A few GoodGym members decided to do some litter picking in their local area. I joined up with fellow Goodgym Member Daniel to do some paired litter picking in a particularly bad area of Barnet. Check out some of the other photos and messages.

With GoodGym we litter pick fast, Clearing rubbish that’s left or amassed, It’s good for the mind, And the planet combined, Leaving us fit and refreshed at last!

Hi Paul. Sally and I did this month's paired plogging yesterday. Didn't take long as lots of plastic bottles containing dubious liquids soon filled up our bags. Ugh! We jogged into Regent's park afterwards to see the Frieze sculptures.

Have tagged Goodgymbarnetactive in our Insta stories😎

Back to the bee roads of Blackheath this month and a mile loop round one of the larger fields that I often use for intervals, it it bordered by the A2 and a couple of other less busy roads. There was a lot more than last time I did it, around three bin bags full, mainly takeaway rubbish, presumably thrown out of car windows. On a positive note there were still far more wild flowers and mushrooms than rubbish.

Paul Browning

Five GoodGym runners were given Middlesex University air quality monitors to assess the air quality around them as they moved about in the month of October. All of them reported interesting results he is what George had to say.

Air Quality Monitoring Mission Report from George

Collecting the data was really eye opening. Barnet Council's Air Quality Action Plan marks the North Circular and Tally Ho Corner as some of the most polluted parts of our borough, exceeding WHO limits on particulate matter. However, the times I went to those areas, air quality appeared relatively OK, perhaps due to the wet and windy weather, which reduces particulate pollution. (I also learned later that our monitoring devices don't measure nitrogen oxides, which is the main pollution type from road traffic!)

However, going near smokers dropped the air quality quickly. Also, going climbing (which I love!) put me in a chalk-dusty environment with poor air quality. But the most shocking part was going on the tube.

Open air platforms were fine, but going inside a train carriage lowered the air quality. Underground, the air quality quickly hit zero on the Northern, Piccadilly, Victoria and Bakerloo lines because of PM10 - the large pollution particles, or soot, which you can see all over the tube. 

And waiting on a platform, arriving trains brought clouds of dust that triggered massive spikes in pollution. The highest reading I got was when two trains came in almost back to back (the first up the Edgware branch, the second one I was waiting for).

The highest reading I got a screenshot of was over 500μg per cubic metre of PM10. The app's measurements only go up to 250μg per cubic metre. I can't imagine how bad that is for your lungs, but I'm now wearing a pollution-filtering mask whenever I travel underground.

The London borough of Barnet manages about 600 miles of roads. In order to celebrate world car free day and signal their commitment to alternative forms of transport, they took the daring decision to close about 50 metres of that network, from nowhere in particular at one end of a non-descript residential road to nowhere in particular at the other. Their promotion efforts in the lead up to the event were evident in the number of stalls: one from a local evangelical church, one from a girl guide group, one from the London cycling campaign and ... er, that's it. As a result of their promotional strategy, when I visited, actual members of the public were probably outnumbered 2-1 by people in high viz or otherwise being paid or required to be there. We look forward to the press release declaring this a roaring success and a major contribution to Barnet's net zero efforts.

Report by Daniel