Hanwell School of Boxing, a volunteer-led charity offering sports activities to young people of all backgrounds, moved to their current site in 2011. Tonight's task owner, Linda, had been one of the key players in making the move happen. She told us about the building’s history and the improvements made over the past fourteen years. But nothing lasts forever. The wooden posts that have stood at the entrance since 2011 were now rotten, and Linda thought it was time to replace them with five plastic bollards.

Five GoodGym runners who braved the drizzle on their 3 km run to Hanwell split into engineering and sweeping teams. The builders, Steph Ducat and Kash, had the job of removing the aged wooden posts and then digging a trench as per Linda's instructions. Paving blocks, no longer held in place by the poles, and tree roots were only minor challenges, solved by a mattock found by Linda and Steph's jigsaw puzzle skills. The real enemy was the stubborn old concrete, not easily removable to make space for the new bollards. The good news? Nothing is set in concrete at the GoodGym tasks, and there's always an option to change the approach.

After consulting Linda, the engineers agreed the best way forward was to set the new posts in place with minimal digging, then pour a mix of cement and water around them. Steph and Kash flattened the soil and laid the first layer of mixed cement - without a trowel! Who needs a trowel if you can use a random square piece of foam found on premises? The technique Linda suggested for the second layer was to scatter the cement around the poles, then pour water on top. The speed-engineering brought concrete results: maybe not the straightest poles, but certainly stable!

Meanwhile, Thaiza, Harvey and Sevan did what GoodGymers are best at in autumn: leaf sweeping. With rakes and brooms in hand, they set a goal to clear the whole tarmac surface leading to the boxing club. Ambitious! The leaves might not have been heavyweight, but there was an abundance of them. The sweeping team bagged as many leaves as they could fit in Linda's car, who would then distribute the green waste where it was needed. The rest of the fallen leaves had to be swept to the side - maybe for another time to bag. The result? A leaf-free driveway to the boxing school!

Before the team set off for another soggy 3km, Linda invited them inside the club and traditionally offered them hot chocolate and minced pies. The sweet treat was a lovely reward that powered the GoodGymers all the way back to Ealing Broadway.

Kash and Steph Ducat made their way to the church to find the crate of groceries already waiting for them to bring into the food cupboard. What an a peeling task to start the day and week. once all the crates were in, we went all bananas 🍌 as had to separate green and ripe ones in smaller crates. Loads of grapes today too. Once all the crates emptied, we packed them on a pallet ready for collection. last task was to sort out tinned food : soup, custard, loads of beans etc. Then it was time for the 2 minions to leave.

Ms L's large garden had once been a beautiful, exotic oasis, a home of many barbecues by the pond and palm trees. Since Ms L's husband had passed away five years ago, the place had become a run-down home of brambles, ivy and cats. Felines, Ms L didn't mind. She watched those nimble cousins of jaguars with affection in her eyes. But brambles and ivy? Ms L felt bad about the state of her garden, yet her health didn't allow her to maintain the place anymore without her husband.

The garden was like a full-time job for him. Evenings, weekends, there was always something to do here. - Ms L.

Sevan and Kash ran 5km from Dalston Junction to Upper Holloway to offer the lady their gardening support. With such a big garden overtaken by weeds, it was hard to tell where to start. Brambles and ivy, which had spread rapidly and encroached on neighbours' premises, seemed like a good choice to make a big difference.

In Ms L's husband's shed, Sevan found a slightly rusty pair of shears and a fork. He then cut down the ivy sprawling on the flower bed and climbing to the upstairs neighbour's window. His intervention recovered a family of ceramic rabbits and squirrels with an adopted baby elephant, bird and fox. Sevan also dug out some of the ivy roots to prevent the weeds from coming back and threatening the unity of the eclectic herd.

Meanwhile, Kash used loppers with a missing handle to tame the brambles that had grown onto the shed roof and into the neighbour's garden. She didn't get to dig any roots, but tidied the base of one of the palm trees, removing the dead leaves to reach the bramble stalks.

In the end, both GoodGymers ended up with equally large piles of cuttings. There is always time for a little bit of fun at every mission, so Sevan dressed up as Ned Stark with a vegan version of his furry overcoat made of ivy. When both stacks of trimmings were combined into a single monster heap, Kash jumped on it and surfed on it as if it were a sea beast emerging from the ocean.

Ms L was so grateful for the help that she thanked the GoodGymers cordially, and even gave Kash a hug!

