Our esteemed leader Euclides was unavailable this evening, so Sarah stepped in to lead the group to Lordship Recreation Ground.

Task owner Ximena was also absent, but had given full instructions: we were to spread woodchip around the base of various benches and bald patches around the parkrun and junior parkrun courses.

Equipped with two wheelbarrows, two shovels and a rake, the group made short work of the task, returning to the woodchip pile several times to ensure any potentially muddy patches were well covered.

Meanwhile Dave eschewed the use of tools and developed his own wheelbarrow filling strategy. As Paul said "he's literally the human Swiss Army knife"

As 8pm rolled around the equipment was packed away, Haringey hi 5s were exchanged and our heroes disappeared into the night.

Kudos to Claire for tonight's pun!

6 wonderful Goodgymers kicked off a whole new year of GG action by helping the Friends of the Meadow Orchard go hunting for last season's fallen christmas trees to be converted into hugel beds.

Huge-l News If True

And so it begins. 2025 ushered its new GG Haringey year with the threat of inclement snow but that wasn't going to stop our brave Goodgymmers. Armed with puffa jackets and more layers than we could count, our Goodgymmers ran, cycled, and walked to the task in the West of the borough where the good folk from the Meadow Orchard had pressed the Big Red Button labelled Goodgym: Press For Help and we heeded the call.

It wasn't the promise of hot spiced cider and wassailing that brought our team out, I swear, but it certainly helped as the first dusting of snow began falling during our run. Thankfully, almost as soon as the dusting began it had stopped and the evening ended up being quite mild, if only in comparison to the weather elsewhere in the country.

Our team was guided to a lovely long and wide avenue of fancy houses where we were handed a list with house numbers with trees to collect. We wasted no time in pairing up and before you knew it, our teams were buzzing all over the road picking up huge trees and collecting them on the green at the bottom of the avenue. Once we were satisfied all the trees on the list had been collected, we picked them up and carried them the kilometre or so back to the Meadow Orchard, destined to become hugel beds in the not-so-distant future.

Once at the Orchard, Alan from the Friends group, always a man of his word, proceeded to entertain us with fire-making and hot cider. What a better way to kick off GG 2025.

Super Sarah will be leading the session next week, as we fill up holes at Lordship Rec to ensure the safety of our local parkruns and junior parkruns. Come!

(*) you had to be there