A beautiful Sunday morning, Graham and Rosa went for a nice run in Victoria park on the way to Chandos Road gardens, where the locals have applied for some funds to plant some wild flowers. The rough idea is to make it look like Tuscany, and they’re planning sit out there on summer evenings sipping on aperol spritzs… or so I understand

The wild flowers need some sandy ground to grow in so they had had three big bags of sand delivered, but it needed moving across the park. Many lovely folks from the neighbourhood pitched in with shovels and wheelbarrows. With a big joint effort we were able to get the sand moved over and spread out where the wildflowers are to be planted in just under an hour!

Well done everyone! We look forward to seeing how those seeds grow!

Last night, GoodGym Newham headed out to support the Friends of Chandos Road Gardens, clearing autumn leaves from the streets and litter from the children’s playground.

Nick arrived first and got straight to work on litter picking, setting the pace for the session. Graham walked over despite recovering from a football-related injury — we wish him a swift recovery! Kev arrived after a run, and then Rosa, Eugene, and I did a little group run, taking the scenic route from the Aquatics Centre to join in.

Armed with rakes, bags and shovels, we tackled the leaves lining the street and rubbish scattered around the playground. Among the items collected were stray wrappers, cups, and even a lonely teddy bear!

We were also joined by volunteers and local residents from Chandos Road, who continued the cleanup after we left, finishing the job and collecting all the bagged leaves and rubbish for the council. Great to see the community come together to make the streets and playground cleaner and safer.

📅 Upcoming Tasks

We don't currently have anything lined up next Tuesday, but we do have the following brilliant tasks coming up not long after:

Saturday 8th Nov: Parkrun and then gardening at Emmanuel Church

Tuesday 11th: Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground

Thanks to everyone who came along today — with our combined efforts, Chandos Road is looking brighter, tidier, and ready for everyone to enjoy! 🌿

My health and safety advice was met with a wailing and a gnashing of teeth. I thought the suggestion that we should "lift with our knees" was pretty sensible, Hilary and Nick had different ideas. From their reaction I thought the piece of advice I'd been given in every health and safety talk in any manual labour type setting had been an elaborate hoax... opinions varied across the group... anyway, lots of lifting was indeed required as we headed to the Education Links school, where we were greeted by Mark who is a trustee of the school.

The mission, clear some space on the outer walls to make room for a new mural to cover the entire front of the building. Some other items for disposal had also been organised outside the school for chucking in a big skip. Classic goodgym fare. The team (8 strong, good turn out!) divided and conquered, plenty of smashing stuff into smaller bits along the way, elbow grease required, and got the job done.

Many thanks to our host Mark who gave us really clear direction and explained some of the context of what the work will facilitate in terms of the new mural and how the kids at the school will benefit.

Hope to see you all next week superstars!

A return trip to Chandos Road which had a lot less leaves than our last visit.

This time was a litter picking session.

Hilary led the team in their run from the Print House while Kevin and I took a walking option as we had the litter pickers and bags supplied by Newham council. We split up and headed to three areas of the play park to ensure the children have a clean litter free area to play.

So, Tuesday 19th Nov. And it’s cold. The blizzard earlier in the day is not going to cool the burning passion of these goodgymers to aid the community. Not only braving the cold, but also the unknown! A new task! Chandos road gardens. The community group that looks after the gardens asked for some help clearing the streets around the gardens from litter and leaves. Turned out the latter was in greater abundance!

It was in fact an absolute classic goodgym task, with about a 2 mile run to get there, no specialists skills required (just a willingness to graft), lots of bending, lifting, raking and sweeping, an enthusiastic host helping to steer us in the right direction, and best of all, an output at the end of it that could be neatly measured in bags! (The council even came out to collect them!).

Special mention also goes out to Mabel (the dog) for her first task, she wasn’t so hot at raking, but made up for it by giving all the leaves a good sniff.

Also big thanks to the Friends of Chandos Road Gardens community group who hosted and were also out in force leading by example and providing equipment and tips.

Random weekly question was “if you could keep any species of animal as a pet (that you wouldn’t normally keep as a pet … and danger was not a limiting factor) what would you choose?!”

I can’t say I got a complete set of answers, but some examples were polar bear, panda bear, silver back gorilla, badger, shark.. various bits of logic for those, big warm cuddles, protectiveness/protection, help with workouts, for scaring people (I’ll let you imagine which reason goes with which animal!). All good answers.

Next week’s Tue evening task still to be confirmed, likely to be flyering or furniture building, but if you’re free and fancy being an absolute local legend then sign up here!