An excellent "cross border" turnout this evening at the Hackney Adventure playground as we were joined by Lucinda, Kareem and Chris from Tower Hamlets, and welcomed Joke (from Newham) to her first mission.

There was rain in the air when we arrived at the gates with the usual air of nervous expectancy as to what Ange actually had planned for us this evening - "shifting stuff" proved to be the best description, as she showed us an area round the back of the centre where wooden panels, old crash mats, sinks(!), plastic boxes, bits of shed, guttering and a lot else beside was slowly being enveloped by the undergrowth. In preparation for an upcoming inspection she needed it moved to another area - and with that we got to work.

After a good 45 minutes of non stop back and forth, we had the whole place cleared, and all that remained to be moved were some water catching roof panels, and a couple of strangely shaped "mystery items"...Ange explained that these had been parts from a film set recreating the cave paintings in Lascaux France, and which had been donated to the playground to amuse the children (who apparently were pretty non plussed...). We also perhaps didn't treat them with the reverence they deserved as we soon had them tossed on top of the pile of everything else, and with that we bid our farewells to Ange for another week and ran off into the damp evening.

It might have been a real feel of -7 degrees, but that didn't put off six brave GoodGym-ers who started the year off right by assembling to tackle some planters near Maryland that needed a refresh. The local community has been working hard to brighten up an area around Henniker Point, tackling flytipping and littering by setting up some planters and growing trees, flowers and even edible plants.

Saturday's mission was to remove old soil, weeds and even a dead tree from two of the planters, and add fresh soil in ready for spring planting. Thanks to a great effort by all we quickly tidied them up, ready for us to come back for planting in a few weeks! Shout out to Nick and Sooz for a great effort on a very stubborn tree, and great to see Sher join us for his first mission too - look forward to welcoming you back again soon!

A hardy gang of local goodgymmers from GG Hackney and Newham provided chilled hands and toes today to support the Hackney Marshes parkrun team across a wide range of the volunteer roles. Hilary was on timekeeping duty, Rosa on barcode scanning, Graham as Funnel Manager, Nick on finish tokens and Sooz as tail walker. Between us we did spend a lot of time discussing just how many layers we all had on between us...and what the best techniques were to stop fingers freezing up.

Undeterred by the arctic conditions, 459 runners took to the course with some sparkling times at the front of the field, and our tail walkers crossing the line in just under an hour. A really enjoyable morning of volunteering (we'll certainly be back to do it again), and we then walked (via a welcome coffee) to Maryland for our next spring planter mission - always great when a plan comes together in spite of the chilly conditions!