I miss the summer, I really do! Don’t you? Regardless, it was such a great pleasure to be running with other 8 brave GoodGym-ers at yesterday's group session. We also welcomed Mariam, who was not discouraged at all but the rainy introduction to GoodGym Brighton!

Armed with rain cover ☔, weeds scrapers🧹provided by the B&H Tidy Up Team, loppers ✂ and other garden tools borrowed from Brighton Borrowers, we joined forces 💪 with a few other brave volunteers from Round Hill: the community hero Rob, my lovely neighbour Josh and the super active Aurelie from the Sylvan Hall Residents Association.

Together, we managed to clear Cat-Creep (ie the long steep stairway connecting Wakefield Road with Roundhill Crescent, where tods are crossing 🐸), a great length of the pathway of Wakefield Road, and the surrounding of the orchard at the East end of Sylvan Hall, which is aimed to flourish as a secret biodiversity spot of this residential estate. Mariam also managed to save cute snails from the green clearance! 🐌

This was a great and fully appreciated effort! Thank YOU all, GoodGym! Thank you also for helping to save good bread loaves and pasties from being wasted. Hope you enjoyed them for dinner 😊.

To the next one, and to the summer to come (hopefully).

Brighton’s topography may not have been the inspiration for Kate Bush’s classic track, but our hills are remarkable in both number and steepness. Great for some challenging and rewarding running sessions!

10 GoodGym-ers tackled not one but two of Brighton and Hove’s most challenging hills. The group split our efforts between parallel street clean-up tasks, supporting groups in Hanover and Roundhill to paint over graffiti tags and pick up wind-blown litter to encourage others to keep the community tidy.

Striding up the sun-drenched lawns and splitting off to our separate sites, we were joined in our mission by a crew of local residents and councillors and cheered on by many passers-by as we paint rolled and litter picked our way around the neighbourhood.

Or, to paraphrase the prescient words of Chamillionaire:

They see me rollin’

We painting

Patrollin’ for litter making town less dirty...

Brighton and Hove City Council helped by supplying paints and brushes for painting over graffiti in the Roundhill and Lewes Road area. Good Gym volunteers did sterling work sprucing up the area!

We finished with a fun, increasingly fast paced training session around the Level led by Pippa and were rewarded with slices of still warm chocolate beetroot cake (yup, one of our five a day! :) ), as part of Stefania’s extended Birthday Celebrations. Buon compleanno, Stefania!

The Cat Creep is a secret shortcut between the upper and downhill residential roads in the Round Hill Ward, well known by its residents. Unlike some of the other Cat Creeps in Brighton, this one was initially wider and named Lennox Road in readiness for houses to be built along it. However, this plan was eventually abandoned: Lennox Road was just too steep for coaches to negotiate!

Nowadays, if you’re on the Cat Creep after dark, don’t be surprised if you see someone with a torch apparently staring at the stairs. From February to April, a group of local enthusiasts counts toads and newts as they migrate from one side of the cat creep to the other to mate. So, we did. We counted at least 7 tods at our passage! This greatly hopped GoodGymers up to undertake the group mission that involved the distribution of more than 150 copies of the local newsletter, “The Round Hill Reporter” to the residents of the ward, especially those who can't or don't want to be online, so they can hear all about the latest news in the area. It was a blast, so we had plenty of time for a fitness session hopping up the stairs together with the tods – indeed, using our phone and head torch to avoid stepping on them – and some sprint runs up hill. The second Tuesday of the month is Brighton GoodGym’s social night, and we concluded our evening with a Quiz Night to socialise at a local pub.