For those who don't believe in Autumn starting on the 1st of September, last night there was no escape from the equinox marking the start of the darker half of the year. Headtorch season was on. After a 2km run in Walpole Park, four Ealing GoodGymers, who were about to start their task, concluded it was already time for the work lights.

The only tool Harvey, Steph, Sevan and Kash needed for tonight's job was a pair of thick, long gloves. Was falconry a new GoodGym discipline? The quartet hoped to get an Ealing Eagle landing on their gloves - and, ideally, in their team - yet, not many runners ventured to the park nighttime. What's more eccentric than running in an unlit park after dark? Pulling thistles in an unlit park after dark! The GoodGymers ticked off both oddities in a single night, and removed three trolleys of invasive plants in an hour - the result equally good as last week!

Next week we're going to give the thistles a break and take down the signs after the best half marathon that is happening this week - sign up now!

Its Tuesday Ealing group run and as running to warm up, decided to stop and do a good bank drop at the local shop. As getting colder decided to go for pasta or Spirali and some soup. Nice warm soup for someone to enjoy. Glad to see that the donation box was nearly full.

Today's visit to Care4Calais included an unusual new task for the team to complete. A haul of prams, pushchairs and wheelchairs were unloaded from task owner Tamzin's car and they needed to be cleaned. Had they been (p)ram raided from a local shop? Not at all, they'd been recovered from a local recycling centre where they'd been sitting outside for a while. Kash offered to put on waterproofs, wash everything down and find out which ones still had more life in them.

Steph worked alongside Tamzin to prepare clothing packs for local hotels, tailoring them to the needs of each recipient. Some of the previously created packs had to be fixed too to correct the sizes of the clothes. Outside, Kash was also preparing a custom request, finding a wheelchair for an 11 year old who couldn't walk.

In another area, Afshin and Sevan worked on a third task, sorting new donations. Care4Calais are always in need of clothes, particularly for men, so there was a little disappointment from Tamzin to discover that there was mostly womens' clothing in the donated bags. Helpfully, some winter coats and hats were found too, which will be really useful in the coming months.

To wrap up the task, Steph moved the completed clothing packs to be collected by the delivery driver and the newly sorted clothes went to the storage room, replacing those that had been used. Apart from the slightly soggy wheeled transport outside and a lot of stock rotation, there was no evidence that GoodGym had been present, just in case the police do come knocking 👮.

The second day of Ealing Climate Week felt more like being on the set of an action film rather than taking a climate action. Fire? Check. Helicopters? Check. A small team of heroes? Check.

After a two-month break from joint sessions with Ealing Greenwayers, three GoodGymers arrived at Pear Tree Park to find charred stumps of a hedge that used to be a border between the newest park in Ealing and Perivale Park sports ground. The fire that broke out in July consumed all green parts of the hedge and the woodchip carpet our team had spread months before. Today's session with Richard and five other Greenwayers was to tidy up the debris and create space for the vegetation to be reborn like a Phoenix.

As the Greenwayers attacked the burnt stems and branches with saws, Sevan, Steph, and Kash were dragging and wheelbarrowing the charred timber to drop it behind the bushes. The team discovered that not all blackened wood was dead inside, so Richard decided not to cut down all the tree stems, hoping that they might revive.

While a decent action film doesn't necessarily need a twist, our story had one: twisting a not-burnt, but rotten tree, a part of a hedge close to the closed park cafe. Three GoodGymers diverted their attention from barrows to the leaning dead tree and yanked it off the ground. It took all three from the GoodGym gang to haul it away, so afterwards they came back to the wheelbarrows overflowing with burnt branches that needed emptying.

The peaceful atmosphere in the park was briefly disturbed by the sight of three tandem rotor helicopters sliding through the blue sky. Where did they go? No one could tell. But everyone knew who had the most sooty nose after the task, and this time it wasn't Kash.

There was another bumper showing of children at Pitshanger Junior parkrun this week, with the Ealing Half Marathon next week, as well as the Mini Mile for children. There were 131 finishers, which isn't a record for Pitshanger Juniors, but isn't far off.

Sevan had the tough task of tapping the button to record finish times multiple times a second as the children were bunched together and racing each other to the line. Almost all of them completed the course in under 19 minutes and the first finisher, a girl, finishing in 7:20! Around the course, Steph, Kash and Maria were marshalling and taking some hard high fives as parents as well as children were being motivated by our trio.

As well as mashing the button to record finishers, at the same time Sevan was discussing the food history of Marmite and Hershey's chocolate with others in the funnel. He learned that Vegemite came to exist when Marmite supply lines broke down after the First World War in 1923, forcing Australian Marmite lovers to create their own yeasty spread.

Three GoodGym early birds showed up in the sunny Pitshanger Park, before junior parkrun, to kick off the day with a little bit of fitness. With the gazebo area in use by another group performing tai chi-like movements, our trio found a gym floor at the park cafe, not open until 9 am. Maria, Kash, and Steph Ducat (who, rather than sleeping, spent the previous night walking a marathon!) did a 15-minute round of core exercises, firing up their abs, obliques and lower back muscles. They finished just in time to vacate the cafe terrace as the delivery of pastry arrived at the door.

Saturday evening and Steph Ducat set off with other walkers in the streets of London from Battersea Park in waves from 7pm. Walkers did either the full marathon, half marathon and the 10km. Steph Ducat walked the full marathon on a open road event and completed it in 6hours and 28 minutes : no running only walking. Shine walk lights London up at night as thousands of walkers sharing their lights.

GoodGym Ealing kicked off their Ealing Climate Week with a bang! The Saturday morning in Southall was packed with action: encouraging people to get active by supporting Southall parkrun around the course and at the funnel, a jog to donate old sports kit at Open Southall, and, finally, arriving at Western Road Urban Garden for more joy of connecting with others taking positive action on climate.

GoodGymers Sevan, Steph Ducat, and Kash met familiar faces at the garden: our host, Janpal from Southall Community Alliance, Ash, who just came back from a clean-up at the canal, and our friend, the mighty Andre. For Afshin, it was the first time at Western Road - surely, a less prickly experience than his very first GoodGym session at the farm, where he had earned his red t-shirt. It was a good opportunity to meet people from Active Communities and Let’s Go Southall, whose aims of getting the local community confident going out, making new friends, and getting active are similar to ours.

Today’s task for our group was to clear and tidy the area around the polytunnel in preparation for the end of the season. With a large group of colleagues, we removed the weeds in no time, and had enough time at the end of the session to connect with other volunteers and enjoy samosas, snacks, and fruit from Southall Community Alliance. We are already looking forward to the October session at Western Road!