In The Sweep Midwinter, Ant Was All Alone, No One Came To GoodGym, And The Rain Poured Down, Then The Door Swung Open, Raymond Strode Right In, Off We Went To Leyton, To Sweep A Church Therein

Well, it was a quiet end to the year at the Waltham Forest branch of GoodGym but just as fun as it always is thanks to our big-hearted Taskforce supremo, Raymond. Understandably, people stayed away today as we were facing an 8km run in the rain during Christmas party season. If nobody had arrived, we would have left our lovely contact Maureen to sweep a church all on her own, so it was magnificent to see the big guy arrive at Mirth.

In the end, it was all nice and easy we were done and dusted in twenty minutes!

Next year we are moving home so from our first task on 8th January, we will be meeting at Greenleaf Road Baptist Church. More details will be emailed out soon.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to everyone.

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While we were all enjoying the summer, it looks like autumn slowly crept up and hit us over the head with a bag of dry brown leaves. According to Google, autumn doesn't start until the end of the month, but if you ask me, it has already arrived. Mind you I'm not complaining, I quite like this season and it still means there is plenty to do out of doors with cutting back stuff, picking up leaves and all that to keep the hardworking GoodGymers of Waltham Forest busy.

And hardworking they are because we had a great turnout last night for our long run to St John's of Leytonstone. We also had our youngest ever volunteer, A-level student Shiala who come along with her dad, Sajid. What a great team the two of them made superb running and getting stuck into the task. Great work.

Of course, it was great work from all concerned with everyone arriving on time and pounding out the 2.5 miles run at a decent pace. Of course, the thought of our monthly social at the end of our exertions probably proved an excellent incentive to get things done.

There to greet us on-site was the ever cheerful and helpful Maureen who equipped us with the tools for the job. St John's is a stunning church set in a beautiful garden. This Saturday evening they host the London Gala Orchestra who will be playing a recital of Peter and the Wolf. Our job was to spruce up the churchyard ahead of this event. The team did an outstanding job of this, ridding the long pathway of weeds and cutting back the overgrowing branches.

After beavering away at this task, it was time to get back on the road for another 2.5 miles (5 in total!). Needless to say, after all that work, we were ravenous when we walked into the Turkish restaurant, Gokuzu for our post-run meal. Massive thanks go to Nerys for organising this; it was a great choice. The staff looked after us with plenty of on the house bread and delicious salad arriving almost as soon as we sat down. The food was terrific and plentiful too.

Great work all. Next week we are off to the marshes to do a bit of a plog, sign-up here

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We were venturing out of E17 on last night's run. With just three sign-ups, I was a little worried we would be rocking up at the glorious St John's Church in Leytonstone with too few people to tackle the invading army of weeds and overgrown shrubs. I need not have worried and even my guilt trip WhatsApp message was not needed as the cavalry was already warming up ready for the charge. In the end, we hit double figures with a perfect ten beautiful people ready to run at 6:45 from MM&M.

After a brief discourse on the task ahead and a chat about embarrassing emails mistakes, we were on the road. I decided to take the scenic route on this 2.5-mile run, but as I had no idea where I was going, I hooked up GMap to my headphones and received instructions every few yards to turn right, turn left blah, blah, blah. It felt like we were hunting a Minotaur and just when I was starting to get dizzy, there we found ourselves in the tranquil surroundings of St John's.

There to meet us was the lovely Maureen fresh from The Time Is Now London march. Objective? To gently try and tell our political class that we are systematically destroying the only known habitable place in The Universe! Well done Maureen.

The next step was to get tooled up, which meant venturing below decks in this ancient church. Okay, it wasn't the crypt, it was far scarier! Hidden away in a long forgotten corner and behind wrought iron gates was a dusty room full of numerous sharp objects! I'm talking shears, secateurs, loppers etc.

Following our excursion to this hidden chamber, we emerged blinking into the sunlight. At which point we proceeded to weed, cut, sweep and bag all the various green bits and pieces that had popped up between paving stones and through railings all around this lovely churchyard.

Many bags were filled but with the clock ticking it was time to down tools and get back on the jog and eventually back to base.

Great job, folks. Hopefully, see you again next week when we will be heading to Willow Brook Primary School

The good news last night was that the clocks have finally changed meaning that we started our run in the daylight, the bad news was that is was freezing cold and wet! But that didn't bother the hardy crew from The Forest who relished a testing run to a new task. Before I get into that let's look at the day's other news.

We Are One

Next week is GoodGym Waltham Forest's (GGWF's) first birthday. We will be marking this occasion with a return to one of our favourite destinations, George Mason Lodge, for a spot of gardening. Other celebrations are planned, including cake and party paraphernalia, feel free contribute a cake! Sign-up here

Talking of birthday's

It's Camden birthday too and the monthly social is taking place there tonight (Thursday 4th April). Do pop along and represent the Waltham Forest massive if you can

Back to tonight

We were visiting a new destination tonight so along with the daylight afforded us by the recent clock change, everything felt a bit fresh and exciting. In fact more so with our biggest turnout since January and the fact that we welcomed new runners Manuela and Damaris to our group. I say new runners but I mean new GoodGymers, it was obvious in the first few strides that these pair are both well practised in the art of running. We also welcomed back Michael on a two-week GoodGym streak, surely a hat-trick beckons with our birthday run coming next week? Our numbers were further bolstered by the return of our globe-trotting regular and ultramarathon man, Ercole, piacere di vederti il mio vecchio amico.

Perhaps the light evening brought everyone out tonight, or perhaps it was the promise of cake generously donated by Mr. 50+ runs himself, Francis. Either way, it wasn't the weather that swelled our ranks! Colder than Hank Williams's heart and wetter that Marty Pellow's band, it was far from the balmy spring evening I was hoping for. Happily, it didn't seem to bother this intrepid crew who completed the testing 3.5 km run to our destination without breaking a sweat.

Our destination was the St. John The Baptist Church in Leytonstone. A splendid looking church in extensive grounds, it wouldn't look out of place in the Cotswolds so it certainly brightened up its urban setting. There to greet us with a warm welcome were Maureen and David who had prepared things very well for our visit with gloves, bags, litter pickers and tools aplenty. The crew wasted no time in getting stuck in and started removing, litter, weeds and brambles from the churchyard.

After making light work of the task and with fingers and toes beginning to turn a light shade of blue, we took refuge inside for a quick photocall and a pew (literally) before heading back to base to devour Francis's cake. For some reason, I seem to be acquiring a reputation as a cake glutton so I limited myself to just three slices on this occasion!

Well done everyone, it was a near biblical experience.

Sign up to the birthday run next week here

Oh and a quick PS. After a successful GGWF Parkrun meeting last Saturday. I will be returning to Walthamstow Parkrun on Saturday 13th April for another one. This is also the occasion of Ruari's 100th Parkrun so why not join us for a free timed 5k run? Details here

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