GoodGym had a great day at the Big Sports Day in Wimbledon Park celebrating sport in the borough. We met with Roxanne Bennett, the Sports and Leisure Manager, from Merton Council, Councillor Caroline Cooper Marbiah, and the Mayor of Merton, Councillor Slawek Szczepanski, and told them all about how great GoodGym is and how we can support local charities and community groups in the borough once GoodGym Merton is launched. We just need three more taskforce to launch so if you want to be part of the process then let us know!

We spent an hour walking round the event handing out leaflets and explaining what we do. Jade got into networking mode and chatted with all the community groups and created valuable connections face-to-face to let them know how GoodGym Merton could support them.

So lovely to meet Caroline and with Jade and bond as the founding group of Goodgym Merton. Very excited for the launch! Watch this space.

I was lucky enough to represent GoodGym by attending a special Mayoral Sunday Civic Service to celebrate the start of the 24/25 Mayoral Year.

The theme of the ceremony was ‘championing volunteering and the natural environment' . Habitats & Heritage is the chosen mayoral charity for the coming 12 months.

The mayor was keen to attend a future Goodgym task as long as it doesn't involve running!

This weekend we put our GoodGymers to the task of plogging in their local park or cemetery if they dared! They did not disappoint...

Sevan and Kash went full Halloween mode and dared to enter a spooky cemetery to collect the rubbish that was cluttering up the graves. How spooktacular!

Rob and his son went to the park and picked up food and drink detritus that was left by a careless soul.

Well done to all that went out and tidied up their local streets and parks.

Please send any further images to rachelwhite@goodgym.org and I can add them to to the report.

I have found some litter on the green and tidied it up

On a drizzly Tuesday morning, a few of us went to Elm Park to do a bit exercise and pick up as much rubbish as we could find. It wasn't easy to get out of bed and get motivated to do this as the excess of Christmas was making us all feel sluggish and tired... However, a few minutes in we started to get our mojo. Rubbish collection day had left a lot of rubbish on the roads, unfortunately, so we picked up half a bags worth before getting to the park. In the park, there were wrappers, face masks and an enormous amount of beer cans. Dave tidied up round the children's play equipment whilst Jen and myself tackling the drinking corner. A mutual friend, Ellie, spotted us in the bushes and came over to see what we were up to and she ended up helping too - a new recruit, perhaps?! The kids had a great time with the litter pickers and between us we managed to fill 2 and a half bags of rubbish. Elm Park looks so much better for our efforts and we felt warm and fuzzy for getting out in the fresh air and making a difference.

Meanwhile, at the slightly less glamorous location of a hospital car park, Samia litter picked along the pedestrian walkway with a detour around the car park to Costa, collecting several paper cups, lids and face masks.

Goodgym Kingston runners Rob and Kate met Lorena and her sister Milena at Las Aguas to begin our great debut plinternational ( plog international)! The goal was to clear the walkways leading up Monserrate of litter. Monserrate is a hill that dominates the city center of Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia. It rises to 3,152 metres above the sea level, where there is a church with a shrine, devoted to El Señor Caído.

Rob was keen to lead the stretches and warm up inspired by our Kingston run leader Mark. While Kate was pleased to point out that because we were warming up for our jog and task at 11:30, we’ll still be mid -plinternational at exactly the same time as our Kingston group run was warming up outside the Guildhall, because they’re 6 hours ahead of us in London. It’s like we’re doing a split task litter pick on two continents with team Kingston Goodgym this Tuesday!

Post warm up and we were all stretched and planned out. Lorena came prepared and got out the bin bags and she donned her gloves. There was plenty of plastic litter to be picked up provided by Coca-Cola and Gatorade as well as many plastic cups, countless plastic straws and lolly sticks, plastic spoons, sandwich bags and water bottles. We were so pleased to be able to clear up the area and couldn’t bottle it up! The climb soon became a bit trickier and Rob mentioned feeling a bit dizzy from the bending down to pick up litter at over 1500m at that point. It seemed like the hill kept on going and we were getting tired but we knew we’d get over it! We kept a positive altitude and felt better after a little encouragement from some locals. We passed many people on the way up that saw us gathering rubbish and said ‘muchos gracias’ and ‘buen trabajo’! Someone even stopped us to take a photo of us and say that he likes what we’re doing and is happy to see us cleaning up the rubbish. He also asked Lorena about our Goodgym group. As we’d almost filled two bags of rubbish we were relieved to find some larger bins to deposit them into near the top and could continue the climb on what was more than merely a slight incline as Mark might say but was certainly a solid hill! The views of all of the city of Bogotá at the top were a great reward!