On a warm evening, we made our way on foot and by bike to lend a hand in caring for the historic cedar trees at Chiswick House and Gardens.

With the lawns showing the strain of recent summer heatwaves, our task was to refresh the bases of the trees with a protective layer of woodchip.

We got into an easy rhythm of spreading and chatting and levelled two piles around the large cedar.

Just in time, Lucy arrived to lend a hand and orchestrate the all-important group photo at the end.

With the final barrow emptied it was time to head to the pub to raise a glass on the eve of Remy's birthday, and tuck into another much heralded birthday cake made by Eloise. So good Emily hot footed it across London to try some.

Happy Birthday Remy!

Another session with Care4Calais, but Steph Ducat was the only regular to assist Tamzin. Today we welcomed Sylvia for her 1st Goodgym session. Both Ariane and Maxime are not newbies, but also their 1st session with Care4Calais. Today was not our usual task with preparing clothes with different items and sizes. Tamzin and her husband are having works done in the house, which also includes the different rooms where loads of items are stored and packed once prepared. Our mission was to move all the items from the main storage on the 1st floor to the 2nd floor in order for the contractors to be able to work in those.In one hour with some lifting, moving boxes, bags etc the team with Tamzin and her husband cleared the room. Tamzin was overwelmed and didnt think we would have completed that task so quickly. We all stopped for some water as very hot and dusty due to the works being done in the house. As we still had 1 hour left, Tamzin said lets go to the ware house in Ealing to prepare bags/parcels for the 4pm collection. This was also a first as short road trip!!No singing in the car. Once arrived we started to unload the car and get parcels ready with adding shioes to the ready made bags, but we encounted a small problem. We were missing bags to add the shoes, so Steph Ducat ran to local shops to find bags Tamzin needed...not easy task as they didnt have what we wanted .....so after 3 stores found what we needed. Back at the ware house and the crew cracked on and all the shoes were added, labels added and boxed/bagged by destination ready for thwe 4pm collection. Shoe-t for the stars!

Last night we were back at Cultivate London, a local horticultural charity, for round two of an unbe-leaf-ably big task. One that has a big impact though! Cultivate have been collecting all the leaves that fall into the playground at a local school and bagging them up so they turn into mulch. They then sell the nutrient rich mulch to local people and the profit goes back into the charity. Neat, right?

They needed a hand getting all the good mulch bagged up - enter GoodGym! So after a warm up where we cheered Eloise for an epic triathlon at the weekend, we set off on our run.

We arrived to find Romina waiting for us with tools and bags, and got to work. Despite it being just leaves, the filled bags turned out to be surprisingly heavy so it was quite the workout. Michelle, Steph, Eloise and Luis formed a great team to lift and squash, taking inspiration from the noble art of grape crushing. Unfortunately they did not produce any wine this time.

After 40 minutes of solid work we had made an enormous dent in the pile - I'd say one more session should do it! We were rewarded with a tree groaning with plums, and spent a happy few minutes enjoying the delicious fruit before heading back for fitness (just as fun?).

The workout last night focused on lower body, core and arms, and all muscle groups got a good challenge. Next week we're back at Chiswick House for another session in the beautiful grounds. Until then, happy GGing!

A bit of a change this week, switching to the Monday crew. New set-up styles were adapted to, and the van was quickly unloaded. The foodbank volunteer team was a bit short-staffed this week, so I stayed for an additional 30 minutes to run food parcels out to clients.