Julia (Redbridge/Waltham Forest)

Another Friday lunchtime and another relaxing hour spent clearing ivy and brambles from the graves at St Mary's Church in Walthamstow Village. It's a wonderfully peaceful place and the perfect lunchbreak during a busy day at the desk.

GoodGym Waltham Forest have now cleared around 75% of the area so we'll be back again soon. Check out what's coming up here

What a session we had tonight! Lots of energy, banter and productivity! Whilst we had a couple of no-shows, we had some unexpected 'shows' so we ended up having a good group workout and had a very productive session at St Peter in the Forest churchyard!

//WELCOME AND WELCOME BACK//

It was great to welcome Michael to his first GoodGym session and what a start he had indeed, think this is our most productive goodgymmer!!!!

A warm welcome to Julius at his first Waltham Forest session (after having one session in Norwich before the you-know-what-happened). This was an epic first session with some serious strength display!

It was fantastic to see Charlie back after one year - looking forward to more sessions in 2022!

//OFF LIKE A ROCKET//

Well we were all very excited after our warm up, so we took off energetically and on reflection a little bit too fast, which we realized very soon and slowed down. Ray has joined us for the run to the church and led a walk&jog group of Rachel and Rosalind through his secret shortcut (the fact of which became clear once I ran back and didn't find them, but I knew Ray will get them there safely and on time:)).

Howling at the moon or howling with pain? What can we say - the almost full Woolf Moon has provided a fantastic guide for our run to the task so myself, Charlie and Ruby decided to howl at the moon (must be those good endorphines from running...). This, however, backfired as everyone ahead of us stopped and waited thinking we were shouting for them to stop or screaming out in pain face palm :)

//GETTING STUFF DONE AT ST PETER'S//

• A little bit about St Peter's in the Forest: St Peter's is a Church of England church but it's so much more than just that - it's a vital part of the Waltham Forest community providing space for forest school sessions, local history, biodiversity, heritage education and outdoor activities for families and people of all ages. The church and the community centre received National Lottery Heritage Fund and over 2020 underwent major restoration work which is why the church looks so great, however there's always a need to help in the churchyard!

• Mean lean shoveling machine Michael! One of our major tasks was to re-descover an overgrown path amongst the graves, weed it, clean it and cover it with a weed suppressant and gravel. Step forward Michael - the man is clearly very talented with a shovel so in no time, there was a cleared path with borders discovered under all that growth and wet leaves!!! I promised that next gardening task Michael can take it easy and be a photographer - it's definitely deserved!:) Once we all admired Michael's work and oohed and aahed, Rachel and Charlie got the brushes out and gave those borders a good scrub and masterfully put down a weed suppressant - thankfully we had just enough to cover most of the path!. In the meantime Saj and Michael covered the path with the gravel. Look at this beauty:

• The remembrance garden is finally DONE!!! Before Ray disappeared to work, he showed where the gravel bags are and Julius and Charlie grabbed the wheelbarrows and had a nice arm workout by bringing the rest of the bags from the opposite side of the churchyard and covering the rest of the path in the garden as well as for the new path.

• Julius's is a real Caesar! Once the gravel bags were all transported we were talking about bringing the pallet back to the shed so a group of us went to carry it only to see this one-man band who just went and did it! Well done Julius!

• Discovering a fallen down gravestone and clearing a lot of graves! Rosalind, Saj, Rachel, Rebecca and Ruby performed miracles with their trowels, spades and forks by clearing out the corner and ancient graves by the main path (and below our new one!) whilst wheelbarrowing weeds into one neat pile, which we hope we didn't leave in the wrong place! All the borders, outside and on top of graves were cleared, weeded and we discovered a nice border there as well. Epic effort this!

• Frightening Father Alex! Usually there’s no one at the church at this time so it must’ve been quite a shock to suddenly hear and see lots of people coming into the churchyard, grabbing forks and spades and hectically working around graves!!! We can only apologise to Father Alex, who came out to say hello and was very curious and nice about it all! We reassured him that we were not digging up anything we shouldn't do:) What can we say, it was an eventful night:)

//THAT'S A WRAP//

Once we ensured that all the tools were collected and safely put away into the shed and everything was tided up, we took a group photo (ok we took a few but only 2 turned out good:)) and made our way back in a leisurely fashion with a mix of jogging and walking. A few goodgymers were dropping off to make it back home so four of us made it to the base where we did a nice little stretch down to finish an energetic and productive session! Great to see everyone - well done for your energy and effort tonight!