🎶Julia and I. You, it’s yoooou and me. 🎶

Yep, we ran up ALL the hills on the way to St. Peter in the Forest, taking in Lloyd park and the glorious forest itself to round off 5K!

After all the recent heat, once there we got straight to watering those thirsty herbs and roses in the churchyard (and no, we didn’t make a deal with God), and of course, the odd Bush too.

Then a quick trot back down to the village. Passing by a postbox with a crocheted fruit bowl hat. Honestly though, dear reader, we’ve seen Stranger Things.

And from there we went our separate ways.

Do you want to feel how it feels? **Do join our next group session next Wednesday!

It was a task with a bit of added showbiz this Wednesday afternoon as GoodGym Waltham Forest were joined by a cameraman and Jacob, a journalist with the Independent. Jacob had been told by his physio that 2 years of home working has not been good for his health and she suggested he encorporated more cardio exercise into his week. She also thought that the social aspect of GoodGym would be hugely beneficial.

St-Peter-in-the-Forest is a beautiful church on the edge of Epping Forest with a brilliant programme of community activities and they often need GoodGym's support in keeping their vast graveyard clean and tidy. After a few stretches we were off for a gentle jog around the forest while we explained all things GoodGym to Jacob, closely followed Ben the cameraman who was simply trying not to fall in the mud.

Soon we were back at the church with a wheelbarrow full of tools and set to work weeding, pruning and tidying a small remembrance garden. Jacob was having a great time, commenting on how nice it was to be out with other people and that he was enjoying the gardening despite not having the motivation to look after his own at home.

Big shout to Peter, Ruby, Ramon and Julia for coming down and showing off their acting skills.

p.s. I should point out that myself, GoodGym or Jacob have absolutely no affiliation with Jacob Rees-Mogg or the Conservative party. It was simply the best pun my brain could think of late on a Wednesday evening.

What a session we had tonight! Lots of energy, banter and productivity! Whilst we had a couple of no-shows, we had some unexpected 'shows' so we ended up having a good group workout and had a very productive session at St Peter in the Forest churchyard!

//WELCOME AND WELCOME BACK//

It was great to welcome Michael to his first GoodGym session and what a start he had indeed, think this is our most productive goodgymmer!!!!

A warm welcome to Julius at his first Waltham Forest session (after having one session in Norwich before the you-know-what-happened). This was an epic first session with some serious strength display!

It was fantastic to see Charlie back after one year - looking forward to more sessions in 2022!

//OFF LIKE A ROCKET//

Well we were all very excited after our warm up, so we took off energetically and on reflection a little bit too fast, which we realized very soon and slowed down. Ray has joined us for the run to the church and led a walk&jog group of Rachel and Rosalind through his secret shortcut (the fact of which became clear once I ran back and didn't find them, but I knew Ray will get them there safely and on time:)).

Howling at the moon or howling with pain? What can we say - the almost full Woolf Moon has provided a fantastic guide for our run to the task so myself, Charlie and Ruby decided to howl at the moon (must be those good endorphines from running...). This, however, backfired as everyone ahead of us stopped and waited thinking we were shouting for them to stop or screaming out in pain face palm :)

//GETTING STUFF DONE AT ST PETER'S//

• A little bit about St Peter's in the Forest: St Peter's is a Church of England church but it's so much more than just that - it's a vital part of the Waltham Forest community providing space for forest school sessions, local history, biodiversity, heritage education and outdoor activities for families and people of all ages. The church and the community centre received National Lottery Heritage Fund and over 2020 underwent major restoration work which is why the church looks so great, however there's always a need to help in the churchyard!

• Mean lean shoveling machine Michael! One of our major tasks was to re-descover an overgrown path amongst the graves, weed it, clean it and cover it with a weed suppressant and gravel. Step forward Michael - the man is clearly very talented with a shovel so in no time, there was a cleared path with borders discovered under all that growth and wet leaves!!! I promised that next gardening task Michael can take it easy and be a photographer - it's definitely deserved!:) Once we all admired Michael's work and oohed and aahed, Rachel and Charlie got the brushes out and gave those borders a good scrub and masterfully put down a weed suppressant - thankfully we had just enough to cover most of the path!. In the meantime Saj and Michael covered the path with the gravel. Look at this beauty:

• The remembrance garden is finally DONE!!! Before Ray disappeared to work, he showed where the gravel bags are and Julius and Charlie grabbed the wheelbarrows and had a nice arm workout by bringing the rest of the bags from the opposite side of the churchyard and covering the rest of the path in the garden as well as for the new path.

