Four fabulous GoodGymers rounded off a gloriously sunny weekend by helping out the Friends of Ally Pally Station, a group set up in 2016 to provide some colour to the station by creating a community garden.

Fiona, Jenny, Laura and Vicki started off with some watering and planting of the containers dotted up and down the station platforms, ably assisted by our energetic junior helper for the day, Vicki’s son Kamran.

Once Michael from Friends of Ally Pally arrived, we were directed towards litter picking – no easy task when the litter was behind station railings. With help from a somewhat rickety stepladder, Jenny bounded over the railings like a gazelle, and got stuck into a particularly heavily-littered section of embankment. Fiona manned the bags whilst Laura helped out over the other side of the station, and Vicki and Kamran made use of a hole hacked into a chicken wire barrier to pick up litter near the bus stop.

The final tally was seven large bags of rubbish, after which we headed down to Platform 1 for a chat with local artist Alan Cracknall who is going to be working on decorating some of the pedestrian footbridge, and for cake, baked by Vicki and decorated by Kamran. There was time for a quick chat with the Friends group, who told us that it’s been going so well they’ve had visitors from other stations trying to set up similar schemes. The gardening scheme runs once a month and we’ll ask if they need some GoodGym gardening or litter picking muscle another time.