Last night we had an epic trip to Beckenham Park Care Home. It's a pretty big site and they had lots of space for Christmas decorations!

Me and David met at the Bridge House, we met Cat, Clare and Kelsey en route, spotted the David Bowie ⚡️ before meeting everyone else at the care home.

We'd been assigned three trees to decorate...

LBDouble-Yule

One room was in the cricket-themed bistro. In no time, a classy red and silver themed tree was created. David also added a few select decorations to the rest of the room...

In the second room, Kat did an incredible job, using her knitting skills to untangle a load of fairy lights. Some white feather boas gave the tree a snowy-vibe.

And the final tree was a bit mismatch... with all the leftover decorations.

The care home team provided a few glasses of baileys, very greatful for our help.

We also discovered a Kelsey Way sign. 🙌

---

Nice job everyone! 🎄

Possibly the last (?) hot day of the year was also time for Pengefest - a small food and beer festival to fundraise for St Christopher's Hospice. GoodGym offered to help set up the stalls in front of the Blenheim Centre (RIP Wilko) in Penge so that the event could start on time and the ale lovers weren't kept waiting.

The team was a nice mix of Group Run regulars, Community Mission pros, and a brand new face - Robert. Welcome!

First task was unloading everything into Empire Square. We got the BBQ out, tables and chairs, and even hay bales! Bromley GoodGym are now experts at gazebo construction, so when those were ready to go up it didn't take us long. The gazebos even had wheels to get them into position fast 🛞

Finally we headed over to The Goldsmiths pub nearby to borrow some pub benches for the crowds to sit on. Mark and Stephen already had history with these big pieces of timber, but with more hands this time (and less incline to the destination!) we got them moved into the square to complete the setup.

We celebrated our work with a group photo 📷 in the square before heading off to enjoy the weekend.

Well done everyone 🙌

It was apple-solutely delightful to have 11 A* weeders and mulchers this evening for a brand new task at Mayow Park. Some new faces (welcome Karl!) and some old faces (no offence, Shauna).

We met at the Bridge House, shared our favourite genres of music - OMG we have an eclectic bunch - and then hit the road.

---

Alona was there to meet us with tools at the ready. We split into two groups:

🍂 Ria, Shauna, David and Harry were on team mulch - shoveling the good stuff into wheelbarrows and running it across the park.

🍎 On team orchard were Sandra, Kat, Michelle, Millie, Karl and Clare - yanking up the grass and weeds around the apple trees so the mulch could be put down (which stops the weeds taking the water and goodness in the soil and provides extra nutrients to the soil).

It turns out Alona is full of knowledge when it comes to fruit trees, explaining all about the fungus in the soil, the comfrey surrounding the trees (which is a nitrogen fixer!?) and the different types of apples. Very interesting!

---

Way to grow!

The Friends of Mayow Park help to maintain the park and they don't often have big teams like GoodGym, so even in the 45 minutes we were there, we made a big difference to 6 trees and Alona was very grateful for our help. Hopefully we'll be back!

Nice one team! 💪