• Julius's is a real Caesar! Once the gravel bags were all transported we were talking about bringing the pallet back to the shed so a group of us went to carry it only to see this one-man band who just went and did it! Well done Julius!

• Discovering a fallen down gravestone and clearing a lot of graves! Rosalind, Saj, Rachel, Rebecca and Ruby performed miracles with their trowels, spades and forks by clearing out the corner and ancient graves by the main path (and below our new one!) whilst wheelbarrowing weeds into one neat pile, which we hope we didn't leave in the wrong place! All the borders, outside and on top of graves were cleared, weeded and we discovered a nice border there as well. Epic effort this!

• Frightening Father Alex! Usually there’s no one at the church at this time so it must’ve been quite a shock to suddenly hear and see lots of people coming into the churchyard, grabbing forks and spades and hectically working around graves!!! We can only apologise to Father Alex, who came out to say hello and was very curious and nice about it all! We reassured him that we were not digging up anything we shouldn't do:) What can we say, it was an eventful night:)

//THAT'S A WRAP//

Once we ensured that all the tools were collected and safely put away into the shed and everything was tided up, we took a group photo (ok we took a few but only 2 turned out good:)) and made our way back in a leisurely fashion with a mix of jogging and walking. A few goodgymers were dropping off to make it back home so four of us made it to the base where we did a nice little stretch down to finish an energetic and productive session! Great to see everyone - well done for your energy and effort tonight!

Where have all the goodgymmers gone?

There must've been a big party somewhere happening as only 3 out of 7 sign-ups showed up to todays group run:)

Energetic run and gravel bag lifting! But despite being low on numbers we had great energy and put it to good use by keeping a nice pace to and from the St Peter's churchyard, where we moved lots of gravel bags to the storage area as well as opening quite few of them to continue covering the path in the remembrance garden (we WILL finish it THIS YEAR!). We didn't quite finish the job but hopefully next time!!!!

Until next time!

Great to see new and old GGWF faces at tonight's run!

Everyone arrived on time, congregating inside in the warmth of the Greenleaf Road church (still very chuffed we have this wonderful base to use)! We were lucky again with a lovely starry evening, crisp and dry!

We started off with a warm up in the carpark, doing dynamic stretches to get our bodies warmed up and ready for what's to come:

Hills, Hills, Hills

It all started off gently enough jogging up to Forest Rd and then someone (coughs Matthew had an idea to run up a particularly steep road and we went for it! It was quite a mountain but everyone did a fantastic job persevering jogging and walking up and it felt amazing at the top (one might say just like climbing Everest, totally the same... :))! Yes it might've taken only a minute but the heart rate was up and running and there are some thoughts of hill training in the future!

Getting busy trimming bushes at St Peter-in-the-Forest

Lots was done at the session. Here's what we got up to:

• Gravelly duty: Tony, Matthew and Ercole got the wheelbarrows and walked to the Peterhouse community centre to bring 10 very heavy bags of gravel to spread it out on the paths! They then joined in the rest of tasks.
• Path covering: Ruby, Natasha and Charlotte were masterfully cutting up weed suppressant fabric and laying out, securing it with plastic pegs, using whatever was handy as a hammer! Great strong work!
• Weeding: The bed closest to the path was overtaken by grass so a few goodgymmers pulled out the grass with roots to make the area nice and tidy!
• Trimming bushes: We weren't planning on this but as we were looking around we noticed that the bushes by the entrance to the Remembrance Garden were quite, ahem, bushy so Pippa, Clara and Ercole got the secateurs from the shed and got to work - Edward Scissorhands, eat our heart out!

Celebrating Clara's 50th with muffins!

We took a gentler route back, finishing up with the nice stretch down and then celebrated Clara's 50th good deed with some banana and coffee muffins!

An intrepid duo of Charlotte and Fran met at St Peter's in the Forest Churchyard to help with some much needed maintenance. As the name suggests, it's a beautiful location, midway between Walthamstow and Snaresbrook, surrounded by protected woodlands. The churchyard has recently been part of the Walthamstow art trail and some of the exhibits are still there for visitors to see. Nearly all the work in the churchyard is done by volunteers, and it's a large site so there is plenty to get stuck into!

Anita, one of the volunteers explained the task - to tidy up a big patch of brambles and weeds surrounding their memorial garden. She supplied us with gloves and shears, and left us to it. Within the hour we had managed to make a noticeable difference to the unwieldly patch, sustaining bug bites and nettle stings to validate our efforts! Next time, hopefully with a few more people, we can make even more of an improvement, and tame the wilderness into a place that both humans and animals can enjoy! (PS: forgot to take any photos, so attached is proof of leg bites instead!)