17 of us came out to help Ealing Transition Community Orchard for a final round of bramble snipping and hedge trimming before the dark nights really close in.

We started at our base, Bodyline Studio, where we welcomed some new and returning faces.

• Great to have Sam with us on his tourism trail from Liverpool.

• Lovey to have Emily back with us after a long battle with injury.

• We also welcomed back Courtney, after threatening to leave us for good last year by moving back to Aus, you can imagine my joy to see her signed up this week!

• Huge well done goes to Chris who complete his first marathon on Sunday.

• Also to Harvey knocking out an ultra, superstars!

• The biggest congratulations this week however goes to Mollie who joined us this week with her on board co-pilot, he will be coming into the world in January! That’s two GoodGym bumps in the group now! 🥰

With the battle for loosing day light working against us we wasted no time in getting down to the task and collected all our tools en route. We were greeted by Grant who was ready to show us exactly what needed doing.

He also let us know a bit of history about the garden and explained to everyone new to the task how it’s actually built on top of old tennis courts! 🎾 The garden is now used a community learning space and they are reliant on volunteers such as ourselves to keep it at its best!

Splitting up across the garden we had groups trimming the shrubs and hedges and groups taking on the brambles. Team bramble were focused on removing briar around the trees while team hedge were tasked with making the shrubbery surrounding the site much neater and tidier.

We had around 30 minutes before darkness descended so it was all systems go to chop and clear as quickly as possible! With five minutes to go we all pulled together to make sure everything was raked up and and cleared away.

That’s a days worth of work for two people!

We finished up by running the tools back through (the now pretty dark) Walpole Park before dropping them off and finishing up with a little agility, balance and coordination circuit in the park. We had side shuffles, backwards running and even some carioca, no not karaoke!

Great work everyone!