Tonight we headed out along ‘The Highway’ to one of our favourite tasks The Bevy.

First we warmly welcomed Sarah, all the way from Hong Kong for her first Goodgym run and shared the ‘bad’ news that we weren’t gonna be on the tele after all due to a poorly cameraman. And then shared the ‘good’ news that we will be on the tele next week when we visit the Community kitchen!

On arrival at The Bevy Dave the gardener gave us a reminder of some of the reasons why The Bevy is such as amazing space. It’s a community owned pub that does what any good pub should and serves the community. That includes hosting groups such as Friday Friends for a weekly lunch, putting on talks from university academics at Brains at the Bevy and so much more. You can even go there for a pint!

Dave and Jonathan have been doing an amazing job of looking after the gardens, including creating a kitchen garden growing apples, sweetcorn., beans, raspberries, gooseberries, salad, herbs & so much more. Rikesh, Helena & Sarah did a great job of helping Dave in the kitchen garden weeding those hard to reach edges that Dave can’t manage on his own. Meanwhile the rest of the crew were helping Jonathan in the front garden where there is another hard to reach area that needed our attention. Frances, Michael, Sherman & Laura braving the raised bed with strict instructions not to fall off! Madeleine, Nipun & Scarlett tidied up the lower areas with a good sweep and some tender pruning of the planted boxes.

Dave & Jonathan as always were delighted with out work and Dave declared we’d done a month’s work in half an hour! Awesome stuff!

Well done to all on a long run and a job well done. See you all next week.

16 Hackney GoodGymers ran 5.5k to help Cordwainers Grow resurrect an abandoned community garden.

A glorious summers evening in H- Town brought out a lovely crew of runners eager to jump on the GG treadmill of fitness and volunteering.

Heading out on a relaxed 2k run taking us towards the fringes of Hackney Downs. We met Kate from Cordwainers Grow who have been tasked with rejuvenating the garden since the services were removed from the local authority residential home and the garden became neglected and overrun.

The main jobs we had was to remove all the huge bushes and weeds growing from under the wall along the drive way. As well as litter picking and some soil reassignment.

Just as we were hitting our stride cutting, pulling, digging and sawing the overgrown vegetation out of the walls we suddenly disturbed a Killer mig colony and no one was safe!! We became breakfast, lunch and dinner and were being eaten alive!!

We quickly upped the pace to finish the weed removal and shovel the soil into the raised flower beds while litter picking at light speed!!

As the bites started to come up we dashed off!! Completing a speedy task we will probably all never forget in record time!!

To try and take our minds of the itching we ran over to Hackney Downs and to the ultra famous GG Hackney Anna 1k Time trial where we started fast and got faster!! As we flew around the 1k circuit zipping up the Strava leaderboard!!

With blood pumping and time on our side we headed back to London Fields for some leg conditioning and a team core blast!!

Thanks for coming along!! And sorry about the bites!! Hope yours have gone down quickly and no itching.

Hopefully the the glory of being pretty much or even exactly GoodGyms 100,000th GoodDeed will have made the evening extra special!!

GG Legend Pritesh will be leading the charge to Hollybush next week!! Have a great time and I will see you all on the 14th!

Smooth Running

Joel