The world may be in lock down but it takes more than that to stop 9 Goodgymers to run for a second visit to Kingston Edible Forest Garden, although for these GGrunners it was their first time.

Kingston Edible Forest Garden - a community orchard and group allotment since 1992, they harvest from trees planted in the past, and plant for the future. There is an acre of fruit, nuts, shrubs and bushes and veg arranged as natural woodland. They also have a couple of ducks on a pond for eggs, a polytunnel, and tree nursery and propagate apple trees for schools.

Once we arrived we were greeting by the volunteer leaders Greg and Ben, who given us a briefing and explained all tasks to do, and then gather gloves and tools before heading into forest. It was nice to chat and meet another volunteer, Katherine and her dog, Rainbow.

The GG runner was divided into two groups; the first one was doing the usual gardening, such as cutting, sawing, slashing and lifting that define any decent Goodgym mission. It was a very satisfactory task to break the tree fallen on the ground in pieces and clean the path.

The other group was helping into the polytunnel, removing the bubble wrap that protects the polytunnel and heat the plants inside, as well as removing and winding the ropes that surrounding the polytunnel and pond.

Is it on? Is it off? Has Dennis had the last word? Heavens No! 3 GoodGymmers defied the storm and ventured out on a very very wet Sunday morning.

After problems with transport and some running and walking from different boroughs , these tourists finally met up at Kingston Edible Forest - a community orchard and group allotment since 1992, they harvest from trees planted in the past, and plant for the future. There is an acre of fruit, nuts, shrubs and bushes and veg arranged as natural woodland. They also have a couple of ducks on a pond for eggs, a polytunnel, tree nursery and propagate apple trees for schools - bascially they do and grow so wonderful things and it was great to be able to help them out today!

We were very grateful to spend our mission today in the Edible Forest's polytunnel that housed many fruit and veg plants. We even played a game of "name that plant" where Naomi was the star player naming almost ever plant she saw just by looking at it, she only missed the dill , which was in fact fennel - a hidden talent Naomi , well done!

We weren't just pondering over grapes and chard we promise, we did some work too, we tightened all the bubble wrap around the polytunnel so that it could avoid getting condensation - who knew bubble wrap could help with that! In doing so we learnt how to tie a complicated (well I thought so) bow knot! We then watered all the plants and sieved some soil ready for future planting and got to plant some beetroot too. And we did it all while playing a game of twister! That's right, the polytunnel was quite small and we could only stand on a tiny path of bricks , let's just say a few toes were trodden on!

To finish we all shared some pineapple mint tea grown in the garden to warm us up so we were ready to fight the elements on the journey home

Thank you for braving the weather today GoodGymmers, great work!

It started off with a bit of a drizzle and soon turned into a full on down pour , but that didn't stop 9 committed folk turning up for a long run to a new task. You see, Kingston folks are so committed they give up the warmth of a choir pew, shrug off sore limbs from a weekends triathlon (or most of one) and push their broken bike all the way, just to make sure they make it to Guildhall for a Tuesday evening run. Amazing effort team, but then I'm not surprised , as QUINCE when do we chicken out on a rainy run??

Mark led us on a weaving route, up hills, down alleys , under motorways...we went this way, that way , forwards and backwards, across the A3.

The new task was with Kingston's edible forest , who run a community allotment and have started growing trees for Kingston's Street tree scheme. We were faced with a simply sapling situation. Plant a bunch of saplings 2ft apart with each row a good large step in between. Get as many as you can in the ground within 15 mins, whilst the heavens opened once again. We turned down the option of retreating to the bubble tunnel and got soaked from our heads To-Ma-Toes.

Tree saplings in and some grass pulled up by the other third of the group to ensure the already planted trees had room to grow, we set off back carefully watching our steps on Mark's new alley way pond-like routes. Puddle hopping turned out to be a pointless activity, but it did add that extra bit of entertainment to a dark damp running night.

Rain doesn't stop us! #goodgym #kingston #running #volunteering #edibleforest #10km #runninggroup pic.twitter.com/8zZRRe6Hki

— GoodGym Kingston-upon-Thames (@GoodGymKingston) October 2, 2019

Thanks to the Edible Forest for hosting us an we look forward to coming back on a community mission one Sunday. Thanks also for the generous amount of quince you gave to us , we look forward to what the White's can cook up with them!