It took us a weekend task and a group run to rip the paving slabs off the surface of Jerome Allotments, a place sentenced to become yet another bunch of tower blocks in Acton. GoodGymers are the virtuosos of destruction, aren't they? What about construction? We had proven to Romina from Cultivate London that we can build stuff too, so she trusted that we can lay the slabs we had salvaged in a different location. How did it go?

Today's team had a nice balance of runners and cyclists. Annabel and guests from our neighbouring GoodGyms, Divya and Michelle, came to the task on their bikes, while runners Christos, Kash and Sevan enjoyed looping on a path around Ealing Common before making it to Popesfield Allotments.

The evening was bright, and Romina was enthusiastic about seeing the GoodGym engineering in action. The objective was to lay one row of paving slabs under the gate to Cultivate's plant nursery at the allotment. Sounds easy?

Here's the GoodGym Ealing slab-laying technique:

1. Measure the width of the gate
   
2. Measure the slabs (60x60 cm and 60x90 cm options)
   
3. Start digging the ground under the gate
   
4. Conclude that 6 people digging is too many
   
5. Let two team members fill bags with gravel for later
   
6. Keep digging
   
7. Measure the hole for the slabs
   
8. Make the hole wider
   
9. Throw some gravel into the hole
   
10. Level it
    
11. Throw some sand into the hole
    
12. Level it
    
13. Try out a slab and conclude it's not level
    
14. (ok, this one is important: if you are going to do it right, don't miss this - even if you feel you messed up the previous steps, just do this one) Get Michelle to do the Irish stepdance on the sand
15. Try out the slab again and marvel at the precision
    
16. Repeat steps 9-16 for other slabs

In a perfect world, the process would end there. But we don't live there. We live in a fun world! And there is always more fun to break the routine.

1. Switch on the floodlight
   
2. Let Romina notice that the slabs had been laid the other way around
   
3. Flip the slabs

In those 20 easy steps, we laid a row of slabs - and the most of them were even even! Romina appreciated our work ethic and drive to get the job done.

Thanks a lot for your help guys, you work always very hard and do always your best, we are lucky to have you working with us 🤗 - Romina

Next week we will be turning into interior (or shall I say - exterior?) designers to furnish the Transition Garden in Lammas Enclosure. Come and join us!

In a corner of a dark street, next to The Secret Slaboratory in South Acton, three GoodGymers stretching after a run were blinded by a bike light zigzagging with bravado towards them. It was no one else than Divya returning to GoodGym after his hibernation in the winter months!

Divya is the muscle and brains Ealing borrows from Hammersmith, and we were lucky to have him today at Jerome Allotments. The site has been already made partially inaccessible due to the commencing of building work. Romina from Cultivate London was hoping to salvage the paving slabs and reuse them at Popesfield Allotments. Some materials had been removed by GoodGym Hounslow and Ealing before, and some had been nicked before Cultivate managed to lift and transport them to the new home.

Tonight, we started where the slab-snatchers stopped. The six slabs were quite easily accessible, and we lifted and wheelbarrowed them outside the fencing, using a makeshift ramp to deal with a bump on the way. The next batch of slabs was not as simple to get to. They were surrounded by cobblestones we couldn't lever with spades.

"A sledgehammer could help here..." dreamt Sevan.

In the meantime, Romina had an alternative task: collecting the sand from under the slabs into bags. We switched to good, old-school shovelling, but some of us still had bigger ambitions.

"If we only had a sledgehammer..." - Sevan.

After some negotiation from Kash, Romina brought the favourite from Cultivate's tool shed:

The Mighty Sledgehammer.

While Steph and Kash worked on delivering the sand to the gate, Divya and Sevan formed a Research & Development Department to figure out how to get the cobblestones out of the way, generally, by smashing them. The innovative work brought fruits, and soon the trapped slabs were free to take. Once the GoodGymers figured out the right technique, there was no stopping them - apart from the timebox for the task!

Auberon from Cultivate joined the GoodGymers and Romina and used his formidable strength to transport the slabs through the gate faster. In an hour, the team rescued 20+ slabs and collected 7 bags of sand. That's a pretty impressive result for such a small group!

The slabs' story is not over! And you can become a part of it, even if you cannot lift. The idea of recycling the slabs is to reuse them at Popesfield Allotments, the new Cultivate site. To complete the end-to-end journey of the slabs, we will run in April to Popesfield to lay them down. Sign up now!

