Twelve runners set out on a beautiful Monday night for short trot down to the Old Harlesden Police Station where a huge task awaited them out the back...

Abraham was there to meet and greet, and introduced us to Colin, who explained that a new art complex called CREATE SPACE will soon be opening there and will be available for local community use, and that they are fighting to make it a great space for everyone, rather than letting it be developed into blocks of flats. Anyone looking for more information about volunteering or signing up as members can contact colinlearatceatespace@outlook.com (0749 232 1626).

Colin led us out to the previously unexplored territory round the back of the station, (where the creepy old Willesden gallows are located!!!) and set us all to work, with Sadhana, our intrepid (and prolific) photographer catching all the best action moments!

There was (quite LITTER-ally) heaps to do;

• moving wood

• weeding

• sawing branches

• moving piles of mattresses

• litter picking

• fighting unruly ivy...

...but the team were undaunted - we had no trouble with the rubble! and cleared some space in that place! Bravely ignoring slugs and wee beasties, brushing past clumps of nettles and thistles and enduring their nasty stings, we worked on for 50 minutes, searching for doc leaves to soothe the pain, but to no avail... We packed up and set off back for the Queensbury with just a sliver of daylight left - yay for spring!

Before you go... The next GoodGym monthly drinks will be on Thursday 6th April from 6.30pm til late, upstairs at the Marquis of Cornwallis, WC1N 1AP (near Russell Sq). All the details are here: https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/gg-monthly-social-april I hope you can make it!

The next is a 'save the date' for the GoodGym Olympics, which will be held on Saturday 10th June at the Parilament Hill Track from 1-6pm; the idea is that different boroughs compete in events like 400m, and the elimination mile, to more novel events like a welly throwing competition and even hopefully a wheelbarrow race with real wheelbarrows. Each area will be encouraged to make their own flag for the event and even have a GoodGym Bake-off (ala a summer fate style), so hopefully it will be something for everyone.

Bye for now, till next time! XXX

On Saturday morning after, having watched GoodGym feature on BBC breakfast, two seasoned GoodGym runners were joined by four newcomers at Dacres Wood Nature Reserve. Before we got to work Tim gave us a bit of the history of the reserve which started out life as the Croydon canal and was a popular hangout for Shackleton back in the day. The reserve is home to some very old Turkey Oaks which amazingly are still upright despite some having a sizable hole at the base. With the tour over it was time to get our waders on and quite literally get stuck in. The pond is designed to be amphibian friendly but the reeds have been taking over leaving the frogs and toads very little open water to move around in. Our job was to pull out as much of the reeds as we could without falling in. It was hard and stinky work but after an hour and a half we'd made significant progress and transferred a lot of reeds from the pond to a big compost pile and even seen a couple of little frogs. Once we'd returned our tools and removed our waders Tim very kindly invited us to his house for tea, cake and much needed showers.