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).

We finally managed to return to help our friends from the The Bevy Pub – More Than a Pub! The Bevy is the first community run pub whose events and profits support the local community: from kids who need a square meal to seniors who want some company and everyone in between, The Bevy is there.

As well as being Brighton’s only community owned pub, is the Bevy Brighton’s first zero food waste pub? Every weekday lunchtime they serve up home cooked community lunches at affordable cost thanks to their link with Fareshare Sussex who redistribute surplus food, feeding bellies not bins. Any food waste is then put in their new hot composter, to produce gold standard compost that is then used in the edible pub garden. They’ve been adding 400 litres of mixed waste per week. For every 3 parts they put in, they get 1 part of top-quality compost - and the punters and fruit, veg and flower garden all love it!

Yesterday, GoodGym Brighton welcomed new member Euan and helped Dave, Shirley and Warren to enrich the soil with Bevy-Made compost, planted pumpkins, harvested rhubarb and cleared the Rubus Fruticosus, also called brambles, from invasive weeds – in a few words, we got the edible pub garden ready for the summer season, when we will come back to look out for the juicy berries to make the most of this place favourite.

The Bevy struggles to make money from food, but ironically it is their community approach to food that is a shining example of how this untypical pub on an ordinary estate working with a host of different organisations, is helping to achieve extraordinary things. Nowdays the Bevy’s work is more important than ever, with economic pressures on the rise. Let’s help our friends to realise their current plans and crowdfunding ambitions! Please Donate and Share

Apart from a few sunny days recently, at GoodGym Brighton it feels like it has not stopped raining for sessions and sessions. But did you know that going for a walk on a rainy day can be Good for you? Rosemary found the BBC article on How rain can make you happier and healthier and so, even this week, 9 happy GoodGym-ers went out running to help Manor Paddock social housing, where the resident Luc was waiting for us with a number of well organised tasks.

Manor Paddock House is an unusual-for-Brighton red brick and red tile dwelling nestling in a dell of the once Manor farming land, close by today to the Royal Sussex County Hospital and at the bottom of Sheepcote Valley. The House was built in 1932 but was converted to eight seniors' social housing flats in 1979. The communal garden area is flanked on two sides by stone wall, once stable walls: leftover from the previous era of Manor Paddock being a grazing field for military and racing horses (now a space for dog walkers and astro-turfed, floodlit sports pitches).

The House residents - especially the gardeners amongst them - are really grateful to Good Gym for helping, twice a year, to keep the weeds in check in this sycamore and birch-shaded, partly-wild garden; for planting bulbs and plants; for mulching fruit bushes, plus a pear and an apple tree, in Spring, and then pruning buddleia in Autumn.

We are all so lucky to enjoy this historic green space, and run to the Paddock where the horses once did!

Welcome Josh and Rosie. Hope you enjoyed this session, and were not so discouraged by the rain :-)

On a bright and breezy evening following some rain, eleven enthusiastic GoodGymers laced up their running shoes and set off for another group run. This time, our mission was to dig into some gardening tasks at Moulsecoomb Allotments and plant some potatoes.

The uphill run to the allotments got us warmed up. Upon arrival, we were greeted by the sight of an overgrown plot desperately in need of some TLC, and Pippa already hard at work. Armed with spades, forks, and mattocks, we were ready to turn this patch from shabby to spud-tacular.

Our first task was to clear the weeds and debris that had taken over this section of the allotment. Everyone got down to earth, pulling up stubborn weeds and clearing the ground. Kudos to those who faced nettles, creepy crawlies, and stubborn pieces of buried debris - we even found and rescued a slow worm! With the ground clear, it was time to plant the potatoes. Each potato was carefully placed into the earth with mulch, spaced just right to give them room to grow.

After a quick tidy-up and a rescue of Stefania's lost phone, the once neglected plot was now a promising potato patch. With the sun beginning to set, we gathered our tools and prepared for the run back.

A thank you to all the runners who came out – you were all spud-tacular! And a warm welcome to Jemima and Isobel who joined us for their first Goodgym task.