The first group run after the clocks went forward last weekend was all in bright daylight. What a difference it made! Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash ran from Ealing Broadway to Acton to meet Mary and Lone from Ealing Repair Cafe in a new workshop location - the Hall of St Mary's Church.

Chris did not join the runners today as he was doing some proper lifting! He made his way to the task by doing the exercise called farmer's walk - or shall we say a donor's walk? Chris showed up with a ton of bags of used clothes that were ready to be reborn as something else! Well done Chris! Ealing Repair Cafe is all about reusing, repairing or recycling old fabrics.

Mary and Lone did a triage on the spot:

• Clothes in good condition to be donated to the refugees
• Old Liverpool and England football t-shirts to be transformed into the famous drawstring bags
• Trainers - to be donated somewhere else (two GoodGymers declared to run back with them and send the shoes to JogOn)
• Jeans to be upcycled into tote bags
• Socks, shorts and particularly ripped clothes to be cut into scraps to make stuffing for draught excluders

"Those are proper jeans, we can make bags out of them! Traid usually give us those skinny jeans, and they are good mostly for draught excluders" - Mary

Ealing Repair Cafe recently donated a couple of draught excluders to St Mary's Church in Acton, which served well to secure the drafty north church door. Who knows, maybe that has also secured us a venue for today's workshop!

Chris spent the rest of the session cutting his old apparel into shreds. He did not expect that turn of events when contributing his old stuff but was extremely grateful that Ealing Repair Cafe accepted his donation. That made Chris immediately stuck into the task.

Steph, Kash and Lone were making t-shirt drawstring bags from already sewn material and by the end of the task completed all 30 that had been prepared. Ealing Repair Cafe donated their last bags batch to The Store Cupboard in West Ealing - a not-for-profit shop providing affordable food to people referred by agencies and charities. We should soon find out which charity receives our latest creations.

Sevan got stuck into detailed work of tracing the letters for Act for Ealing banner, then cut them out. That provided us with some good entertainment: making anagrams! Cleft Granola? Teal Frog Clan? Is that a good band name?

We partner with Act for Ealing as a green travel and exercise group and occasionally share our upcoming activities with them. Check out their news - you can find a lot of fantastic events with an environmental theme if you ever get bored with GoodGym. Hopefully you won't as we have an exciting event planned for this Saturday in collaboration with WWF - check it out here!

Equipped with head torches, working lights and a secret key to the park gates, the GoodGymers ran the streets surrounding Walpole Park and stopped in front of Pitzhanger Manor to regroup. At Rickyard's tool storage, they collected spades, mattocks, loppers, shears, thick gloves and additional assets: park volunteer hi-viz. Although no one should walk in the locked park after dark, the GoodGymers wanted to be perceived as... well, volunteers!

Chris, Sevan, Steph Ducat, and Kash returned to one of the spots where GoodGym fought off brambles last year. Some of the blackberry bushes grew back but seemed small and vulnerable in the winter, which made it a perfect time for a counterattack. Steph and Kash used their favoured weapon, the Mighty Mattock, while Sevan wielded his favourite Spartan Spade with a long shaft and an ample blade. Chris was paving the way to dig out the bramble roots, chopping the stems with Shadowy Shears. He has been very meticulous in giving the blackberries a proper trim.

"It's like I could be a barber in my other life."

The night was calm, windless and dark, with a crescent moon shining against the black, cloudless sky. Although serene, the night was not quiet. As the team worked right next to a pond, quacks and shrieks of water birds counterpointed the sounds of digging and pulling out the roots with effort. Suddenly, the GoodGymers heard the voices of strangers from the street behind the fence.

Chris walked up to a couple on their nighttime stroll. The pair was asking what on earth the GoodGymers were during at this time in the park. Chris used his diplomatic skills and years of GoodGym expertise to describe who we were and what activity we were engaged with. Kash came over and explained that Ealing GoodGymers at today's session were helping with park maintenance after dusk as they had day jobs and couldn't come earlier, then assured that their Tuesday evening sessions get less awkward in the summer. The passers-by turned out to be daily visitors to the park and thanked our team for helping keep their favoured park beautiful and safe.

With a small team we removed nearly 40% of the brambles covering selected patch and did our best to extract the roots, which in some places ran deep and were extremely stubborn. One area looked particularly wrecked, just like after a visit from a wild boar digging for his dinner!

Next week we are visiting a different park in our borough, Blondin Park, where a pile of woodchip waits to be moved. Sign up and join Steph in helping the park. Rewards? Feeling great (and hot chocolate)!

