What is a better place to do something good than a shady alleyway after dusk?

6 GoodGymers showed up at the South end of the pathway leading to the Park Royal tube station to fight the litter and poor weather conditions.

Gen, not discouraged by the lack of group run today, ran on her own to the task. Declan arrived already armed with a head torch and his own litter picker. There were veterans like Claire (who had signed up late but didn't disappoint) and Bryon (who should come for his next task to Ealing to hit that 400 good deeds!). Harvey showed up to bring his infinite energy to the team and equip them with weapons (litter pickers and bags). He also brought an unexpected Wonder Woman headband for Kash - that's what you get for hitting 195 good deeds in a year. Nice!

The quest that took less than an hour was fruitful - we covered the whole alleyway and collected 6 bags of litter, having 5 of us staying till the end of the task - that's more than 1 bag per person!

Moreover, Declan proposed not to mix recycling with the rest of the waste. The result?

• 3 bags of non-recyclables 🗑️

• 3 bags of recyclables ♻️

By the end of the task, Dec and Kash promised to take the bags with recyclables and deliver them to the appropriate bins by their homes.

Notable findings:

• 1 monitor, packaged with cables 🖥️

• 1 RMT 2023 diary 📘

• 1 empty school satchel 🎒

• 1 empty laptop case 💼

• 1 object that looked a bit like a leg in a sock 🧦

• a plethora of cute purple dog poo bags 🐶

Halfway through the task, there was an unusual encounter: a man approached us, asking whether we found "a pot like this one", showing the sample pot picture on his phone. We collectively denied any association with said pot. Later, we wondered whether we made it to the local cartel's hit list or - if one of us actually picked up the pot - prevented an illegal transaction!

Hopefully, the Park Royal alleyway will stay free of rubbish and Ealing drug lords' influence for a little while!

Tonight's task for Cultivate London was so grand it didn't fit into a single group run and had to be split into two community missions. We could have made it a trilogy but we didn't want to go down "The Hobbit" route. The endeavour involved loading and unloading rubbish of different shapes, sizes and varieties into and from a van. Our part was Act Two of the operation and, confusingly, was set up in Acton.

The squad that showed up was a model combination of GoodGym runners, walkers and cyclists. Apart from Liv, Mike and Kash, the Acton site hosted a guest from Hounslow, Alan, and the newest addition to Ealing GoodGym, Declan. If you haven't done it already, give Dec a cheer! There was one more teammate to come... keep reading!

The activity that took most of the time during the mission was... expecting the van to arrive. It was a trial of patience for the Acton team. To subdue the tension, we entertained ourselves by citing nerdy parkrun facts.

The 3.7-mile distance between Hanwell and Acton that the van was supposed to cover was the arena of an epic race: Man versus Van! Forget Man and Van. The audacious GoodGym athletes are known for challenging machines - not just treadmills but also transport vehicles.

After about 15 minutes, we saw the lights of the van in the darkness, and recognised fellow Cultivate London people. The gates of the Rubbish Hades have been opened. We entered the site to deliver the waste from the van to its final destination. A couple of office chairs, a few old PCs, some furniture and the stuff we didn't want to identify found their way to the skip with the help of our agile arms. The job went super fast, and when we thought we were almost done, Harvey, The Man Who Challenged the Van arrived in glory to deliver the final stinky pieces of rubbish from the van to the pile. Despite The Van arriving a few minutes before Harvey, it was disqualified for using fossil fuels, so The Man won!

Before the GoodGym gang disbanded, Romina rewarded us with her delicious homemade oat bars with coconut, banana and dates. Doesn't that seem like a great incentive before our next task for Cultivate London?