After a welcome chat at our meeting place about our favourite boardgames (from Catan and Articulate, to the Very Nasty Horse Race and Bananagrams) we trotted off up Penge High Street towards Cator Park.

We wondered on the way if we've seen the last of the hot weather - good for plants, good for those running the Big Half in a few weeks, but bad for it being the end of summer already if so.

We arrive at the park and headed over to the Tiny Forest - pleased to see how much the trees have shot up since we were last there. Millie reminds us that we want the tree roots to plunge down deep, so could we empty a bucket of water round each tree if possible. We started with the smallest trees, those in the shadiest spots, and did a bit of weeding around too.

A couple of us move over to the park edge, trimming back the hedge so we can see the millennium marker again, and chopping back holly from the pavement side too, to help pedestrians fighting for space on the path, til the next time the council can cut it all back to the fence.

After buckets and buckets of water have been filled and emptied over and over, we say our goodbyes and head home. Thanks all, and see you next time!

Tonight we had a septet of GoodGymers shifting a whole lotta woodchip for the Blenheim Arpley Residents Association. They've done an awesome job starting a community garden and getting loads of trees planted and asked us for a hand with spreading woodchip around the new trees.

Toilet humour

It was a short run, after a little intro question about fave toilets. Some very amusing stories and some good choices!

When we arrived at the task there were two huge piles of woodchip, some wheelbarrows (in various states of repair...), shovels and a few different areas for us to spread the woodchip to; tyres, shrub beds and 3 patches of trees.

We split up and managed to complete most of the job!

It was great to have Mariah at her first session 🥳 and shout out to everyone else for risking the chance of rain to smash out another task 👍

A fantastic four met Sharon at Ripley Arts Centre this morning to scrub some windows clean. It’s a place with an interesting history and lots going on, including music groups, art classes, poetry and filmmaking. It was almost shut down last year so it’s good to see it’s now still going.

We devised our respective strategies for cleaning the windows and set to work, also using various tactics/ladders to reach the higher parts of the windows. The result was pretty shiny and satisfying! At the end we even had a special tour of the building, learning about the musical family that once lived here and left their marks (literally) in the brickwork…

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 🦎