Care4Calais' West London HQ was quieter than normal today. There were bags of donations to be sorted and a smaller than usual number of new clothing requests to be bagged and tagged.

Sevan teamed up with Michelle on her first visit to Care4Calais. They were given bags and suitcases full of clothes that were all jumbled together and were asked to put them in some sort of order. There were plenty of warm jacket donations as the weather had been promising to improve and as usual, plenty of clothes with no or confusing sizing. Some undersized crop tops and shorts were unsuitable, so put to one side for charity donation, while a pair of oversized mens trousers marked size 26 could fit a Sevan in each leg. They were eventually placed in the 2XL box.

In another room, Kash and Steph were preparing standard clothing packs for men, except they didn't have any underwear. The packs that was, not the GoodGymers 🤭. They did what they could, leaving the packs to be stock(ing)ed up later. Kash and Steph then moved on to preparing requests, including a few complex ones that led Kash into the garden to hunt for micro scooters. She returned victorious, having found a pink scooter for a young girl and two more for some older boys.

To complete today's work, everyone took a pile of the newly sorted donations and stored them in a box in the stock room, matching the clothing type and size. Those will be ready to prepare more clothing packs at GoodGym's next session with Care4Calais next week.

A sunny yet windy Sunday had three GoodGymers rubbing their chilly hands against warm coffee cups at a cafe on Pitshanger Lane. After volunteering at Pitshanger Junior parkrun, the team was regrouping ahead of a walk to Pear Tree Park to help Ealing Greenwayers take care of the area around the now-closed park cafe.

For those Greenwayers who couldn't squeeze a run, walk, or cycle on their way to the session, Kash conducted a full-body warm-up involving many gentle joint rotations ahead of 80 minutes of edging, shovelling, wheelbarrowing, and raking.

Richard, the Greenwayers leader, outlined the task of improving the looks of the park's north border. First, the grass' appetite to spread had to be curbed, so the Greenwayers Sue and Ian were on the edging duty until one of the edging tools broke. Oops. That wasn't the GoodGymers this time! The other Greenwayers, Yi Shwei and David, initially joined the GoodGymers Steph Ducat, Sevan and Kash in the woodchip transport department.

Everyone had a go with both shovelling and wheelbarrowing, apart from Kash, who had injured her foot the day before and decided to stay away from any attempts to increase her step count. But did she miss her workout? It couldn't be further from the truth. Kash was on endurance shovelling duty for the entire task and was the main cause of the erosion of a woodchip coast that day. Richard's endeavour was a reverse of Dubai's Palm Islands project. The team have been mercilessly reducing the woodchip pile coastline. Steph and Sevan served as heavy-duty trucks carrying woodchip away from the coast to create desert-like patches under the hedge. Initially, the dunes appeared, that later had to be raked to create a flatter landscape. By noon, a chain of beautiful oases was created of woodchip spread neatly between palm-like bushes. Or was it just a mirage?

We have two new Pear Tree Park sessions already scheduled for spring in April and May! We are hoping for temperatures a little bit closer to those in Dubai - but not too much! Join us next time for a fun and rewarding Sunday morning workout.