Another great GoodGym Hounslow session happened last night, with plenty to celebrate and two important community tasks helping local green spaces recover after the drought.

🎉 Celebrations all round

A huge congratulations to Maxime on his 100th Good Deed! That is a fantastic milestone and a testament to the time, energy and commitment he has put into helping others in the community. Reaching 100 good deeds means 100 occasions of turning up, getting stuck in and making a tangible difference — one task, one neighbour and one community space at a time. What an achievement!

We also gave a warm GoodGym welcome to David, who joined us for his very first session. It was great to have him along, and we hope this is the first of many GoodGym adventures.

💦 Watering after the drought

With our local green spaces needing some extra care following the drought, we split into two groups for two very worthwhile watering tasks. One group headed to Abundance in Chiswick, helping to water their community growing spaces. Organisations like Abundance do so much to bring people together around food, nature and sustainable local communities, so helping to keep their plants healthy is a small but important way of supporting that work.

The other group headed to Wild Chiswick’s allotments, where there was plenty to keep us busy watering plants that had been through a tough spell of dry weather. Wild Chiswick helps protect and nurture local biodiversity while keeping valuable community growing spaces thriving. We even had a curious fox was keeping watch over proceedings! 🦊

🤝 Reuniting!

We decided to skip the usual workout in the interests of bringing the groups back together and spending more time as one team. Neither group was short of a workout, though. At Turnham Green, the watering crew had to carry heavy watering cans all the way across the Green from the rockery — definitely enough functional fitness to make up for skipping the usual fitness! Next week, we’re back to normal with our session at Chiswick House — workout included!

A big well done to everyone. From 100 good deeds to a first session, and everything between and beyond, it was another great night of doing good together. 💚

A big GoodGym Wandsworth welcome to Alice, who joined us for her first group run last night! 🎉 We hope you enjoyed your first session with us — although perhaps we should have warned you that it sometimes means shifting a truly ridiculous amount of mulch…

We started with a warm-up and a question about the quietest place on earth before heading out on our run down to Doddington. Once there, we were faced with a big challenge. The council had kindly donated a huge — absolutely massive — pile of mulch, but unfortunately it had been dumped in a spot that blocked access to the bins, a parking space and an entrance to the estate. So the priority was clear: move it, and as quickly as possible.

We grabbed whatever we could find that had a viable cavity — tubs, bags, boxes, buckets and anything else capable of holding mulch — and got shifting.

What followed was the ultimate full-body workout. No separate fitness session required! Legs were getting a workout carrying loads up the stairs, arms were doing the heavy lifting, and our cores were working overtime to keep everything stable as we hauled mulch up the stairs.

And we really did move mountains. By the end of the session we had transported at least half of the enormous pile. At times it felt like we weren't making much of a dent, but take a look at the before-and-after photos and you'll see just how much we achieved. 💪🌱

A massive well done to everyone who got stuck in. Next week is a bank holiday, so we'll be switching things up with a lunchtime session. Exactly what we're doing is still to be confirmed, so watch this space! 😉

What a challenge at Strand on the Green School last night!

We arrived to discover a huge task ahead of us: moving 3 tonnes of bark and 5 tonnes of sand to different locations around the school. We were definitely up for the challenge, but agreed that our usual fitness session probably wouldn’t be required afterwards!

We got straight to work. Maxime, Michelle, Alanna and Fran took on the particularly hard task of shifting heavy bags of sand up the stairs to the sandpit. Heavy bags + flights of stairs = amazing full body workout!

Meanwhile, the rest of the group were showing off some impressive muscle with some excellent farmers’ lifts moving buckets, and shovelling and barrowing sand to different areas of the playground and nursery while wearing a fetching policeman's hat👮

Somehow we managed it all in record time! Originally thinking we’d have to come back next week to finish the job, but the the whole lot was completed in a single session thanks to amazing teamwork from everyone.

Clare, the caretaker, was really pleased with the result given how long it would it have taken one person. Huge well done to everyone for taking on such a massive challenge and getting it done together. And thanks to Lucy for the run report title!