It was the third group run in a row to Acton. We might have jumped the shark in this episode but we promise the next session will be in the opposite direction from Ealing Broadway!

The Christmas edition of the Reduce and Recycle Hub needed all hands on deck, even if those hands would be freezing. The task was a classic leafletting gig on the Acton streets. In the spirit of reusing and recycling, we went not only for a shark mural photo but also a shark-based pun - both already used back in February.

"How did 5 GoodGymers deal with 500 flyers?", you may ask. We encountered many obstacles on our journey such as "no junk mail" signs and freezing fingers that didn't do well trying to separate individual leaflets from the whole stack. Despite the temperature drop and the fact that Steph and Christos were in shorts, the score was 497 flyers distributed.

It was like an initiation - Christos

The cold made the group run a challenging one but those who managed to complete the session in such conditions now can do any task! The team stuck together till the very end and run back to Ealing Broadway to warm themselves up in a pub and meet more friends.

Rumour has is that Grim Chippers are prowling around Ealing Parks. On Halloween Night, three dreadful Runners of Apocalypse, Sevan, Steph Ducat and Christos ran around Walpole and Lammas Parks. Woe to those who saw them!

Ranger Jon had put tools in the haunted tool store at Rickyard. After nightfall, shovels, rakes, loppers and wheelbarrows had disappeared and then, an hour later materialised again. Some people say they saw three ghosts that night. The first ghost, Kash, is the one who always makes noise by shaking the chains at the gate. The second one, Madhan, used to be a very active GoodGymer but then disappeared almost a month ago and no one has seen him since. The third ghost called Alex was never seen in Ealing before. She was welcomed by the rest of the ghosts to the other side of GoodGym and shown how to draw terrifying ancient symbols in woodchip with a rake.

When the ghosts were scouring the tool store, a shadow sneaked on them to teach them how to scare people in shady parks. The phantom looked like Liv but it was just a shadow with no one to cast it!

The ghouls with tools entered the playground to spook some kids hanging around after dark. Empty swings started swinging with no wind to move them and all the kids ran away. The ghosts disturbed a nearby woodchip pile with shovels and, suddenly, a hand from beneath the chips thrust into the sky. A group of zombies emerged from the woodchip piles. Claire, Emily and Mike grabbed the shovels and rakes and began tirelessly dig the woodchip to revive a whole army of undead buried underneath.

The Three Runners of Apocalypse arrived, joined by the fourth one, Chris, and entered the shovelling party. The demons took wheelbarrows and spread the woodchip all around: on the paths around the playground, at the entrance and even inside the play area, covering the muddy puddles. They couldn't find the undead army, so they stopped and put the tools back in the tool store. The angered terrors cut low-hanging tree branches on the way out of the playground.

Next week the Grim Chippers will be haunting Blondin Park and searching for the undead army in the woodchip piles over there. Join them if you dare!

What a great team of GoodGymers we have in Ealing - good sports, fun and not afraid to stand up in front of the runners about to take on the Ealing Half Marathon! Let the images speak for themselves...

As the September equinox is approaching this week, the days noticeably shrunk, and we officially entered the headtorch season for group runs! We still hit a double-digit number of attendees tonight, thanks to glorious comebacks from Caroline and Cristina 🎉

This Tuesday we came back to Cultivate's new plant nursery at Popesfield Allotments. The trees, shrubs and Herbaceous perennials were still on the pallets where we transported them last month. But would they stay there for long?

No spoilers!

When the runners: Caroline, Cristina, Kash, with backmarkers: Sevan and Steph Ducat arrived at the site, they found the task owner Romina and the GoodGymers: Mike, Madhan and Milly already working the shovels and wheelbarrows to move the gravel from the front gate to the space in front of Cultivate's shed. With more reinforcements arriving (Divya on his bike and Chris running individually), the team was split into two.

People who had been made redundant on the gravel job sought new opportunities on a different project. The next day, another volunteer group was supposed to replace a large membrane covering the ground with... even larger one! There was a problem: the membrane was covered in pallets that, in turn, were covered in plant pots. You know where am I going with this, right? Relocating the plant pots take two! And by plants I don't mean a tiny fern or a little, cute shrub. We are talking trees - the heavy, unwieldy sort - a perfect challenge for us.

Good news! No one lost any eyes when manipulating trees

When the gravel, trees in pots and pallets moved their places, Romina realised that it was difficult to continue working in the darkness and asked us whether we had time for another task. We got our head torches out and were ready to migrate more stuff. This time it would be dried grass from a pile of soil, branches and hay. We surrounded the stack like vultures and loaded the wheelbarrows with hay. We thought that only the dried grass was what Romina was after. Only after she explained the purpose of moving that material, we understood the idea: a bonfire! Anything burnable, not just grass, would go on the new stack 🔥 We transported branches and planks found in the pile to their (final) destination, then parked the wheelbarrows.

Lightning up the bonfire unfortunately was not in the programme for tonight. As it was a windy day, we decided that a cosy pub would be a perfect place to rest and get warm after the session.

Next week we are back at Elthorne Park for an autumn burdock bashing!