Joel

On what was a rather gloomy, cold, wet and windy May the 4th, six GoodGym members felt the force of a community project in need and came running, clearing the clouds on the way and bringing some gorgeous spring sunshine with them. One of those runners was Sarah, on her first GoodGym session. A very warm welcome to Sarah, hopefully see you again soon at some other Community Missions and eventually Group Runs.

The Great Baddow Community Allotment has been recently set up by the Great Baddow Parish Council to promote health and wellbeing; ultimately it will be run by volunteers to support the more vulnerable, elderly and disabled people in the community. It was our job to get the allotment plot ready by turning it over.

Bob, the Parish Councillor in charge of the site gave us our force, sorry forks, to do some digging and off to work we went. It’s safe to say the soil was a bit firmer than we were expecting and required a lot of muscle but we worked our way through, clearing the weeds as we went.

Whilst we were busy digging away Rich shared his famous recipe for noodle soup which had us all captivated and salivating, and we discussed the potential of a party for our fifth birthday in July, it almost felt like things may be finally getting back to normal.

After about 40 minutes of digging the plot was completely turned over, we handed back our forks and went on our way. Rich and Sarah disappeared up Beehive Lane whilst the rest of us ran back into town before splitting off to our respective homes.

Bob seemed delighted with our work and wanted us back in a couple of weeks time so great job everyone. I think you all deserve some cheers!!

We will be at the Mencap centre next week for some decorating and then back to the community allotment to do some more turning over the week after.

Four of us helped out the Mencap centre get their big bulky furniture back from the big yellow storage, or was it five of us 😜 We originally helped move all the furniture into storage 3 weeks ago so they were out of the way of the renovations going on at the centre, now the flooring has been laid it was time to get the bigger items back.

Me and Rachel met Andrew from Mencap and the man who had very kindly let us use his van Brian at the big yellow storage to help load the van for delivery. It was a bit of a struggle to get into the building thanks to the ridiculously long pin number we had to put in, and a struggle to find the lock up all the goodies were stored in but we managed in the end. Me and Andrew did most of the heavy lifting and Rachel pushed the full trolleys out to the van to be loaded. It was then a massive team effort to try and make everything fit, and miss the rather nice looking Mercedes who had parked a bit too close for our liking.

Andy and Joel met up at the Mencap Centre with Philippa to unload our precariously balanced van load, from the pictures it looks like they had lots of fun. Joel even got to admire his handy work and show Andy the feature wall that we had painted the week before at the Mencap centre, which looks even lovelier now all the paint has dried.

It took three trips in the van and a lot of muscle, but all of the tables, filing cabinets and shelving units are now back where they belong. And all done within in an hour!! Fantastic effort everyone, thanks for helping out.

We will be back in a couple of weeks to do some more painting and give the place a new lease of life but next week we will be down at the Great Baddow Community Allotment to turn it over and get it ready.