Area Activator Simon caught up with new-ish Goodgym runners Josh and Rain at the Elizabeth House Food Hub on a slightly soggy Monday evening. We chatted about weekend hikes on the North Downs Way, upcoming Bank Holiday trips to Croatia and putting up relatives during the Jubilee weekend while performing a few warm up drills- and then set off to The Arc Centre for our evening task.

2 miles of pleasant pavement plodding later (on quiet streets), the rain stopped as we met with Damien, the project coordinator for The Big Dig, a really ambitious gardening collaboration between The Arc and The Chelsea Flower Show. Hundreds of flowers have been donated to the community centre, and the team have been preparing the local gardens, play grounds and community flower beds for an influx of new plants over the weekend. Goodgym Islington have already assisted on Saturday and Sunday, lending a hand with lifting and shifting soil from old planters over to new locations, ready for the big planting project. So we continued our progress tonight!

We were given a spade, two forks and a huge mattock (a heavy pick axe made for breaking soil and pavement), and we started to break up some firm soil around the Packington Estate playground to make sure it is all ready for installing new potted plants tomorrow morning. Josh did a great job of smashing the firm ground with the mattock, while Rain covered loads of ground with churning up the soil with her fork. Together, we put in 40 minutes of hard graft and successfully turned over all of the soil in good and ample time.

Awesome stuff everyone! Have a fantastic Bank Holiday!