21 runners headed to Catherine, Ros and little Connie at the lovely Parkview Estate this evening.

After welcoming tonight's first time runners, Laurie and Kate, and TH newbie, Nuria, we sped down Old Ford Rd to the lovely leafy Parkview estate where Catherine & co were waiting for us, exceptionally well briefed.

Armed with bundles of tools, the team wasted no time in dispatching runners to all four corners of the estate:

• Connie & Ros took one team and headed to the flower patch we'd dug at the front, over the summer
• Steve and Dave headed out front too, for some serious hammering work
• A team of 4 headed inside the gorgeous Glasshouse building to cut our Christmas trees for the winter fare
• Another team headed to the new wild flower area to rake and scatter seeds
• A further team were tasked with wheeling and shuttling compost to all sites
• ...while Rita headed up a team of 1 to deal with the Glasshouse planters

Yep, busy or what.

The team dug and weeded and cut and fetched and wheeled and planted and swept and mopped for over an hour. It was amazing what they achieved.

And before we knew it we were gathering inside, to a now pristine hall, where poor Rob made the mistake of saying he'd experienced a twinge. So, delaying the the outro and final team pic, I took it upon myself to offer Rob a standing quad stretch, which the GoodGymers then decided to take photographic evidence of. One word: karma.

We then made our way to our beautiful Bonner Gate spot where Steve led us through some very fast running drills before we made our way back to the hotel to call it a night.

THANK YOU TEAM FOR A WICKED NIGHT!

Special thanks to our wonderful task force who handle things so smoothly in the background, from overseeing the Glasshouse clean-up effort to taking lots of wicked pics.

Thanks to Steve for coming on board early on in the evening for the fitness part of our session; to George, Lieke and Dave for some great pics.

What a lovely evening. You make such a difference, not only to the two woman powerhouse that is the Parkview Estate Residents Association, but to the residents too, who see, appreciate and very much take on board what you're doing. So thank you.

Until next time, have a wonderful week everyone.

21 GoodGymers helped Hackney parks clear 20 tonne bags of Leafs from London Fields and celebrated Mireille’s 💯 in pizza style!!

A lot of fun was had in Hackney tonight!! Welcoming Nuria for her first run we made up a silly route to move exactly 150 metres in the guise of running nearly 3k. Some would call the run indirect I would just say kind of scenic!

Meeting up with Park ranger Bruce we grabbed the best leaf grabbing tools ever created plus a rakes and tonne bags and got to work!

With Hackney Parks genius carbon emission limiting idea to create a woodland area that all the fallen leaves from some of the 5.2 million Hackney tree leaves could be deposited there, without the need for them to be driven anywhere.

So we grabbed, piled up, bagged and dragged/dumped the leaves. The bags were filling fast and the leaf piles were quickly stacked up and whittled down!

20 tonne bags complete it was time to Make our move!

Back to the Bakehouse and on to Broadway Market to celebrate Mireille 100th GoodDeed!! Beautiful pizza and unbelievable cakes from Toyin and Clair!! Huge congratulations for 3 and a half years of epic GoodGyming and constant positivity!! Mireille has been an amazing part of the GoodGym and especially GG Hackney journey!! Thanks for all your dedication and efforts!!

Know she wasn’t officially celebrating tonight but massive shout out to Liz for hitting her intermediate milestone of the way to an unbelievable year of GoodDeeding!! #28togo

See you next week

Joel

p.s thanks to Charlotte for the social pics!!