Last December GoodGymers helped Earthwatch Europe plant a new Tiny Forest in Hanger Hill Park. You can see how small the snips had been back then in this story! What is Tiny Forest, you may ask. It is a native woodland of 600 trees planted densely in a tennis-court-sized plot. Tiny Forests mimic the features of a traditional forest while taking up minimal space. Earthwatch is conducting research across the country to help understand how these little woods have the potential to be a powerful tool in the fight against climate change and habitat loss.

To help our partners from Earthwatch, five Ealing GoodGymers: Claire, Freya, Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash turned scientists for one evening to collect data on how the trees were growing and how much carbon they could capture. The endeavour involved plenty of tape measures and an uphill run!

It was the first Ealing session for Freya, who returned to London (and GoodGym) after a long break and established herself in our area. Great choice, Freya - and welcome to Ealing!

After the optional 2.5km run to conquer Hanger Hill, the task was pretty easy-going. It didn't require getting particularly physical - unless you count squatting to measure the diameter of a tree. That gave Kash an idea about tonight's fitness session - the Sally Up squat challenge! Check it out here if you haven't heard about it.

Another challenge was identifying some of the trees that didn't look like we were expecting them to look. Their tag said holly, but the Google Lens said eucalyptus.

Is there a koala on it?
No.
Then it's not an eucalyptus.

The samples didn't look anything like the above. The Earthwatch survey prompt suggested another option: goat willow. We looked the name up on the internet and found pictures of similarly looking trees to our sample, also called pussy willow or salix caprea. That seemed more sensible than Aussie trees in the UK.

After surveying most of the tagged trees and completing the Sally Up challenge, we treated ourselves to a gentle 1.5 km run down the hill, wondering how satisfied our legs would feel tomorrow.

Join us next week for a task in Hanwell, with a totally optional run, to help organisers of the famous free festival, Hanwell Hootie. Sign up now!

GoodGym Ealing and Hanwell Hootie go together like salt and pepper. Each year, the famous free music festival run by local people, attracts thousands of music lovers who swarm in Hanwell to hear emerging young bands - and our team is around to support that brilliant volunteer-led initiative! No wonder why the numbers picked up at tonight's group run to the Brent Lodge Park's Stables to help the Hootie organisers: June and Andrea.

Since the Hootie was in less than three weeks, it was about time to start organising the equipment stored at the Stables: mostly furniture and banners. But here is a twist:the storage space was struck by an unexpected leak, resulting in damp floor in one of the rooms! The solution: all the things had to be brought into the yard, where Andrea would triage them and decide which items were going back inside and which the Stables needed to part with. It was a perfect challenge for 8 GoodGymers with an hour to spare!

The runners Mohamed, Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash were glad to see regulars Claire and Madhan again after a short break and welcome a pair of new starters: Erin and Nick. The two could not have chosen a better group run task: local to them, contributing to a beloved Hanwell event, and challenging and fun at the same time!

While part of the team set off to move the furniture in varying states outside, others got rock-and-rolling (mostly rolling) festival banners. On such a great spring evening, we thought that even sofas, armchairs, tables and giant "H" letters deserved a dose of fresh air. Particularly sickly furniture pieces: legless, ripped and mouldy, were going to stay outdoors even longer than us. Spoiler alert: they were not coming back. We split the rest of the items into a YES pile (this year's stuff) and a NO pile (another time stuff). The YES things needed to be kept together and placed in an easily accessible (and most dry) part of the Stables ahead of the festival. We didn't discriminate against the NO objects - they were going back inside too, and for all items, we steered away from putting them in the previously flooded sections.

Our amazing team, thanks to determination, teamwork, muscle- and brainpower (and June's clear direction), achieved the goal in about 65 minutes - and even squeezed in a team photoshoot!

Our tonight's efforts will certainly make the Hootie prep smoother! If you want to join the next task to help the festival, see us in two weeks at the same location - sign up for the session now!

Today was GoodGym Ealing's second visit to Care 4 Calais and we were again preparing clothing packages for refugees in the Heathrow area. It was Claire and Mohamed's first visit, so after a quick intro to the charity, the group were shown the storage system and the requested clothes for upcoming beneficiaries.

Each request was different with many having specific needs, so additions to the standard clothing packs had to be sourced and shortages in certain sizes had to be worked around. One person wanted size 15 shoes and another had "piano" on their list. Sevan had to double check that it was an actual piano being requested and not a code word for something else.

The task owner, Tamzin, knew more about the recipients, so stepped in when needed to add alternative clothes depending on need or to share that older people would want extra warm layers to help them through the winter. There were fewer parcels to prepare for women and children, so the GoodGymers didn't get to search through the bag of cute, children's hats too often. That was a treat saved for the group photo.

The team quickly burned through the pre-prepared clothing packs and had to create some more to keep up with demand. With all of the bags completed, the last job was to organise them by destination to make the task of the next set of volunteers easier when it comes to delivering them.

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!