A little run but a massive good deed last night in Ealing as 12 of us ran to help Northfields Allotments dig plots for people in the community who were struggling to maintain them due to older age and recent spells of bad health.

We began by congratulating Harvey on his 8th marathon of the year on Sunday! He’s really cracking on through them now and we’re glad he had just enough in his legs to provide us with his excellent back marking skills last night! With the sun shining and a beautiful evening in store we whizzed through a quick warm up, head count and discussion about upcoming holidays. Sounds like a lot of exciting trips over the next year for our GoodGym members!

This is why we GoodGym!

After a short run through the park using some file sprints we arrived at Northfields Allotments (London’s oldest allotments!) to meet Tana who had arranged for us to help with two plots that had become unmanageable. It was immediately obvious how important this task was to be and really reinforced why we GoodGym! Mr J is a long-standing plot holder of 40 years and the allotment brings him so much joy. However after a bill of bad health last year he’s struggled with being able to manage it on his own and just needed a hand digging it over so he could get going with it again. That’s where we come in and we were delighted to be able to help with such an impactful task! We were also able to help another plot holder who’s had some recent health problems by digging a trench at their plot too, Mrs S was so grateful to receive the our help and hopefully we’ve provided the needed (wo)man power needed to help her maintain her lovely space!

The plot thickened...

We all worked methodically to ensure that we dug over every section and Mr J, Tana and his lovely daughter Kate offered us their top tips throughout. Working together we managed to get pretty much the whole plot turned over in just a short amount of time and when we were done it was clear just how much this meant to Mr J to be able to keep this land that’s such a big part of his life and wellbeing.

It was wonderful to arrive home to find such a lovely email from Kate thanking us for our helping hands. She said that it was great that we understood how much her dad an Mrs S love being in the allotment and that’s we’d given them such a boost to have the work done.

A massive well done to everyone involved in last nights dig!