Sunday morning run in the National Forest - trail running with run around lake with some wildlife. First 10km run for Amelia.

When the golden evening sun casts long shadows of GoodGymers arriving at Elthorne Park armed with spades, you know exactly what time of year it is: burdock-hunting season.

While burdock is a useful food source for pollinators, it is also extremely invasive. A single burdock can produce up to 15,000 seeds, allowing it to spread rapidly across green spaces. Left unchecked, it can grow to an impressive 10 feet tall, competing with other plants for sunlight, water, and nutrients. Its large leaves can block the sunlight from reaching surrounding vegetation. Apart from making it harder for a variety of plants to survive, burdock produces spiky seed heads called burrs later in the year, which easily stick to dogs, wild animals, and people's clothing, helping the plant spread even further.

The Ealing Parks Rangers asked for our help in tackling this botanical giant by digging out its deep taproots wherever possible or cutting plants as close to the ground as we could. Six GoodGymers answered the call. Richard, Yonas, Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash ran 3.5 km from Ealing Broadway through West Ealing and Hanwell to meet Conor at Elthorne Park.

Armed with spades and determination, these Aces of Spades set to work clearing burdock along the path leading to Elthorne Terraces Orchard. Before long, they reached a true burdock stronghold and spent the rest of the evening removing as many plants as possible before they had the chance to develop burrs and disperse their thousands of seeds.

It was a rewarding session that made a difference to protecting the biodiversity of this much-loved Hanwell park. However, having discovered such a significant burdock colony, our work is far from over. We'll need to return before the end of the month to stay ahead of the invasion.

Fancy joining the fight against the burdock army? Come along to our session on 30th June!

Sevan and Kash would have thought that a GoodGym intervention a year ago would discourage, or at least slow down, the bramble growth in Ms A's garden. They were wrong! This year, the blackberries behind the corner of the garden had grown even taller and thicker.

Not deterred by the return of the vicious spiky weeds, the two GoodGymers rolled up their sleeves and put on the thick, bramble-proof gloves. Kash decided not to use the shears that Ms A considered very blunt and instead chopped her way towards the house wall using a good pair of loppers.

Meanwhile, Sevan raked up the trimmings, cut them into smaller pieces with secateurs and packed them into green bags. He then had a round of strimming - with the same ominous strimmer as in 2025 - targeting the grass that had survived the competition with the brambles.

The three green waste bags could barely contain the volume of cuttings, so Sevan and Kash resorted to their usual stomping and dancing in the bags. Ms A was very grateful for the help, as she'd been in a lot of pain and hadn't been able to keep on top of her garden maintenance. Another Sunday afternoon well spent!

GoodGym Ealing's visit to Care4Calais today brought some pleasant surprises. There was a little more space in the stock room after clothes packs had been handed out and some less used items had gone to storage. That made it much easier to find and put away clothes.

The team today split into sorting donations and getting packs ready for new requests, with Kash focused on new women's donations. There were plenty of clothes to check and size. Kash also found some interesting and unusual items, including:

• Impressive and uncomfortable looking golden heels
• A large donation of clutch bags
• A portable DVD player, along with some holiday home videos

Sevan was working with task owner Tamzin to get packs ready for recipients. With no standard packs ready to add to, every request had to be started from scratch and this time there were a number of husband and wife requests.

As well as the usual men's clothing requests, Sevan was dispatched to find some summery women's clothes and was asked to be generous. Light trousers, dresses and skirts were easy to find. Every top he pulled from the boxes had long sleeves though. A legacy of donations from older, colder times. After a lot of rummaging, vests and cheerful short sleeves were discovered and used to complete the requests.

Another session with Care4Calais is planned for later this month, so sign up here to help out.

Earlier in the week, Ealing GoodGymers had been struck by the news of Acton junior parkrun's cancellation on Sunday due to the Eid in the Park celebrations. Sevan and Kash quickly scrambled to find an alternative morning activity, as a lie-in sounded far too boring. That search led them 6 km from Ealing to Wembley, where the two ran on Sunday to visit Mr F and his wife as early as 9 am.

The older couple needed support with garden maintenance, particularly removing weeds from the edges of a paved path and along the fence line. Mr F, who is due to celebrate his 90th birthday this month, was still able to mow the lawn on a warm day when he's feeling well, but weeding had become too strenuous for him.

With a selection of tools from Mr F's shed - some of them more unusual than those typically seen at GoodGym missions - Sevan and Kash got to work. Sevan, who tackled the brambles and thick-stemmed weeds along the wire fence, transitioned from precise secateurs to a fearsome slasher and finally a heavy-duty adze.

Kash, whose task was to remove all the weeds from the edges of the path, had a chance to try a new tool: a weed puller, and kept twisting it clockwise throughout the whole mission. The results were stunning: a neat stretch of bare soil on each side of the paved walkway. Mr F was delighted to see the path again, free from the encroaching overgrowth.

The GoodGymers had just enough time to dispose of the garden waste in the green bin, filling it to the brim. They then ran back to Ealing for their next task of the day, conquering Hanger Hill for the second time that morning.