4 superstar GoodGymmers met Ed (GP Food Co-op lead) outside the impressive West Norwood Leisure Centre. He fitted us with 4 shovels and 2 wheelbarrows and set us to work, filling up the wheelbarrows with soil from where they got delivered, then carting the soil up the hill and into the 8 raised beds built alongside the outside of the Gym. In 1 hour we managed to empty 2 of the 1 Ton sacks of soil, and 2 more raised beds are ticked off the list! A few more sessions and we'll have filled all 8 raised beds, hopefully in time for the garden's official opening early next week! Go GoodGym!!!!

It was an evening marked by miscommunications and yet still lovely to see and laugh with fellow GoodGymer, thats the beauty of the community.

AA Yianny made the run portion of tonight's session alone as others made their way by bike or walking from their various start points. We were there nice and early and in good numbers having put the word out that we needed bodies given the size of the task ahead.

Sadly our task partner had got their dates muddled and was unable to be there to meet us! The challenge therefore was that we didn't have the tools required to shift 10 one tonne bags of soil and compost into the 8 massive planters that had just been delivered to the site.

Never mind - the Lambeth GG spirit is that we will find a way to good and have a laugh doing it - so we decided (by mutiny...) to go off plan in order to meet the criteria we had been set. This meant spinning and moving one of the giant planters away from the gym windows. While the gym goers were building muscle indoors, we were working our posterior chain outside and enjoying it far more!

And so that was it, a planter successfully spun, moved and levelled and then we had to head off as we couldn't move any soil.

There is another session on Thursday to continue the work so hopefully lots of people will sign up and otherwise we will see you next week!

Rickard Close Atwater Close Roycroft Close

I'll keep it brief this week as we had an odd set of circumstances bring us together to meet at the top of Tulse Hill.

To get things started there was a huge incident on the South Circular with police closing off the entire section at the bottom of Tulse Hill and AA was stuck on the other side of it unable to move forward or back. Luckily two things aligned: 1) New Task Force member and now qualified Run Leader Joao was attending tonight 2) I always keep a big jacket in the car (more on this in a sec)

Decision made I needed to park up and grab the flyers for tonight and get a very short distance up the road to the task. Jo meanwhile would meet Vicky at Papa's and run up while our walkers Marie-Noelle and Paul would meet us there directly as did Lasso.

The squad was ready and we did our intros and favourite holiday destinations (Tierra de Fuego, Machu Picchu, CYPRUS! Maldives, Swansea....) and set off into the estates around St Martin's to deliver GROAD's flyers.

We didn't have fobs so we were reliant on residents to let us in and at one point half the team ended up appearing in music video (all eyes on Tik Tok) but we got as much done as we could before everyone headed off in their own direction.

Thanks all, crisis averted and task complete - go GG Lambeth team!

It's a chilly Tuesday and we are back out there in the community to do a GG favourite - hard manual labour / shifting soil.

As ever first things first, we welcomed another new volunteer to the group - welcome Vicky it was great to have you with us! Lass it was good to have you back after a little while away too.

This evening's category was fun for all the family and which was your favourite character from a book or tv show/film when you were young(er), we had some great ones like Postman Pat, Sonic the Hedgehog, He-Man but our winner was Paul who joined us walking at the task with Robin Hood (the first one from the British series!)

We set off early as it was a small group and made good time so when we arrived James and his Milk Float hadn't yet got to the property where we were collecting the soil so there was only one thing for it.... a bit of fitness work although this was mainly to keep the cold at bay and prepare us for the physical work ahead. As we rounded out our set of squats, lunges and wall press ups so James rounded the corner in the float and the task could begin.

The mission tonight was a simple one, we were faced by two full 1 tonne bags of topsoil plus another quarter bag so my basic maths makes that approx ...... umm ... well a lot of kilos of soil, which needed to be shovelled into 25kg bags and carried from the garden round the side of the house and up to the milk float parked outside.

A production line was set up with some people shovelling, some holding bags then running them up and then people swapped around. Twenty minutes in and we had completely filled the float with a layer of bags but James confirmed the all electric plough horse on wheels could take at least 3 tonnes so we were safe to continue filling away.

Well done to Clare for getting stuck in and turning her running jacket from a light colour to deep brown carrying those soil bags and of course Joao who was lifting 100s of kilos on his own as he usually does.

The clock hit 8:10pm and we were done for the evening with too many to count now in the float and a serious dent in the two full bags as well as clearing the smaller bag - definitely more than a tonne done!

Time for a quick selfie before setting off home and thanks to Sam who pointed out the Phoenix bub which has an excellent 2 for £12 cocktail offer EVERYday, definitely a potential GG social venue then!

Great work everyone, thanks to James for getting us down and we look forward to helping out Father Nature in future. See you next week.