25 GoodGymers ran 4km to help Ground works transform the Welshpool community garden!

Amazing to have an infusion of GoodGym first timers this week to really amp up our efforts in our community volunteering efforts!! Hope you all enjoyed your first taste of GG and will be back very soon for more!!

Three big Shout Outs for upcoming activities and get togethers. St Joesph’s Hospice jumble sale clear away on Saturday! Our September Social after our group run on the 17th!! Not forgetting next weeks visit to Abney Park for our Tuesday fix of GoodGym magic!!

It’s great when a plan comes together and we get to complete the task which looked improbable 50 minutes earlier and even better when we get a biscuit and sweet for our efforts to.

With Groundwork’s helping out the Welshpool community garden with plans, ideas, resources we were much needed to get the heavy lifting complete so that the garden would become more manageable for the residents.

Dominating 2.5 tonnes of soil by shovelling, carrying, barrowing and tipping into the brand new triangle raised beds filling them all to the brim!

We weeded away to create a perfect surface to lay 2 massive builders bags of bark down so that the weeds would stay at bay.

With that done the seeds were sewn to start the growing process in the beds which will bring colour and life to the garden!

Special shout out to first timer Ignatius for single handily transforming a large patch of grass into a new double flower bed and sewing the seeds of life!

A 2.5k run to the task 1.5k run back brought us back perfectly for 8:29!

Thanks for your monster effort and see you next week for our visit to Abney!!

Joel

With the (seemingly) ever-present trainer Joel on a well deserved break, it fell to little 'ol me to look after the marvelous Hackney crew on their latest Abney Park adventure.

After sorting out the necesary paperwork for the lovely Sasha's DBS check (anyone interested in doing one to go on missions and/or coach runs, check online and bring your paperwork to a group run for Joel to check!) I had the pleasure of meeting a whole bunch of new faces to the Goodgym family - do give Meryem, Juliette, Friederike, Amanda & Georgia a cheer or two as well!

Formalities over and done with, including the always taxing head-count, Amy led the team over to Abney Park, where we found a couple more Goodgymmers waiting alongside task owner Quentin, who explained our task for the evening. A last minute change due to circumstances meant we were starting on spreading woodchip along some path ways a month earlier than planned, since the lovely English summer weather (read: rain) meant the fresh woodchip was deteriorating quicker and as such had to be spread sooner! Que a crack squad of Goodgymmers tooling up with rakes & shovels & wheelbarrows to attack the pile of woodchip and create some Perfect Pathways in the Park under the watchful eye of Quentin - title pun!

Realising time was flying past while having fun, we packed away the tools, said our goodbyes to Quentin and followed Amy back to base, with Eva making sure everyone got back to the E5 Bakehouse safely. A few stretches and everyone made their way home again, happy after a nice run & work-out.

Next week Hackney master Joel is back, with an office move for Hackney Pirates - please do sign up on the right of the page!

Thanks for having me,

Peter