Eight wonderful Richmond GoodGymmers were out in the June evening sunshine to help with the annual maintenance of the boat house doors along the glorious Richmond Riverside.

Led by Lucy, the gang took a scenic route past Old Deer Park, along both sides of the river and over two bridges to get to the Boat Houses, where we met Vic from the Boating Scouts, who let us loose on the doors.

We got sanding and scrubbing, and used a cocktail of the finest Thames water and white spirit to clean some of the residual mud at the bottom of the doors. We then wiped the dust down and dried up before the brushes came out! The doors got a lathering of teak oil, top to bottom. Kudos to the taller members of our group for reaching the top bits, and to the shorter members for risking themselves being dripped on for the lower to reach bits!

The scores on the doors were in. We were all winners, when doing good and getting fit in such a fantastic location on such a splendid evening, as you can see from some of Anita’s stunning photos.

In the words of the terminator, ‘Oil be back’… in three weeks time to complete the second coat!

Ultimately, it was two Teams on either end of the Church grounds making a small difference. One mission was to clean up the war memorial and the other, involved two sections where we had to lift up some of the turf a few inches off the ground.

Thanks to the tools we had available. This included a post basher, a tape measure, a string for the border, some wooden posts and a small shovel. It was pretty evident that the surrounding lawn around the Church was steeped in history so we took note of that from the beginning. The two areas in question was pretty close to a previous trench that Goodgym previously got involved back in 2024, where we also spotted the sow that reaped its rewards with full flower.

We took a section of the lawn at the back of the church (or depending which way you look at it) and started digging. We found no artifacts, perhaps some dust from previous stone diminished.

Shortly afterwards, we completed our mission. The vicar invited us in for some refreshments afterwards. It's pretty amazing when a team comes together!

A warm welcome and a good workout are always guaranteed at Petersham and Ham Sea Scouts and this morning was no exception.

Adam, Chris, and JP were set to work mixing concrete, loading it into barrows, and wheeling it across the site to create a base for the new firepit, which we started at our visit on Monday evening. The team took turns loading the mixer and barrows and pouring the sloppy mix out for levelling.

Meanwhile, Rosie’s persistent tardiness was rewarded with sole use of a shovel and pick to dig out the base of a rotten post on some exercise bars very popular with the scouts.

Everyone put their backs into the various elements of the task and we soon ran out of time but made a big impact and look forward to our next visit.

A busy evening by the river this evening as the group set off along the sunny path past pubs, cyclists and picnic-eaters, as well as dancing midges, mozzies and mayflies as the path opened up towards Petersham.

Arriving at the Sea Scouts, Scout leader Russell had already put Chris and Mazin to work mixing concrete and wheelbarrowing it across the field where the scout group were adding to the adventure practising archery! The rest of us go stuck straight in too with active tasks happening everywhere: shovelling the fresh concrete into position for the new firepit, measuring up, pumping up the dinghy, moving bags of soil around, moving logs about on the trolley and clearing invasive balsam plants.

An all-round perfect example of a GoodGym task, keeping us all fit by doing good! We are back there on Saturday morning to help further, sign up to join the fun!

At this month’s RFS visit, Adam, Chris, JP, Steph and Suze were given the task of causing double bubble trouble toil and trouble!

In other words,recycling bubble rap to be used in the RFS store to wrap up donated brick a brac items.

Additionally, with the help of knifes, we successfully broke down the cardboard boxes they came in.

Fortunately we did not burst anyone’s bubble here.

See link below for upcoming tasks https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions

Returned to GG Richmond’s sponsored plots in Buccleuch to do a bit more weeding and plant the anonymously donated peony and rose that we discovered on Monday.

Distracted by other tasks (weeding, watering, pruning, litter picking, composting, deconstructing the VE Day wreathes) it took about eight hours to get the two plants ensconced in their new home in front of the Insect Hotel.