“Seek, and ye shall find”, says a quote from the Bible - but it doesn’t specify whether the sought and the found are necessarily the same thing. The November Grove Farm conservation day was all about searching and discovering. Mike treated us today to a unique quest, equipped with a treasure map from an unlikely source: Thames Water. More precisely, the map wasn’t really a map, but a clue: “that amuse adults”.

On the way to the presumed treasure location, we followed a golden, shiny trail, distracted by the lustre of beer cans scattered along the path. We diligently collected the spoils, packed them in a bag, and cunningly hid our riches inside a rubbish bin. Next to the bin, we made an amusing discovery: a couple of pieces of illustrated literature for the enthusiasts of bottom-heavy ladies. Was that what amuses adults?

Five GoodGymers and three Friends of Grove Farm pressed on, venturing off the path into the wilderness, where Mike stopped and revealed what sort of treasures we were after. The treasure had been buried on the grounds of Grove Farm a century ago, under a manhole owned by Thames Water. But the riches it contained were not of a material kind - that would have been, of course, rather desirable, as we could have funded Friends of Grove Farm efforts to maintain the nature reserve. However, there was more at stake. The beautiful wood anemone patch up the hill was threatened by an underground water blockage, which only Thames Water could fix. But first, we had to find the manhole and clear the access.

After three people pointed out that it would have been great to have a metal detector, we accepted the reality (in which there was no metal detector) and got stuck into hacking the brambles and branches, raking cuttings and leaves, and poking the ground with a fork or a spade. After a few false alarms, resulting in digging out bricks, pipes, pots, and tyres, we tightened our search area to more accurately match the what3words phrase “what.amuses.adults” - to no avail. One of us came up with a hypothesis that a tree with many stems growing in the middle of the patch we scoured might have easily grown right from the manhole within the hundred years - an idea we feared to accept.

It would have been a privilege to report to my dear readers that the mission ended with great success. Alas, we haven’t found the manhole. All we discovered was rubbish hiding in the undergrowth. That had to suffice for a treasure at the end of a worthy quest. We will continue our search in December, so wrap yourself warmly, Dear Explorers, and let us know if you want to put your name down for another adventure here!

It’s been 9 years since the 9th August 2016, when 21 GoodGymers set out from Ealing Broadway for Boston Manor Park for the very first GoodGym Ealing session: a park maintenance task combined with light fitness. I wasn’t there. And I never met any of those original Ealing GoodGymers, apart from two guests: Ivo, the founder, and Ed from GoodGym Central. If you look at our website, you cannot even tell anymore who led that session. But does it matter?

Since 2016, 918 GoodGymers in Ealing - that includes guests like John who visited us today - have done over 10200 good deeds! That’s quite a number, isn’t it? Many of those GoodGymers already moved on, left the borough, found other communities, or started families, but all of them contributed to making GoodGym Ealing a little bit better by at least one good deed!

And today, here we were, at Sandy Park in Hanwell, celebrating the 9 fantastic years of connecting with each other to help our community and isolated, older people within it. Some of the people celebrating today were new faces who joined this year. No matter how the group evolves, we are still the community connected by the same idea: doing good while getting fit. At the same time, for every one of us, GoodGym means something slightly different - and that’s ok - because we are all different. GoodGym is not a space where people should feel the need to fit in. GoodGym is here for us and should fit our lives and who we really are.

At last year's birthday party, I asked everyone to share what they think makes GoodGym Ealing great. The overwhelming majority said the people, the company, socialising. That’s why this year’s birthday was simple: a picnic in the park. We enjoyed the sun, the birthday cake baked by Nishy, the banana bread from Iram, who used the surplus fruit from Monday’s Food Cupboard task, the homemade pizza and cakes brought by Lena and Marta, the vegan sushi from John, pizzas and other snacks shared by Ash, Sevan, Steph Ducat, and Gaby. We enjoyed the relaxed afternoon, connecting with each other, and, most importantly, enjoyed being ourselves.

Happy birthday, GoodGym Ealing!

Legends about the feats of strength, bursts of joy, and - most importantly - samosas at Western Road in Southall spread quickly outside the Ealing Borough. The accounts reach as far North as Ickenham, where our newest addition to the team lives: Zahra!

Zahra made Western Road her first GoodGym session and was warmly welcomed by Janpal from Southall Community Alliance, who told her the story of the Western Road Urban Garden project. Apart from the GoodGymers, the allotment was visited today by volunteers Andre, Paul and Katie, with a brief cameo from Mr Bhasin.

Janpal likes to bring colour and vibrancy to Western Road. This season, he bought some dahlia tubers of many varieties, some of them named after cocktails and liqueurs like Cuba Libre and Crème De Cognac.

"What about crème de la crème?" - Andre asked.
"That's all our volunteers!" - Janpal replied.

The day was sunny, yet the cold wind made us think that the spring was not quite there. The first task was to bring the bags with soil from outside into the polytunnel, stir the earth and top it with compost. The dahlia bulbs would have much better chances of sprouting in the warmth of the polytunnel than outdoors.

With that job completed, the team: Zahra, Steph Ducat, Kash, Andre and Paul moved to another assignment: moving donated wood from next door's garden to the urban garden site. Sevan was receiving the planks handed over to him and putting them aside. With nails sticking out of the timber, and glass discovered in the grass at the boundary of the gardens, the task was abandoned as the safety of the volunteers was the priority, and not everyone had sturdy enough shoes to risk a cut.

When Lena and Marta arrived, they joined Zahra, Kash and Andre in planting the dahlias. The process involved soaking the tubers, writing variety names such as Tsuki-yori-no-shisha or Kennemerland on donated plant labels, and planting the bulbs. The Dahlia crew filled the soil bags with all 32 bulbs prepared by Janpal. Nice work!

Steph and Sevan returned to their ambitious task of splitting the massive tree stump which had been started last month. 28 days later the GoodGymers discovered the poor wedge still stuck between the stubborn wood and getting rusty at the top, where it had been repeatedly smashed and, as a result, had lost its protective coating. The two GoodGymers took turns hacking the stump and eventually released the wedge and gloriously split the wood. What a victory it was! Both pieces of the root were taken on a trolley and placed on top of the barrier made of logs like a trophy.

After the break, when Janpal's legendary hospitality was proven true (yes, there were samosas, drinks, biscuits and fruit!), Sevan and Steph moved on to a different job: preparing the soil at the community allotment plots. The session ended at 1 pm, and the volunteers were offered the produce to take home, this time: leeks.

We are looking forward to the late Springtime sessions at Western Road and seeing our dahlias' colours coming to life! Stay tuned for our next session at Southall's favourite urban garden. Next Saturday morning, we will be meeting for a dose of conservation work at Grove Farm Nature Reserve.