hackney tours

Last night we headed out into hackney with two groups: one to move the soil of a man called Matt and a second to clear up the area surrounding a Stoke Newington church. Good Gym has no religious affiliations but we were asked by Niall the vicar to come and help with the outside of his church which was strewn with weeds and litter.The groups split at York Hall with  professional Hackney expert Simon leading a group across London fields to  Matt's house. A nice man called Matt kindly agreed to give the top 8" of his front garden in Horton Road to a community growing project on Mare Street. It's called Cordwainers Garden and is run by Kate.So tonight, at 7:30pm, Matt and Kate welcomed eight good gym runners to dig up the garden and put it into rubble sacks. With some working on cutting through troublesome roots, some on loosening the earth with forks and some on shoveling it into bags, the team filled twenty bags in the first 20 minutes.  After a full 40 minutes of physical exertion (including a lazy 1 minute water break), they had filled 35 bags with delicious top soil and piled them to one side.  Kate says "It made me tired just to watch them. They were magnificent, amazing." She might encourage her community volunteers to try growing pineapples in the new raised beds that the soil will be used to make. After the team had scraped any spilled soil from the path and neatened up the pile of rubble sacks, we talked briefly about organising the job of moving the bags to their new garden. On the way back they bumped into another 15 Good Gym runners who'd been good and gone to Church. The longer group had headed along the canal to Queensbridge road and went due North until they hit Amhurst road and arrived at the Saint Paul's Church, which is also home to North London Action For Homeless and Stoke Newington Farmers' Market. We tidied the place up, sweeping weeding and litter picking until it was the place was spic an span. Heading back South we headed onto Hackney Downs and did a grueling lap of the Park to ensure we were sufficiently knackered. Knackeredness™ gets you fit so we're trying to do more of it. It's quite tiring, but makes you feel good. Heading back, the groups converged at the top of London Fields and some speedy people from advertising led a fast paced dash back to York Hall. Stretching happened and everything was OK. Here's another nice picture of Simon doing digging.