This year's GoodGym Ealing's Christmas party didn't encourage us to get more steps in - it was just opposite St Mary's Church, at the New Inn pub in South Ealing! Big thanks to Iram, who found and booked the venue! The room we had was nice and quiet - until we started popping the Christmas crackers!

The jokes from the crackers were a perfect, silly warm-up to the traditional GoodGym quiz, prepared by quiz masters Sevan and Iram. The prize? Chocolates - and, if you were vegan, chocolate bars. Yum!

Just as if there was not enough joy (there was!) during the quiz, Santa himself visited us. He was very secretive - we couldn't guess his identity or where he got his gifts from. From books and plush reindeer to best of the best shower kits, everyone received a little something to take back home.

What a fun and festive evening it's been!

Every community has its own traditions to celebrate festive times. GoodGym Ealing is no different. Our Christmas tradition since 2018 (with some breaks) has been kicking off the season by decorating the Christmas tree at St Mary’s in South Ealing to get the church ready for the Christmas services.

Eleven GoodGymers and one new GoodGymer-to-be were welcomed at the church by Wei Hei, Revd. Joy French and her husband, Clynt. It was a great opportunity to meet the vicar, who, although new to Ealing, showed a familiar warmth and - pun not intended - joy. We’ve been treated to some Christmas tunes, mulled wine, and minced pies, yum!

We had a Geordie Santa, The True Santa, and a bunch of helpful elves on our team. Not all the elves had expected to be following a Christmas dress code, but Thaiza got them covered! She brought all sorts of festive headwear, making everyone a bit more sparkly.

Some elves got busy decorating the tree, and others headed to the gallery for a work at height: a little bit of dusting. The good news was that our earlier session in September hadn’t left us with much dust to bust.

With Joy very pleased with the outcome of using our Christmastifying skills, the team headed to the New Inn across the road for more festivities: Christmas crackers, quiz time, and Secret Santa!

6 goodgymers cleaned up a small part of their local area to improve their enviroment. Cans, plastics and various items stewn by the foxes.

Pitshanger Junior parkrun celebrated a huge milestone today, their 500th event! 🥳👏 To celebrate, they'd asked everyone present to wear blue and one of the organisers had even brought cake to celebrate the 11 years that the event had been running 🎂. Four of the original volunteers from that first parkrun in 2014 were present too.

Little did they know that an elite group of 11 (co-incidentally) puddle jumpers and cake box crackers was present within the 80 finishers and 38 volunteers today. By the time that Harvey and Kash had returned from their marshalling duties, there were only crumbs left of the cake that once represented the parkrun's route. Sevan was timekeeping and his evidence was pieced together with the chocolately finger prints around the crime scene to hunt down the cake robbing culprits, some of whom are still at large 🕵️.

GoodGym will be back supporting Pitshanger Junior parkrun in 2 weeks, when there may be 11 fewer runners present. They would love to have as many volunteers as today, so please sign up to help make this brilliant event happen.