Fantastic effort for last week's Parkini with people finding the most amusing of boxes around on their run/walk/cycle! Congratulation to Dharmesh on winning, with Beth coming in very close second!

Another tough week for spotting and selfieing. Still yet again GG Redbridge made the best of it making the rules up as we went along.

Nobody panicked at the lack of dogs although Jenny did have a cow at one point 🐮 As Linda and Julia were lucky enough to spot some gorgeous Newfoundlands Jenny declared them joint winners with a special mention to Sharon putting her diary to good pawpose and Liz for her outstanding creativity. Peter was testing out his new bike so only managed one photo due to sensibly keeping both hands on the handle bars-Auntie Linda approves of this attitude to safety. Kristian and Beth submitted photos taken indoors and thats all good too. 😀

This weekend there has been a change from the Parkini as a few of us are committed to the food bank move with a pre-mission group run at 11 am in Valentines Park.

Well that was something else, as the clock ticked down to 7pm I won’t lie I was a little nervous however as soon as I pressed live (and it worked, this has not always happened in practice) we were off.

So after all the prep it was show time, Saturday night, after a whirlwind 2 months from thinking it up, it went live and I have to say what a fun experience it was.

Please note, Chris has done a super job of updating the website which features all the events, all the area videos and if you fancy watching the whole thing again, bingo it’s there.

Live Show

Events

Area videos

So in total 29 areas got involved sending in clips of their finest duvet making, tin stacking, shoe putting on, tin blowing, boat wafting, planking and jumping clips it was something else, we even had a virtual elimination 5km race, which if I don’t mind typing was extremely tense. I was bowled over by the level of entries, not only that but we also were sent loads of different area videos which feature a bit about what some of the GoodGym areas have been getting up to during these times. We even got the marching band back together to play the GoodGym Games Anthem.

All in all it was wonderful, from the commentators who provided such good commentary throughout to the participants who just got involved. I was delighted to see so many watched throughout and loved reading the comments, the aim for organising these types of things is to hopefully bring members of the community together as I think we have so many different and wonderful characters.

The overall winners of the two trophies up for grabs were GoodGym Lambeth taking the Kerry-Barnard Cup and GoodGym Haringey taking the Hunter-Sidhu Shield on the last event.

Not only did we have that going on, my inbox was full of delicious bakes and carefully crafted veg/fruit. I think the standard just keeps going up a notch through sourdough loafs to delicious cupcakes, however the winner this year in the public vote was Imogen with her winning baking creation "3 We're all having a good lime (cake)"

Craving it up on the veg side was a wonderful creation named "The Eye Test" curated by Andrea Lo. Both I’m sure we can agree were outstanding. Please see their winning creations on Here

Please note more photos from the entries will be added in the coming days.

I also do want to thank the GoodGym Games committee who have been wonderful to work with, I brought this idea to the table when the GoodGym in Oxford was postponed and together we made it into last nights show, they are deserves a massive cheer, with special mention to Mark Gilyead, who had edited more clips than I would like to say, thank you.

Thank you Aidan Padfield, Beth Hoskins, Graham Atkins, Mark Gilyead, Steph Turner and Will Dowsett. Massive cheers. Special mention also to GoodGym members John Gutteridge, Chris Howsen and Tim Wheatley for all your help putting this together also and to the wonderful GoodGym members who were the sounds for the night the comentators Steve Jenkins, Teresa Gebski, Tim Dwyer, Peter Gillibrand, James Kerry-Barnard, John Hunter, Catherine Speed and Ivo Gormley, just fantastic.

Here's a video for all the team: video

New rules for our "Parkini" means that different people are now choosing the selfie challenge. This weeks challenge was set by Liz who set the theme of Fantasy.

12 of us did not meet up and ran/walked to take selfies with things that were not there. Monsters, Fairy Tales, 🧚 Dreams, Magic, Super Heroes 🦸 Legends, Witches Familiars and aging 'pop' idols were all not seen but somehow conjured up 🧙🏽 and represented in our selfies.

Imagination has always featured in our Parkinis but I think we excelled ourselves this time, particulary James C this weeks winner and monster tamer extraordinaire!

Next weeks challenge is going to be chosen by Peter.

Saturday was a busy day for GG Redbridge. Three of us were involved in moving a local food bank and a fourth was drafted in to assist with an errand of mercy assisting a confused elderly dog walker find her way home. As if that was not enough 11 of us got involved in this weeks Parkini Walk/Run with Street Art selfie challenge.

We walked/ran far and near, sometimes out of the borough. Some great finds were to be had and where there was not much to be found ingenuity came to the fore. Fantastic efforts all round with Julia B pronounced the winner and a special mention to Beth.

Looking forward to next weeks challenge, Julia is "shaking things up" so let us see what fresh torture...oops...I mean adventure does she have in store for us next week 🤷🏼‍

Another fun weekend of searching for things we regularly go past and didn't know where there. This weeks challenge was Nautical which was a real challenge as none of us live near open water. Nonetheless relevant items were found in our bathrooms, back gardens, man hole covers, Strava Art, chip shops, travel agents, local parks, lakes and pet shops. Liz and Dharmesh even went the extra mile or should I say several miles to find more authentic items. With all this fantastic effort going on I am very honoured that our esteemed judge crowned me this weeks winner. Thank you Julia for another great challenge. looking forward to next weeks.

Well that was fun. 15 of us set off on our weekly "Parkini Run" we were each allocated a letter, asked to take selfies with something behind us starting with that letter and send the photos to Julia. We were provided with a grid showing a 5 and 10 letter word and as Julia released the photos we were advised which position on the grid the photos were to appear. Once we had the words there was an additional task to guess another 10 letter word linking those two words to a clue to next weeks challenge. Easy! Yeah...you would think so...!

It was interesting to see how the items in the photos could be interpreted to mean different letters e.g. the return of our old friend 🐴 💩 could be Dung, Manure, Pong or Excrement! There was then the issue of seemingly having too many consonants leading some of us to question if these words were even English.

As usual everyone gave it their all with some great entries. A few if us had our heads in Dictionaries, notepads and Wordy Websites to the point where our brains were scrambled into Alphabetti Spaghetti.

The correct answer was - Faces Everywhere = Pareidolia

Quite frankly Julia S use of that last word was just sesquipedalian 😁

Well done to Liz and Vicki for guessing correctly, ultimate first prize went to Liz. Julia S used selfies as a tie breaker and one of Liz's cried out to be a winner 😮.