We were back at Sunnyside Community Gardens to finish off last week's compost turning. Taking inspiration from the recent Winter Olympics, we applied avalanche rescue snow-removal techniques to moving compost: using a "V" formation with three rows of diggers passing dirt back to the next, forming a nice efficient chain effect.

Great team effort - we were able to complete the compost bay that had totally defeated us last week.

Now it's over to the worms to do work their magic...

Solid effort turning compost at Sunnyside (more like Rainyside) Community Gardens. One bin turned to completion - the other barely scratched the surface, but failure isn't a word in Eslam's vocabulary, so we'll call it a win. All the more for next week, right?!

For one last time as a Goodgym Area Activator, Simon met at the Arsenal Community Hub on Benwell Road to meet a huge group of keen runners, ready to help at Caledonian Park this evening. It was truly a joy to see familiar faces from years gone by (including awesome folks who attended Simon's first session 6.5 years ago at Mildmay Community Centre - I'll find the link!). Also thank you to Astra for attending your first Goodgym session- I heartly recommend attending more sessions soon- we have wonderful people in this community!

After a short (but necessary) warm up, we ran together up McKenzie Road and the Market Road slopes to the wonderful Caledonian Park Clocktower, to meet up with Miriam and Gail, our local task coordinators.

Our objective for the night (with our 26 volunteers on hand!!!), was to shovel piles of crushed rock fines into wheelbarrows, and then transport the loads over to the forest pathways on the West side of the park. This is a lovely wooded walk, that is often frequented by children, families and wheelchair users, and we want to keep this area as accessible as possible during the Springtime months.

We separated into multiple groups to cover the whole area. Team 1 shoveled the ground fines, Team 2 pushed the barrows across the park and Team 3 raked and flattened the ground around the amphitheatre (carefully avoiding the grassed surfaces and paved sections). We also had a 4th team on hand to transfer soil from builder's merchant bags, ready for Spring planting later this month.

This is a massive task, and our crew did an smashing job over the 45 minutes we had available. 26 hands, all working in tandem, really makes a huge difference. Well done!

As we closed up our evening, Area Activator Simon lead a running group back to the Emirates Stadium, while Emily and Louise lead a walking group to The Tollington Arms on Sobell Road- a great local pub that serves incredible Thai food. Together, we celebrated Area Activator Simon's final fixture as a leader, but not his final Goodgym adventure for sure!