7 Goodgymmers dug deep on an evening of mixed weather and pre-London sympathy Marathon jitters as they lent a hand at the Haringey Learning Partnership with a spot of water feature creation.

Haringey Heroes

Not all marathons are created equal and it would be churlish to deny that the London Marathon holds a special place in the heart of most London runners. Which is why this year we are living [or running?] vicariously through our very own Sarah and Latoya who will be attempting to win the race on Sunday ;)

You are both amazing women and we are so proud you're representing us in London's Top Race - smash it and we'll be cheering you every step of the way!

<3 <3

Can't Teach An Old Dog New Tricks

As sure as eggs is eggs, you get a group of Haringey Goodgymmers together to dig holes for an hour and most of the conversation that unfolds is quite frankly unprintable. To be fair, our resident Smutmeister- who shall remain unnamed - managed to hold her first bawdy double entendre until around the 7:41pm mark - so at least that is something. Anyway, let's concentrate on the task at hand instead, shall we?

A group of us met at the Blue House Yard for a very short sprint over to HLP, where we met Luke from Grown22 who's helping the school create their very own wild nature pond. There, we were joined by the walking GG crew and we were tasked with, effectively, digging a pretty big hole. Reader, we dug. Oh, how we dug.

At some point, Luke mentioned some heavy wood sleepers needed shifting to the other side of the school, and Niamh and Sam jumped at it, flexing their biceps as they went. This was perhaps timely because even though she had been digging a pretty massive hole for over half an hour, Sam didn't actually seem to know what she was actually doing, having been surprised to find out halfway through the task that we were creating a pond. Credit where credit is due - you give that woman a shovel and she will dig, and dig deep and relentlessly, no questions asked. Boom.

After about an hour, Luke was satisfied we had reached the depth we needed to reach this evening and bid us farewell, not before we took some selfies and had a little play with Luke's trusty sidekick - the sweet Mylo.

Great eve.

Join us next week as we go back the wonderful Orchard Meadow in Crouch End where tasks will include trimming a bush and some tool maintenance. Oh dear!

3 runners and 1 cyclist appeared Chapmans Green to get into some serious weeding.

Alex reached out to us before the task, reminding us to bring along head torches. But with the clocks going forward at the weekend, we had plenty of light through to Nurjehan-o'clock.

We started the task with a brief tour of the old bowling green, which GGH has helped to transform. It's turning into a lovely orchard. Crab Apple jelly coming this autumn. Then out to the public park, and over to the Allium, Marigold, and Lavender bed, we planted up previously. It was being taken over by grasses, and some sort of creeping vine from beyond the pale.

Hand rakes were particularly effecting at gathering up large bundles of the creeper. The soil was clearly very fecund with amount of weeds that had sprung up, and the amount of worms hiding just below the surface. Bodes well for those spring flowers soon! Before too long we'd filled 4 bin bags full. And Alex could start covering the ground with some weed preventing mulch. With the locals admiring our handiwork, we waved goodbye and headed off into the (now conveniently timed) sunset.