There was a biting cold wind blowing through Pitshanger Park this morning for Junior parkrun. It blew straight through the volunteers too, who nevertheless put on a cheery and enthusiatic event for all today's runners.

Steph Ducat, Chris McC, Kash, Gaby and Sevan all used their motivational skills to help the 61 finishers around the course. Kash and Gaby as marshals and Chris and Sevan as timekeepers were all cheering and put the power of the high 5 into action. Steph on the other hand had to be more creative as the tail walker, hopping, skipping and running to keep the final child entertained and moving towards completing his 2km.

At the finish, Mohamed was getting to grips with funnel management, keeping children in line. Harvey was barcode scanning and Chris Y was providing everyone with moral support. Chris was also silently mocking everyone else's lack of planning as he rocked his woolly mittens 🧤❄️.

It's hard to believe we are already three weeks into January and the next Reduce and Recycle Hub is approaching soon - on the first day of February. For GoodGym Ealing, that means lending organisers a hand and exploring the residential streets of Acton while dropping leaflets promoting the hub into letterboxes.

Tonight's route included Acton's street art trail - with the obligatory photo at the shark mural at the corner of Stuart and Newburg Roads. We could not miss the beautiful mural of the lady wearing a kimono on Myrtle Road. The same street hid a surprise: in the Poet’s Corner Community Garden, we found not only cherry blossoms painted on a house wall but also a real blossoming cherry tree in front of the wall. Check the photos if you don't believe! Is the Spring around the corner?

To distribute 400 flyers, we had a strong team of eight GoodGymers - with a special guest among the Ealing folk: Jack from the Central Team. Welcome to your first Ealing group run, Jack - hopefully, the first of many to come! Jack joined Kash's 4-people squad with Steph and Chris, while Sevan led Christos, Mohamed and Liuba through the parallel streets to meet with the first group where the roads joined.

The success of the one-hour-long task had a tradeoff: freezing hands. Before heading back to Ealing Broadway, the whole team fulfilled the tradition of Acton group runs and stopped to warm their hands with a cup of chai. Afterwards, Liuba, Steph, Chris, Sevan, Jack and Kash ran back to Ealing and Christos and Mohamed made their way home on their own.

Next week we are running to a different part of the borough: Blondin Park in Northfields to mulch the trees we are yet to plant later this week. Sign up now for next Tuesday's task!

GoodGym Ealing's traditional Xmas get together was in a new location for 2024, The Grove, where we had a cosy corner set aside for us. We also had crackers, of course, where we found jokes, paper hats and lots of wooden spoons. Were the spoons a booby prize or useful cutlery? Well, opinions varied.

After a very energetic task at St Mary's church decorating their Xmas tree and preparing the first floor for their bumper Christmas congregation, it was time to treat ourselves to some food and drink. It was the most recent of many good deeds that GoodGym Ealing have completed in 2024, so we felt like we'd all earned it while we reflected on 2024. There was also the traditional GoodGym quiz to get people to recall useful/useless facts from the past year, which was a bit more challenging than usual this time.

Steph mysteriously vanished when Santa appeared. Maybe he suffers from clausophobia? In any case, Santa was kind enough to run our Secret Santa gift exchange to give wonderful £5-or-under gifts like a dog quiz, a box of Lindor chocolates or a mo-tea-vational mug.

We all had a great evening and went home full of festive cheer or festive beer, or both.

A church clean-up task at St Mary's is to GoodGymers what Home Alone or Die Hard are to families watching TV - a Christmas classic! Only a brief run away from Ealing Broadway, St Mary's awaited our sweeping and decorating skills. Although we knew that GoodGym's good friend, Vicar Steve, wouldn't be at the church anymore with his indispensible words of encouragement, the new task owner, Brian, gave us an equally magical treatment.

Tonight's church clean-up and Christmas tree decoration session had a fantastic turnout of 13 GoodGymers, including three (yes, that's right!) new joiners. Makkiya, Raphael and Sudha brought us a lot of enthusiasm and good energy, and we are hoping to see them again soon at another task.

The team split into the dust busters who worked upstairs and the Christmas tree beauty specialists at the altar. If decorating the tree somehow didn't provide enough merriness for everyone, then Claire's Jingle Bells played on the piano did!

Having received praise from Brian on their work, the team headed to the Grove for more festivities to come: the Christmas crackers, buffet, quiz and Secret Santa!

Next Tuesday, we are staying close to Ealing Broadway and helping the ranger transport a pile of woodchip outside Walpole Park into the walled garden - sign up now!