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!

One lovely morning and one wonderful group - 6.5 miles ticked off together in the sun :)

4 intrepid Good Gymmers arrived super early at the farm ahead of the Spring Fair. Gemma, farm manager, set us to work on an assortment of tasks including gazebo assembly, outdoor furniture feng shui and plant identification. The latter was surprisingly complicated and I’m sure we all discovered new varieties of tomatoes! It was another great session at the farm and we look forward to returning to our usual Sunday slot in 2 weeks.

It was time for one of our regular trips to The Albany! Thanks to Paul for leading the run as I got the bus to as close to the task as possible. It turned out to be perfect timing and we all arrived at The Albany within a minute of each other!

The task for this evening was the usual litter picking as the winds blows in the litter from the surrounding streets and then also a bit of weeding between the paving stones.

The unusual task for the evening was if we saw a snail then we needed to pick it up and put it in a bucket and then the snails would be relocated away from the vegetable plants.

We had a couple of marathons to celebrate so we headed for a post group run social to refuel and catch up with friends!

On Easter Saturday we joined Annie to do some weeding at the Hervey Road garden.

We set to work, digging up the weeds on the long border and getting yes sir, yes sir, 3 bags full. We discussed Laura's upcoming trip to Mali and her rather grown up job out there - we will miss you Laura and look forward to hearing about it on your forays back to London! And Arthur interjected very regularly that he didn't want to weed anymore and wanted to go to the playground, poor little thing.

After a decent job on the long border we headed to the wildflower garden and witnessed Marta and Richard's magnificent dead hedging coming into its own. Here Annie patiently showed us what were plants and what were weeds and we got to work filling at least another 3 bags full. The conversation remained genial but little did we know, the morning was about to take a sinister turn.

It happened just as we were collecting our belongings and getting ready to go. Cat pulled a present out of her bag for Arthur. A little white chocolate chick. Awww sweet, "what a treat". And amazingly it wasn't at all melted. The first thing that happened was, inexplicably panicking that it would suddenly melt in my hands, I said "let's dig in" and promptly pulled it's head off. It's baffling really - as if I don't experience on a daily basis the things a 3 year old finds distressing 🥺 The wailing started. Quiet at first and then a crescendo to the dreaded high pitched banshee shriek. Every parent's nightmare and at which point I saved the day by stuffing a bit of the head into his mouth and he realised the decapitated bird was in fact, very yummy. More was consumed and we were all revelling in this moment of tranquility and sweetness when Cat piped up, "does it taste like chicken?" 🤯

Witty and sadistic in equal measure. Certainly disarming - in fact I forgot to get a group photo, so thrown was I by this turn of events.

A happy ending though. All the chocolate remained in his tummy even after the turns on the roundabout and we all trundled off to the rest of our weekends. Good job team!

We've got woodchipping at St Richard's on Tuesday and we're back at Prince Philip on Wednesday - hope to see you there.

Until next time!