Despite the short notice change in task, six GoodGymers made their way to Walpole park, to help Ealing Park Rangers fighting back against the vicious bramble growths around the park!

Sevan, Paul, Madhan and Christos met at The Rickyard, with Kash getting an early start on acquiring the necessary tools, supplies and trolley to demolish this latest area of brambles. The team then made their way towards the South entrance of the park, meeting up with Kate at the newest site for clearing up, to help with the safety around the park.

But first, Madhan celebrated an incredible achievement of 300 good deeds, and today’s was a fitting task for someone with such a level of GoodGym experience, in preparing to battle this beast of brambles!

Picking up our shears and loppers, the team set to work on the brambles, leaving nothing in our wake. Brambles were chopped and tackled from the bottom, dragged out and piled onto the trolley for carting off to the waste pile.

With the blackberries starting to ripen amongst the brambles, a few GoodGymers were courageous enough to try these out - apparently these are still a little on the sour side from the taste tests!

Another large bramble patch was destroyed, opening up the surrounding paths and creating a safer area for pedestrians.

The Goodgymers were not only welcomed by our 2 and 4 legged friends(cats, dogs, goats, pig, chicken), but also by the sun 🌞😎. Welcome Nick to the Goodgym Family : 1st mission today!! Anuj and Beata have previously been at the farm and joined the crew after a Park Run at Northala earlier in the morning. First visit for Penny and Kate at the farm too. Several tasks for the team with some work to be done on the potato patch that GG Ealing put in place in previous missions which Steph Ducat attended. The potato patch put the team to their knees as weeding to be done between the onions and potatoes. Compost had to be wheelbarrowed from behind the cabin to the potato patch : mission was to create a hill around the potatoes to avoid them being above the ground and becoming green. were the team creating the hills of Northala??They grow and push themselves above the soil. The team realised it was muddy and the compost had mystery mud and a lot of straw. While 4 members were looking after the potatoe patch, Anuj and Beata were playing with compost, smelly compost!!! Not Jean Paul Gauthier fragrance!They were returning compost over from one box to another. After a hard session, a group photo and a pun discussion they all went for pizza, sausage roll, cheesy twirls, crafted beer and coffee in the sun. They bumped into Harvey who came over for a lovely pizza too.

Two of our gang, Kate and Harvey ran/walked to the task tonight, bumping into another GoodGymer, Caz, on her way for some light refreshments on a warm evening - luck her! Milly and Mike took a long way round to the entrance, after ending up the wrong side of the fence (there's a message in there!). After collecting tools from Linda at Hanwell School of Boxing, the four set about clearing and weeding. Four?! That should have been five! But where was Chris?! With tales of poorly performing maps, Chris found us at last and joined in.

We toiled and cleared, weeded and pulled up ivy, making the driveway up to the club look so much more presentable. After finishing up, a treat lay in store for us - Linda from the club put the kettle on and rustled up five mugs of steaming hot chocolate. Whilst we sipped, we learned about the history of Hanwell School og Boxing, the reason for its strange opening times, and some of the amazing achievements of the young people who learned the fine art of pugilism there. It's a fantastic community resource and it now has an impressive walkway up to the club.