Next Tuesday, we are running to a location near Elthorne Park to mulch the fruit trees at community orchards maintained by HANGOT. Some of those GoodGymers helped plant this February. Sign up here for the next week's session!

When schools close for half term, there’s nothing better than escaping with the whole family for a well-deserved holiday! Or is there?

For Cultivate London and GoodGymers half term has different attractions in store: speed painting walls schools while kids are away! Romina from Cultivate has been tasked to gather volunteers who would paint the hall in Berrymede School in Acton. One of the groups she had booked for mid-week has cancelled the arrangement, and another party laid the first coat of paint. It was already Saturday afternoon and the children were going back to school on Monday!

Then eight GoodGymers from Ealing and Hounslow arrived!

Aprons and latex gloves on, white paint poured into trays, rollers and brushes ready. Get, set, go!

In about 75 minutes, the GoodGym team covered the entire bottom part of the wall that needed treatment with the second coat of paint! The last ten minutes they spent perfecting the art and concealing all the visible gaps.

A good quality check was possible thanks to Madhan who found the light switch. When Romina came back from the allotment to see the result, she found that GoodGymers lived up to their reputation.

Well done guys, very impressed but kinda expected it from you 😉

Because the whole hall was ours during the task, we put some music on. Michelle was the sound engineer and played a GoodGym-made, school-themed playlist, featuring classics like Pink Floyd.

Hey, teacher, leave them kids alone!

At the end of the session, Emmanuella, who hates waste, distributed plenty of organic brownies she had baked among the painters 💚

It was the last GoodGym session before the long holiday for both Michelle and Alan. A big thank you to both of them for making it to Ealing for that one!

Those who have visited Dean Gardens earlier in the week - at Tuesday volunteering session might have heard stories about bunkers buried beneath the green space. Three GoodGymers decided to grab spades today and verify whether the story was true!

That was not what exactly Auberon from Cultivate London wanted them to do... His plan was to dig horizontally rather than vertically. Sticking to the military theme, Auberon painted two lines in white spray and ordered his recruits to dig two parallel trenches along the railings next to Leeland Terrace.

That was the start of the community activity organised by Cultivate and the council: planting a new wildlife hedge in Dean Gardens. The number of volunteers, including groups of college students looking for volunteer experience, surprised Auberon. Luckily, he brought enough tools (in a van larger than CultiVan) to keep the production line going. While some people were still digging the trench, others were already planting the trees and covering the roots with soil (or mud!). Another group was already progressing with the second trench, and soon, a mulching unit was needed.

Auberon knew he had a perfect squad that didn't need to be told how to mulch. The GoodGymers grabbed shovels and a couple of wheelbarrows and started woodchipping the newly planted trees. They were already warmed up for all aspects of tree planting that day, after the morning session with HANGOT at their orchards.

With plenty of volunteers, the planting operation was finished in 90 minutes and the length of the hedge in Dean Gardens tripled! The spare 30 minutes and the spare woodchip were used to mulch the existing young trees and the flowerbeds in colourful wooden boxes.

The next session with Cultivate London will be in Acton next Sunday - sign up now!

Kash visited Dean Gardens on her lunch break and found familiar people from Cultivate London and the regular and irregular volunteers. Today's task was the maintenance of the wild hedge: trimming, weeding and woodchipping. Kash got a little bit of everything on her short mission.

We are back to Dean Gardens this Saturday afternoon to plant more hedges around the fences of the green space. Sign up to join us!

After a week or so of dry weather, the skies decided to open again, just when we were on our way to Berrymede School in Acton. Romina from Cultivate London double-checked whether we are sure about carrying on with the task. Absolutely yes! We had a pile of fallen leaves to collect and an achievement to celebrate! Steph Ducat, who joined last year in May, has reached unbeleafable 200 good deeds! Super Steph was wearing the red cape tonight and got a seat on a special throne in the school's garden.

We were lucky to miss the heavy rain. Having collected 51 bags of leaves to be used as compost, we knew it was the photo time. Rather than posing with bags, we asked Romina for a more exciting backdrop. She led us to the kid's garden and showed us a collection of wooden seats, including a throne - that one was destined for Steph!

A task in Acton couldn't be finished without the traditional hot beverage in one of the chaii places in Acton. We all took a short break for tea, then ran or walked back to Ealing. Super Steph flew to his home further West to wait for the next call to action.

Join us at the next group run to Blondin Park to put up signage around the park and drink some hot chocolate in the pavillion. Sign up now!