If I had a favourite number, it would be 13, which is the number of fantastic GoodGymers we had at our session last night.

We kicked off in the Bridge House, named ourselves and shared favourite beverages for a warm day and promptly hit the road. Our task(s) were at the lovely Betts Park,

🎨 Bringing back some life to a few old raised beds

🌱 Weeding between the cracks in the play area and

✂️ Trimming back a few overgrown branches.

We met Alan from the Friends of Betts Park who gave us a quick history lesson on the Croydon Canal (the last stretch of canal in south London 🥲) and grabbed all our necessary tools.

Team DIY (aka Sandra and Millie) screwed a couple of dislodged planks back onto one of the raised beds. Team Paint (aka Hannah, Fiona, Shauna, Meg, Angela and Egle) were turning the beds a deep shade of green, Team Trim (aka me and Harry) cut back a few branches overhanging the paths before helping out Team Weed (aka Cat, Catherine and Alex) with eeking out a load of grass and weeds that had been growing between the tarmac in the play area. And somewhere in there, we managed to cart over a load of soil (fresh from Crystal Palace Museum's water tower!) and empty it into the beds.

The play area looks so much neater now ("Are you guys making the park look nicer? Do you get paid for that?", said the teenager), the paths are a bit safer, and the raised beds are finally ready to have some herbs and veg growing in them again!

Amazing work team. And a few km and plenty of leg exercises to boot. 👌

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.

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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!

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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! 💪

11 massive legends came out this Monday evening for a task at the History-tastic Crystal Palace Museum Water Tower. 💦🔥

We met at the Bridge House and it was lovely to have 4 fresh faces with us (Nice one for joining Sandra, Millie, Michelle & Harry 👍👏🤝🙌) . We discussed our favourite juices (which inspired some post-session-pub beverages...) and set off up the hill.

John was there to meet us with a large selection of tools and his mass of knowledge. We split into different sections of the tower and began making a production line which looked something like this:

🌱🪨➡️

🍂

🛒↔️

💩

🪣

After smashing through 30 minutes of scraping, yanking, shaking and bagging, we'd made another serious dent in the excavation. John then told us all about the history of the tower, why the top was knocked off and also a hint about the plans to turn it into an accessible place for the public to visit.

We jogged back down the hill and did some stretches to finish.

Amazing job team ✊