We had a great turn out on bank holiday Monday. Together we filled wheelbarrows with sand and delivered them (along with rake puns) to complete the path through the woods.

Nine GoodGymers made their way to ARC Community Centre last night, meeting Amy and Autumn at their canal-side community garden in a mission to clear the decks — or rather, the beds — ready for a season of planting.

And what better way to celebrate Amy's 200th GoodGym session than with her hosting us!

Five of us ran there from Arsenal and joined another four there. The main task was clearing a long pile of dead shrubbery from along the fence, trying to fit it into two big garden waste sacks like a game of tetris. Louise put her sawing skills to the test, beelining it for the fattest of branches, while Deirdre fiercly attacked and bashed the overflowing bag of branches with a spade, and Mehmet and Luke demonstrated impressive feats of strength, hoisting a hefty railway sleeper into place to squash down the contents of the other bag. We're not as scary a bunch as that sounds...

Steph Ducat carefully dug out burdock and prepared the ground at the end of the garden for a tree that will be planted later this week. And over at the wildflower roundabout, Caitlin, Da Marcus, and Deirdre made a (small) start on weeding.

Looking forward to returning in a few weeks to continue with their great work...

Last night's session saw 9 GoodGymers roll up at Elizabeth House Community Centre, helping to stack chairs, clean tables, and sweep the floor after their foodbank in record time. Although I'm not sure we managed to rid the floor of every sparkle of glitter!

As is often the case with this task - we were rewarded with surplus bread and veg to take home (has anyone tasted those mustard seeds?! They're fiery!!)

5 GoodGymers took a gentle 2.5 km run to get there too - although we all bailed out of the run back, opting instead to head directly home to cook up our leeks and munch on our bread, much to the disappointment of Luke who really wanted to witness me running laps of the stadium with 2 leeks and a baguette in tow... next time!

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!