Snow way?!

Two unexpected things tonight:

SNOW, or some blossom that looked like snow, and a LIZARD loose in Cator Park. We didn’t see it but we were shown pics. Wild.

Before all that excitement, we met at the bridge house, named ourselves, partially numbered, and told everyone our favourite races/future races.

We jogged a cool 2-3km to the park via the snow to meet Gill, Lou and Ian aka some of the friends of Cator and Alexandra parks for some Tiny Forest weeding, mulching and watering of the thirsty trees.

Lou showed us a pic of the lizard, which someone probably let loose. No one saw it.

300 trees, 1000 weeds and several wheelbarrows of mulch later and we were done. Nice one everyone 🦎

We went to Churchfields Recreation Ground tonight for some weeding abd watering in their tiny forest!

As usual, we met at Bridge House where we introduced ourselves and answered this week's question - what's your favourite ice cream flavour? We ran the gamut from run & raisin to cornetto chocolate, but Kelsey won the evening with orange choc chip :O

It was a 2km run through Penge and along Avenue Road to the Ground where we met Amanda, who helps run the Friends Group, who handed out tools for us to water the trees and take out the weeds.

We worked industriously as the sun set and left the tiny forest looking better than we found it, which is grand!

A pleasant 2km run back to Bridge House for some stretches and then split up to bead home :)

Massive shout out to Lindsay🤓 - first time GoodGymer!

Meeting as usual at the Bridge House, all beaming from the sunshine, we had a brief chat about our favourite DIY tasks, which ranged from just the pure satisfaction of completing any job, to the complicated rewiring of electrical things (hot tip - take a photo of how it looked before you touched it!)

We jogged off for a little loop round the sights of Penge and back to Anerley, and peered in at the frogspawn in the little corner pond of the St Hugh's community garden.

Mark had already collected some willow stems, and some of us set about planting them to make a living hedge (which you can weave together once it's a bit more established). The rest of us had a heavy little workout shifting railway sleepers and pallets from the front of the garden to the back, where they'll make more raised beds and other garden features for locals.

All in all a lovely productive sunny evening :)

A fab five went up the hill ⛰️ to Upper Norwood tonight to help Sabine at the Central Hill Estate get some gazebos 🎪 and a table ready for an Easter Egg Hunt 🐣 she's organising on Saturday.

We had perfect weather ☀️ to motivate us to higher ground through the Crystal Palace Park, which we can now enjoy as it's light again! Speaking of, tonight's question was "Name your favourite part of the Park". From the dinosaurs ☀️ to the maze to the transmission tower, it's an iconic place. As we headed into the entrance by Bridge House, we spotted some lovely annuals in the planter and stopped for what might be the earliest run photo ever? 😂

We met Sabine at her lock-up, collected the bits to take across the estate and headed over to a fellow resident's house on the other side nearer to the planned event space, who will mind the kit for the week. Props to James for moving the really heavy gazebo!

It was a quick task but will have a major impact, helping the estate residents enjoy Easter as a community 🙂

We had our first WWF X GoodGym Workout for Nature session* this evening and what a lovely night for it!

After discussing our favourite UK place to be in sunny weather (thanks for the question Clare!), six of us ran the 3km to Dorset Road Allotments where we met Jeannette and co. Over the last year we've been helping to dismantle a HUGE chicken shed which hadn't been used for a decade so was full of brambles. This has finally been demolished so our task tonight was to clear the foundations so that topsoil and grass seed can be added. The eventual plan is to turn the spot into a picnic area, which will look out over a flower-covered hibernaculum made from the leftover rubble from the chicken shed. Very environmentally friendly!

Over 40 minutes we made good progress, with Colette being in charge of scouting out bits of broken glass and plastic, David trying out the pickaxe to get rid of tough roots, and Clare, Catherine and James digging and raking over the earth and shuttling wheelbarrows of top soil from the compost heap while I worked with Jeannette to get rid of any pesky bind weed roots.

We finished off just as the sun was setting (so nice to be able to do tasks in daylight!) and before setting off on the run back the team gave me their best chicken poses in honour of our long departed friends.

Great job team!

*Between 7 April and 4 May 2025, WWF (the wildlife people, not the wrestlers) and GoodGym are collaborating on hundreds of sessions to celebrate Earth Day. Each session will involve a Workout for Nature - a physical volunteering activity which will benefit local green spaces, and give our own wellbeing a boost. You can find out more here