We had our first properly dark task of the season tonight as we helped Millie and the Friends of Cator Park neaten up foliage ahead of the annual Paws in the Park competition on Sunday. Work lights set up, Millie taught us how to scallop the bramble edge so that more of the path was accessible but we still left enough greenery for the birds and insects.

It was Elna's first task and she got stuck in with the shears straight away. We were also joined mid-way through the task by Millie's schnauzers who did a great job of supervising.

Nice job all!

Tony and I attacked a load of brambles and ivy, freeing up Mr D's patio and garage doors. Now he'll be able to go outside much more easily!

Inspired by shopping for a water butt, tonight's dilemma of the day was "What's your favourite vessel for drinking liquid?" It turns out everyone has a very specific mug, broken bottle or tankard, unless you're James for whom it's much more important that the liquid itself delivers after a tough week of work 🍷 Fair enough!

We split into two cohorts to get to our task - Cat led a longer run with Stephen as trusty backmarker, whilst Charlie and I took a stroll!

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Bark in the Dark...

Our task was at Cator Park, filling up barrows and buckets with woodchip at one end and ferrying it over to the new Tiny Forest at the other end. Maybe we should actually install a boat to carry it along the stream?

In what was apparently the final mulch run of the year, we got a solid 10+ barrows-full from the pile to the tiny trees.

The wee saplings will be much better protected from competing weeds now that it's knee deep in woodchip!

Ace work team, and don't forget to bring head torches next week 💡

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Back at Beckenham Green, and as we head into autumn fallen leaves were starting to stack up. With 4 GoodGymers ready to roll, we were assigned sweeping duty, and we hurtled through it 👊

First Leaonie and I collected the debris by the fence near the M&S corner, with Kelly starting work near the planters and joined by Ria. We then all moved up to the planters and brought the leaves down to our big pile, which was thrown behind the fence into the nature trail to start rotting down and provide good food for the plants there.

Having smashed that out in 50 minutes, we proceeded to remove some weeds from the planters and help install some wanted, propagated plants to fill in the gaps.

A lovely team and a fun task - thanks for making it a great start to the weekend 🎉

NEW LOCATION! 🎉 We headed to Churchfields Recreation Ground in west Beckenham for this session to meet Amanda, who leads a group aiming to make the park look a little nicer. Starting out from Bridge House, we first of all did our intros - this week's question, Which is your favourite bank holiday? (since we missed our Group Run last week). We had a nice spread - Easter, August Bank Holiday, May!

We took off east, unusually for us, and explored some new streets in Penge, crossing over Maple Road and the tram line to get to Churchfields Road, completing a cool 2.1km in the muggy evening air.

Amanda had a dream that the entrance to the park would look a lot more inviting with neatly edged paths, and the playground would be free of litter. GoodGym Bromley were only happy to make this dream come true, so we picked up tools from her well organised cart and got to work.

Fiona, James, David and I edged some paths, while Millie and Molly collected litter, with Catherine and Hannah tackling weeds using trowels.

As the light drew and the clock struck 8, we tidied up and enjoyed some flapjacks kindly provided for our hosts, then heading back via the main road to Bridge House for another 2km on the board.

Amanda was super pleased with our help and we're sure to return to Churchfields soon ❤️

My first Goodgym Mission in years, and great fun to get to make a little difference for Mr J. I attacked the 3 smallish trees in his front garden, cleared a bunch of bindweed, and swept up a bit (in the wind). Here's a couple of before and after pics, still a bit left to do but it looks better than before and I got to play with a saw 🪚