Xmas day and a few Goodgymers from different areas joined other park runners on a very cold and windy morning in Gunnersbury Park. Nearly 900 runners/walkers took part on a very special Park run : Xmas day parkrun. Different outfits were seen and seems that Santa has twins, triplets or quadruplets and he was all over the park. Obviously we could see snowmen, elves and other festive characters running around. Some runners also volunteered at the end as bar code scanners : Harvey, Tom and Maria. Chikako was guide running with her daughter. At least the outfits and hats kept all of us warm. Merry Xmas to everyone. After parkrun some Goodgymers walked to St Mary's Road in Ealing to enjoy free coffee, pastries and savoury snacks at Pulp X Paperback : donations from customers when getting a hot drink and tasty freshly baked pastries. Donations going to Prostate Cancer UK and Ealing Churches Winter Night Shelter.
Good to see people coming out on Xmas day to run. walk, volunteer and be social.

A perfect Christmas Eve task cannot get better than what five eager GoodGymers did at a secret location in Ealing this year! Wrapping presents, peeling veggies for a Christmas meal, and prepping non-alcoholic Grinch mojito - all of that for the next day’s Christmas Dinner for young care leavers, who would otherwise be alone this season.

Most of the GoodGymers were on the kitchen duty: Harvey and Maria got stuck into spud-bashing, exchanging insights about parkrun and festivals. Seema peeled so many carrots that she would remember them until Christmas 2026. Kash, after wiping hundreds of plates, was removing the outer leaves of Brussels sprouts and carving the sign of the cross at their base. Why? Apparently, it makes them cook faster!

Meanwhile, Sevan creatively packed presents for care leavers, then left with the organiser, Pam, for a quest to deliver delicious coffee for all the volunteers.

For many young care leavers, Christmas can be a reminder of what they don’t have. That’s why it felt so rewarding to help a small team of volunteers create a day that makes those vulnerable young people feel not alone and that they have a community around them. We hope this year’s Ealing Christmas Dinner event will be delightful!

Behind Mrs M's house lay a jungle filled with trees, vines, spiky branches and all sorts of other things. Mrs M wanted the trees in her jungle to produce fruit again, so GoodGym sent Mr and Ms Tarzan to help her out.

The trees that Mrs M wanted to get producing fruit again were in the middle of the jungle and had become overgrown with ivy and brambles. So much so that the bark of the trees could barely be seen in places. The Tarzans, ducked, dived and swung their ways through creepers and climbers to arrive at the fruitless apple trees. Clearing the ivy was key to the trees' future health as the GoodGym pair had learned at an earlier group session this year.

After the effort of making their way to the trees, the Tarzans took a look at the tools that Mrs M had given them and found 1 sharp and 1 blunt pair of secateurs, a blunt pair of shears and a garden fork. With few useful tools, they'd have to use their brains... or as it turned out, their strength to free the trees. After using the secateurs to cut the low level thinner vines, they took separate paths. Mr Tarzan went low to prise the thick vines close to the ground away from the tree bark, then break them to kill the ivy far above his head. Ms Tarzan swung and climbed high into the canopy to clear as many vines as possible from the tree bark.

With pulling, prising, twisting and snapping, the Tarzans managed to clear all of the vines from the 2 tree trunks that were within reach. With nothing left to swing with, the pair walked to the edge of the jungle to tell Mrs M of their successes. Mrs M was hopeful that with the GoodGymers' help, she would have a better crop of apples next year.

Ah, the dark Walpole Park in winter, a fleet of wheelbarrows, and the usual suspects with head torches, shovels, spades and rakes. Sounds familiar? Another trip to the Walled Garden, a path surface that needed refreshing and the scent of... woodchip? Or maybe something else?

Tonight's task was the second part of the 2025 edition of replacing woodchip on the Walled Garden path, so we've been doing a fair amount of digging, wheelbarrow runs, shovelling, and raking. Certainly not weeding, which in turn was the speciality of other visitors to the park garden - a different kind of weeding.

When walking with wheelbarrows past Rickyard, each time we heard party tunes. Did the Christmas miracle come early, transforming Walpole Park into a nightclub? Everyone seemed to be having fun - and so did we! With a small, but powerful team of four: Harvey, Steph, Sevan and Kash, we've finished off the job in no time! Now we're getting ready for the start of 2026, kicking off the group runs with another session at Walpole Park - sign up now!

The last 100+ leaflets informing about the upcoming free health & fitness sessions at St Mary's church for women of Acton didn't need a big team to finish off. I ventured West of Acton's Morrisons this time, covering Denehurst Gardens, Marble Close, and parts of Willcott Road and Gunnersbury Lane. The flyers batch has been finished, so hopefully we'll see good numbers of women wanting to look after their health and wellbeing storming the classes January!

The delivery van had turned up early at the South Ealing Community Food Cupboard this week, so when GoodGymers Evelyn, Alan and Martin arrived, it initially looked like the regular volunteer team had done all of the work.

However, although the van had been unloaded and crates put in place around the room, there were still plenty of tasks left to help with and the team spent an enjoyable session performing quality control on boxes of tangerines, portioning grapes into bags and flattening cardboard boxes.

The team reckoned that this week's selection contained all of the fruit and veg needed for a Christmas Day feast...with the exception of sprouts, an omission that divided opinion.