This Wednesday GoodGym Camden headed up to Castlehaven Community Association. Castlehaven are turning a disused area of land into a small community garden. They're starting some community gardening events, but needed a bit of muscle to prepare the ground and that's where GoodGym come in.

We ran the 2k to the area as a large group and once there split into four teams to tackle the various jobs.

Team Pritesh

Following a talk on the history of the pond from Chris, this group were responsible for shovelling soil and using it to cover up sandy bits around the perimeter. All went well here. They were also responsible for adding a bit of soil to the middle of the pond to help weigh down the lining. This didn't seem to go so well: the soil appeared to be floating. We stood around a bit wondering if it would sink, but it didn't. There were discussions about whether this was a special type of soil designed to catch sediment or if it was an artistic feature. Nobody knows. We may never know.

Team Sophie

Team Sophie were in charge of ridding the nature trail area from thistles and weeds and nasty stuff so that visitors could actually see where the trail was meant to be. They did a splendid job and even managed to uncover a couple of syringes. Bonus!

Team Beth

Beth's team was in charge of lopping and chopping various twigs and bits of wood up and shifting them to the compost heap. This was definitely the most destructive task of the evening, but also great fun.

Team Simon

We disappeared around the back of the changing rooms to rake up some leaves and stick them in a giant sack. We didn't find any needles, but did leave the area looking much clearer. We gave the trees a little look as we left that sort of said "we've just tidied this up, so don't you go dropping any more of those pesky leaves around." We'll see what happens

Following our jobs we had a quick warmup with various on-the-spot drills and then performed a 5-minute 6-team 5-person continuous relay (which takes as long to say as it does to perform) around the park. It was rather competitive and also rather slippy, but nobody fell over and we can't remember who won (well, the winning team probably does).

We jogged back to the community centre and had a freedom stretch while a couple of us tested out our balance skills.

A marvellous job from all involved and we didn't even get rained on. See you next time.

Simon

P.S. UPDATE: the pond seems OK Thanks Ana