It was a gorgeous evening to be heading back to the Royal London Hospital to be reunited with the Barts Volunteers team.

Our task tonight

We met in the café area, adjacent to A&E, to be briefed by Nancy on tonight’s activities. It was a busy night of activity: Tom and Ricardo were taking us up to the 13th and 14th floors to help stock the ward trolleys with everything from activity packs to colouring pencils for patients.

We were also distributing evening newspapers and puzzle books to patients on both floors.

Our team tonight

Our team slowly grew: we welcomed James and Nirmay for their first Monday evening tasks in Tower Hamlets - and Georgia for her first ever GoodGym! (Huge shout-out to Nirmay who came up with tonight’s pun).

And as for other firsts, our Ricardo was not only an active GoodGymer this evening, now a well established Barts Volunteer, he was also helping Tom and Nancy to lead the task!

It was decided we should take the stairs to the 14th floor as tonight’s fitness fix. A speedy (fairly painless?) climb meant that we weren’t too far behind Tom and the trolley on arrival at the 14th floor.

And so to our task...

Tom and Ricardo wasted no time in showing us the ward trolley ropes. With every base covered from combs to miniature toothpastes and headphones, the trolley inventory is thorough.

Dividing into two teams – one on trolley replenishment and the remainder of the team heading out onto the wards – we covered the whole of the 14th floor before heading down to the 13th floor.

It was a lively and surprisingly fast-paced task. Tom and Ricardo did a brilliant job of navigating corridor after corridor; ward after ward, ensuring we headed only to suitable bays, and the team all did a great job in offering papers and magazines to many appreciative patients and relatives. This is was a feelgood task at its finest.

The timesped by (even by Tower Hamlets standards) and it was 8:30 by the time we were saying our cheerios to Tom and Ricardo, and heading out into a surprisingly warm October night.

What an evening. Well done to everyone involved.

Until next time.

A gorgeous Monday night saw 12 GoodGymers heading to the lovely GET OUT Food Forest Community Garden in Bow.

Following a short fitness in Harley Grove, we proceeded to make our way to the large garden gate to meet Frankie, our task owner for the night...

What is GET OUT?

"GET OUT has created a community garden and food forest project in the heart of Bow. The charity's converted an overgrown area of around half an acre into a productive food forest that acts as a hub for both education, and connecting to nature.

The garden is home to an outdoor classroom, and grows seasonal veg, fruit trees and perennials for the school and local community. It's also helped to create a refuge for wildlife, which includes the garden's very own pond - a useful tool for local ecology education!"

Gathered by the well-stocked shed at the bottom of the garden, Frankie proceeded to run through the details of the first tasks of the night: sawing logs from long branches and pruning bushes.

Working industriously in small teams, GoodGymers wasted no time in cracking on with the job in hand, piling logs and bags full of foliage.

With over half an hour left and branches no more, Frankie dispatched us to new corners of the garden to shift gravel, chop more branches and turn compost.

It was a physical evening, and one which we thoroughly enjoyed.

It was gone 8 before we were posing for the final photo, sampling the garden's cherry tomatoes, and accepting Frankie's lovely gift to green-fingered GoodGymers of his own brand fertilizer.

What a night!

A big shout-out to the whole team, especially to David and Neena who joined us for their first Monday night Tower Hamlets task! Look forward to seeing you again soon.

Next week

...we return to the Priory Park, to see Larry for another big garden clearance.

Until then.

The workout...

Busy Ravenscroft Park was a delight in which to start tonight’s session, with a little pre-task workout.

No fewer than 6 runners gathered around the largest planter in the park to whizz through the obligatory dips, incline push ups, several different types of seated leg lower, and some new squat techniques.

The task...

After being met by task owners Ed and Liz, we all wandered over to Sivill House, to greet the rest of the group and get the lowdown on tonight’s task.

What were we here to do?

Spread woodchip!

Yes, thanks to a large donation of woodchip, the productive, committed Columbia TRA were keen to have some additional pairs of hands join their team (Ed, Ed and Liz this evening) tonight to help distribute this around the estate’s many young fruit trees.

(Used in this way, woodchip can help to maintain the moisture of the soil and reduce the volume of weeds).

Ed wasted no time in briefing the group as to how best to tackle the vast task of getting tonnes of woodchip to some of the furthest points on the estate. This included an informative short tour so we knew where we were headed.

And so to work we went, with one crew ready to distribute around one of the gardens to the back of the estate (already a fruit paradise with some very decent raspberries); another shovelling barrow after barrow of woodchip, and a third wheeling to designated fruit tree-hotspots.

With the main areas completed, Ed took one team off to another totally new area to finish the job for the night, a spot towards the Columbia Road, front of the estate.

By the time we’d finished packing away the last wheelbarrow and woodchip bag, it was after 8, so we said our cheerios, and headed home.

A brilliant evening of very physical activity – well done everyone (and big shout-out to Sree for tonight’s fun pun).

Next week, we return to the Cranbrook Community Garden to help Janet finish the The Big Gardening Job, complete with pre-task workout.

Until then.

The Fitness

As we lined up around the vegetable planters for tonight’s workout, slowly our little group grew, until there were no fewer than six GoodGymers performing seated leg lowers, Bulgarian split squats and incline push-ups on the edge of these miniature gardens.

As we completed a few post-workout stretches, our remaining members for tonight’s task appeared, ready to be briefed by Larry, our task owner, on the big task ahead for tonight.

Why were we here?

The St Leonard’s Priory Park is a park in Bow that has been ‘a place of prayer and gardening for 900 years’. The St Leonard’s team garden here every week to continue this legacy. Over the last year, we’ve loved joining Larry from the Bow Church team in this picturesque spot in the middle of a busy, bustling, well-connected area of our Borough.

The park is well supported by the local community: residents attend weekly gardening sessions, monthly feasts and - very soon – the Forest School!

Yep, tonight our task was to head back to the pretty, overgrown area at the back of the park to help clear some tall weeds and bundles of nettles for a new outdoor classroom for the neighbouring primary school.

The Task

The team wasted no time in getting stuck in to the task of clearing a mass of nettles, bindweed and other pesky plants (many of whom had long, well established roots). Spread out into all four corners of the area, they pulled, raked and bagged at a very fast pace.

We saw spiders, snails, plants of many types… (St Leonards Fascinating Fact #13: The park is now home to the Stag Beetle...).

Yes, this area is now Biodiversity Central.

What IS biodiversity?

In a nutshell (forgive the pun), it’s variety. We learned more this evening about the increasing amount of flora and fauna in this space, and the way boosting the ecology of the site helps attract more wildlife (more insects = more food for birds, more pollination of plants…).

Put simply, maintaining biodiversity helps to preserve quality of air, soil and water, so every little really does help.

The final lap

Back to the team: the bags were now getting full; Sree had mown the lawn, and it was after 8…Time to call it a day.

As the last bag was hauled to the side of the tool shed, we stood and marvelled at the before and after site. Posing for one final picture in the area where 4ft nettles had previously stood, we concluded that it was a Monday evening well spent.

We’ll be returning to this lovely spot next month to help clear…yep, the other side!

(…While next week we head to the Royal London to join Nancy and the Barts Volunteers Team for some more hospital tasks).

Until then.