30 people ran to Kings Cross Community Orchard and supported heavy plums, killed weeds with cardboard, got covered in stagnant water and hacked nettles with a scythe.

Sounds pretty weird huh. Well it was....but it was great.

We ran together as a pack this week- with the exception of Danica, Pritesh and Alex who legged it 11k to help out Kilburn resident Diana with her unruly garden (great work you beauts- report from Pritesh below). We had a nice short run to Camley Street to the Orchard run by Alara Wholefoods and London Orchard Project.

London Orchard Project and Alara Dream Farm

We were welcomed by Alex from Alara. He manages the site and is a really interesting guy (Have a read of the blog on Alara Dream Farm above). He had a raft of jobs he needed doing a large proportion of which stank to high heavens .....

Task 1

The fruit trees in the Orchard are now surrounded by weeds. Alex want to 'mulchify' them; whacking cardboard around the base of the trees and covering them in rich stinky compost. This should starve the pesky blighters of light and stop them multiplying. The job sounded easy enough but involved climbing in and out of a deep recycling skip. Scaling the 8 foot walls is pretty tough with little legs eh Freya?

Task 2

Weed destruction. A great little task with some fantastic old school tools. Megan went all Stakhanov with her Sickle (big thanks to A - Level History for that reference), Beth, Jess and Monica did their best Grim Reaper impression with the Scythe, and Holly mastered 'Grandpa's Weedmachine'?! We overfilled 2 wheelbarrows with all the weeds they bashed. Nice one.

Task 3 - Heavy Plums

There's loads of fruit kicking about the trading estate- and the plum tree is going absolute great guns. So much so the extensive crop is too heavy for the tree. Using a sledgehammer Jacqui, Jon, Polly and Lucia crated a structure using some big wooden stakes to prop up the branches and keep them off the floor. Nice work.

Task 4

The stinkiest of the lot. This involved planting in various plots at the back of the trading estate. The group prepared the area, got the plants ready and than covered the area in the most rancid water I have ever had the misfortune of coming into contact with. I think Rodney, Becky and George had to have a number of showers post run to wash away the awful smell...nice one guys.

Task 5

Burning some stuff...enough said. Everyone loves making a fire.

The Muesli Gauntlet

As a thank you for our efforts Alex gave us all a lovely box of muesli as a thank you and we trotted off down the canal on the way home....some of us more quickly than others. I don't think I have seen anyone run faster than Paul and Stevie with a 1k box of muesli in their hands.

Heres a Mission Report from Pritesh

It was probably the nicest evening in camden this year, and myself, Alex and Danica had decided to go loooooong with a mission in Kilburn! It was probably more of an evening to be relaxing in the sun and we saw plenty of Londoners taking advantage as we made our way from Somers Town, up and over Primrose Hill (that was a killer) and continued the long run up to Kilburn. We kept a strong pace up and had no map mishaps so made our way safely to the Kingsgate estate.

There we met Diana who was already out enjoying her evening with some gardening. She showed us what needed to be done - a pretty hefty clearing job on the space outside her home. This had become overgrown and unloved and needed clearing so that she can restore it to it's former glory. Diana had already made a start so there was greenery that needed to be bagged up to be taken away as well as the clearing. Danica and I got on with chopping down and bagging up the green waste whilst Alex got properly stuck in dragging up brambles and ivy and all manner of other marauding shrubbery! We soon realised we were going to run out of time so Alex joined in with the bagging and we soon had everything cleared up.

It's a shame on these tasks that we don't have more time but we get the benefits of a hard run as well as the hard task. Diana will certainly need more help and GG Camden will be up to the task...we also can't say no to her refreshments (lovely apple juice today)!

This was my 100th GoodGym good deed and it couldnt've been a more lovely evening highlighting all the best of why GoodGym has such an impact on us the runners as well as those that we help...here's to the next 100 - cheers :)