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.

Today was the last Junior parkrun before Xmas and Santa had come to town early. There was lots of fancy dress on show at Pitshanger Juniors from the volunteers and also the runners 🤶⛄🎅.

Steph, Harvey and Sevan spread Xmas cheer as marshals, encouraging the runners around the course and making sure they made it around safely. At the other end of the naughty-nice spectrum, tail walkers Kash and Maria turned one little girl into the Grinch 👹.

The girl didn't want to complete the course, didn't want to be spoken to and didn't want to be followed by the tail walkers, which is difficult as that's the whole point of their role. She was being a bit mean and definitely not in the Christmas spirit. Maybe she has tail walker phobia? Her grandma said that the child would drop out, so the tail walkers passed her, then 15 minutes later, she was still working her way around the course. After reaching the funnel, Kash went to find the grouchy child and carefully supported them to get to the finish.

On a mild December Sunday morning, Santa visiting Pitshanger junior parkrun was looking for workouts to be ready for January to get back in shape after the abundance of Christmas treats.

He tried some tai chi and breathwork first, which turned out to be more intense than he had expected! Santa had to do a couple of sprints between the park cafe and the gazebo where a group practiced tai chi - people could not get enough photos with Santa, so he kept running back to pose with them!

Tired of fame, he joined a smaller GoodGym group for a full-body workout with zero equipment (well, apart from the picnic benches!). Could Santa do jumping jacks and Bulgarian split squats? Yes, he could! At the end of the 15-minute session, Santa and his two helpers were warmed-up and ready to go for all the high-fives, cheering and tail-walking at junior parkrun. Well done, Santa!

Back at Mr C house where his daughter welcomed me back as I was there recently and had some work to be done on the back garden. As the front needed a bit of weeding too, I did that too as had enough of 90 minutes to finish both sides. In the front flower bed, had to get rid all the dead weed/branches and clear the rubbish that was coming from the main road. Seems that the various cats seen in front like this flower bed...could smell cat poo or was it from the fox i saw a few minutes in front?! Then i went to finish the back garden with the weeding and removing grass in between the slabs. I also cut down all the brambles that were left against the old shed as still some but nothing to cut it last time : used the hoe to cut the smaller brambles. This time, Mr C daughter said she still did not find something to cut the thicker brambles, but i searched in the shed and found some small old rusty clippers or something like that. With pure strength and rusty tool was able to cut and pull out the remaining. Now Mr C and his daughter have to get rid of the bags that were filled from the GG missions(see pic)