Ms D showed Kash and Sevan into her back garden at the start of their mission and left them to get on with things. The only problem was, they didn't know what to do, didn't have any tools and didn't have any bags for waste. They called Ms D back outside and she explained the problem. There were still, however, no tools to cut the vines and branches growing over the back wall as she'd expected Kash and Sevan to bring their own.

"Do you have any scissors?" - Kash
"Only a small pair" - Ms D
"Or a steak knife?" - Sevan
"Let me see..." - Ms D

Ms D returned with a pair of kitchen scissors and a kitchen knife instead of the suggested steak variety. Well, the GoodGymers would do their best with what they had. Some vines were coming over the top from the other side and the rest were growing on Ms D's side out of the wall. They went behind a trellis, up the wall and through some spiky anti-climb furniture at the top. There were cables running through the vines too, so there was potential danger with each snip and slice.

The pair couldn't reach the top of the wall nor the anti-climb thing, so they tried to cut the high lines off by snapping or cutting lower down. With a mix of pulling, chopping and slicing, most of the vines and branches were taken down, without damaging the wires. There was enough time at the end to weed between the slabs and sweep up the mess of leaves and branches to fill 6 black bags.

The mission that looked challenging at the start ended up with a good result, even if it would've been much easier with a step ladder and some shears.

At Acton Junior parkrun this morning, there was a debate over shorts or not as it felt a lot chillier than previous days. There were still a lot of children having fun in their short sleeves who clearly hadn't felt the change in seasons yet and 48 in total finished the 2km run.

Mostly wrapped up warm, 5 GoodGymers were on the volunteer roster to help the event run smoothly. Maria and Sevan were marshalling, Alan timekeeping and Joanna was handing out finish tokens.

Kash was today's tailwalker and had the most exciting role. When the last child dropped out with 500m to go, she sprang into action, transforming from having a cheetah's tail on her tailwalker high-vis into an actual cheetah. She hunted down the next child who was much further around the course, finishing with them to allow the event pack up to begin. "Great running" as the marshals say 🏃.

At our regular visit to Care4Calais this afternoon, Richard came to his first GoodGym task. He was looking to try different volunteering opportunities, which is one of the benefits of GoodGym, variety! Welcome Richard and we look forward to seeing you at future sessions 🎉👏.

There was lots of donation sorting to do today, which Richard powered through with Kash and Sevan. Initially, the trio were sorting and sizing women's clothes until the balance in the bags swung more towards men's donations. Kash then joined Tamzin in preparing custom packs for recipients while Richard and Sevan stayed to work through the men's clothes.

The men's donations pile was extra large, both in the number of items to sort and the sizing of the clothes it contained. As Richard and Sevan sorted, the towers of XL clothes grew so large that they toppled over and had to be found a new home.

The incoming donations contained some surprises, including many fashionable but impractical handbags, some Metropolitan Police shirts and trousers, dress shirts and a suitcase full of... well... suits. None of those was particularly helpful for Care4Calais' clients so they'll be donated to charity. There was also a mystery as to who could have owned a stash of colourful cords that were discovered and how to find an adventurous new owner for them 🤔.

To wrap up the session, Richard and Sevan used their freshly organised clothes to prepare some standard men's packs. The whole team then moved as much of the new stock as they could into the storage room, leaving Tamzin to find space for the glut of new, larger clothing.

If you want to discover surprising donations and help provide clothing to refugees in need, we'll be back working with Care4Calais on the 22nd of November. Sign up here.

On a November morning, Ash, Sevan and Kash ran and walked up Sudbury Hill to bring some GoodGym red into Grove Farm, otherwise dominated by the LAGER Can blue hi-viz vests and rubbish sacks. It was the day of the regular monthly litter pick, and, as usual, the battle with rubbish at Grove Farm seemed never-ending!

Among the ubiquitous drinks cans and bottles, the volunteers found:

• Household flytips
• Construction site flytips
• Fake braid
• Bluetooth speaker
• Half a Halloween or Carnival mask

Today, LAGER Can was the subject of a film student's assignment, so Kash happened to make a cameo in a scene of picking a particularly disgusting Rubicon carton! Who knows what sludgy substance came out of it, but the young filmmaker reckoned it was fantastic material for his film!

Despite the joint LAGER Can & GoodGym team leaving the lane between Sudbury Hill station and David Lloyd spotless, Grove Farm still needs help to clear large flytips. We'll have the opportunity to help the local volunteers, Friends of Grove Farm, keep the place well-maintained at the next conservation day in two weeks. Sign up now!

The golden leaves fall
No green leaves for Mister G
Panini purchased