Remember that bit in Matilda?

Firstly, shout out to Kelsey for her first GG session! Shout out to Ian for back marking and getting the bin bag! Shout out to Nathan who made his way down from GG Southwark! Shout out to James for getting his DBS check sorted so he can help out older people, and shout out to everyone else for being rad.

We kicked off the evening with the great debate - DogGym or no DogGym - should people with pooches be allowed to bring them along??? DogGym won but there were a few abstentions and a couple of no's so we'll leave them out for the mo. Mark says no bark. 🐶

Rubbish GoodGym

Bit of a glitch this evening - we were meant to be cutting back at Captain Sensible but we arrived to no host... ooooops. Luckily for us, there was plenty of rubbish a a fair few weeds dotted around the place. Ian grabbed a bag from a local shop - we filled it up easily, and left a nice pile of weeds too. Job done in 5 minutes. And we left it spotless so it'll look delightful in the daylight!

On the way back we did a bunch of weird and wonderful exercises for the quads - from NSEW tip toeing to Hungarian one-legged squats(??). Safe to say we were weak at the knees afterwards (in a good way).

Nice one everyone! And sorry for the slip up. Cool pics though.

Next week is a Halloween special - dress up if you like! We'll be painting some walls ghostly white at the Young Lewisham Project - sign up here. 👻

What a lovely evening for a jog 🏃 up to the St Christopher's Hospice charity shop in Crystal Palace! After the washout that was last week's session, we were set for sorting clothes 👚 indoors on what was probably the last warm day of the year 😂

The team departed Bridge House and we started with a quick warm up in Crystal Palace park, before heading along the main path to the Sports Centre ⚽ and out by Crystal Palace station 🚉 to quickly get us towards our destination. We tackled the tough incline up Anerley Hill ⛰️ and crossed over the Triangle, arriving at the shop at 7:20 - nice and early to get started on our task.

Teresa welcome us with a big task - moving all the clothes of summer bags out of the main storage area and swapping them with the winter bags 🛍️. She said she once had to do this on her own and it took forever, but our GoodGym squad meant it got done in no time at all this evening ⏲️

We also got on with some regular tasks in the front of the shop. Alex was on vacuum duty, and Hannah found all the stock that needed to rotate to another shop to try and find a new home.

Once the seasonal bags had all been moved, the rest of the team got on with bagging up the clothes Hannah had found, with Fiona racking the hangers back up efficiently. It was at this time that we found the crab bell. Why a bell in the shape of a crab? Who knows! 🦀

Teresa with over the moon at how tidy the shop looked, and we were ready to head back down the hill, but not before a quick photo with some of the fun clothes we'd found!

Great work everyone!

If I had a favourite number, it would be 13, which is the number of fantastic GoodGymers we had at our session last night.

We kicked off in the Bridge House, named ourselves and shared favourite beverages for a warm day and promptly hit the road. Our task(s) were at the lovely Betts Park,

🎨 Bringing back some life to a few old raised beds

🌱 Weeding between the cracks in the play area and

✂️ Trimming back a few overgrown branches.

We met Alan from the Friends of Betts Park who gave us a quick history lesson on the Croydon Canal (the last stretch of canal in south London 🥲) and grabbed all our necessary tools.

Team DIY (aka Sandra and Millie) screwed a couple of dislodged planks back onto one of the raised beds. Team Paint (aka Hannah, Fiona, Shauna, Meg, Angela and Egle) were turning the beds a deep shade of green, Team Trim (aka me and Harry) cut back a few branches overhanging the paths before helping out Team Weed (aka Cat, Catherine and Alex) with eeking out a load of grass and weeds that had been growing between the tarmac in the play area. And somewhere in there, we managed to cart over a load of soil (fresh from Crystal Palace Museum's water tower!) and empty it into the beds.

The play area looks so much neater now ("Are you guys making the park look nicer? Do you get paid for that?", said the teenager), the paths are a bit safer, and the raised beds are finally ready to have some herbs and veg growing in them again!

Amazing work team. And a few km and plenty of leg exercises to boot. 👌

Are you bitten comfortably? Then I'll begin.

It was the tale of two GoodGyms last night, as Bromley and Croydon came together in beautiful matrimony to complete a task at Captain Sensible Garden in South Norwood. It's a little community green space with some amazing plants and trees but it's become pretty wild and overgrown in the last couple of years.

First up, our Bromley crew met at the Bridge House, we welcomed David 🥳 and each shared our favourite (or in Stephen's case - top 10) favourite high street stores, in honour of Wilkinson's/Wilko (RIP).

We met Rachel who has been organising upkeep sessions at the garden. She explained our task, to remove all the big weeds and trim back overgrown plants, and also to pick up any litter that we found.

In the end we had 15 bags of vegetation and litter arranged at the side of the road. I'm not sure anyone escaped without bitten legs at the end?! 😞

To finish, we made the most of the billboard behind us and proclaimed our love for Mondays (our usual group run night).

We did a mix of running and walking back and some of us even grabbed a drink in the pub.

Nice work everyone 👌✨

Three musketeers were helping Matt and Millie at Alexandra Recreation Ground this evening, with a trio of tasks!

🌾 First, we were raking up a load of dead grass in the picnic area which was left over after the council had been to mow it up. We also cleared a section where Sunday's Music In The Park will be hosted.

🌸 We also planted out 5(!) planters with some lovely flowers. We got our design brains on, had a lot of symmetry going within and between beds, and even gave some thought to the height of the different shrubs. Beautiful.

💦 And finally we watered the planters.

WHAM!

Nice job, lads.