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. 🙌

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Nice job everyone! 🎄

We had the first of our bulb planting tasks tonight, with nine volunteers making their way to Alexandra Recreation Ground to plant some tulips while the squirrels were asleep. The task almost didn't happen as our task owner Millie wasn't well (get well soon!) but Mark saved the evening by cycling to pick up the keys to the tool shed on his night off. What a legend!

Once we'd got the shed open, we had fun trying to work out which bulbs were tulips. Luckily our resident horticulturalist Rosie was on hand to guide us and give us tips on optimal bulb planting.

Our next challenge was breaking into the soil: as we've had very little rain over the last few weeks, the ground was rock hard, which definitely put the Gym in GoodGym. After a bit of trial and error, though, we perfected our hole digging technique (the spade as a pogo stick approach worked best) and in less than half an hour we had planted all our bulbs. Big shout out to Michelle who was taking part in her first task - I appreciate that digging holes in the dark is a pretty unconventional way to spend a Monday night (and definitely attracted some bemused looks from dog walkers...) so well done for getting stuck in!

After filling in our holes and covering them with leaves to confuse the squirrels, we ran back to the Bridge House for stretches. Excellent work team!

This week's group run was in honour of This Girl Can's "Let's Lift the Curfew" campaign 🏃‍♀️, highlighting the inequality that women face as the long nights set in 🌃 when it comes to exercising and travelling in public places. It was great to see lots of women at the session and a couple of new and recent faces such as Annie!

We met at the Bridge House, introducing ourselves and answering this week's icebreaker question - what's your favourite journey in the dark? We had some great answers - Cat blew us away with her story and photos of flying through the Northern Lights - amazing! 😮

It was a long 3km run to the Dorset Road Allotments so we set off along the main road before busting the curfew by heading through Penge Recreation Ground, then across Penge towards Elmers End and the allotments.

This was Part 5 of our ongoing project to help break down an old chicken coop that's long been condemned, with the space planned to be added to the allotments so the local community can benefit. There were huge brambles to be cut, wire netting to be removed and weeds galore. With a large number of tools on hand there was something for everyone to do 😀

Clare and I helped removed the green waste in wheelbarrows while the rest of the team worked through to the back of the coop, scything away at the bramble jungle. With many hands we made a lot of progress in just 30 minutes 🏆

Our time up, it was back on the 3km jog to Bridge House. Huge well done to everyone who joined - it was so nice to hear comments like "I didn't know I could run this far!" and just goes to show the motivational power of social running 👊

Keep lifting the curfew by banding together to make the world safer at night 🙏

P.S. Men, GoodGym offer a short, online training slideshow to help you do your bit - find it here.

It had rained on and off all day Monday, so we thought we might be in for a wet one as we headed over to the Dorset Road Allotments near Elmers End to dismantle the old and very overgrown chicken coop there 🐔 Thankfully, not so!

We met at the Bridge House and, being on theme, this week's question was "How do you like your eggs?". A mix of fried, scrambled and boiled (with soldiers!) 🍳

This week's run was a longer 3km 🏃, but the team were up to the challenge, heading through Penge towards Birkbeck and into Elmers End via some of the long straight back roads in west Beckenham. We arrived to meet other GoodGymers and our hosts, whose incredible lights enabled us to find our way over to the coop area.

Paul, Mark, Molly, James and Hannah got stuck into assertive weeding and dismantling 🔨 inside the structure, while David and I hovered at the edge knocking off the brambles that were overhanging the wire net overhead and the side. Clare and Cat efficiently hoovered up the mess that everyone else was creating and wheelbarrowed it elsewhere, keeping their heart rates up from the run.

It didn't feel like 30 minutes went by ⏲️, but we got a lot of work done. There's still much more to do, so keep a look out for our next visit as we continue our work to make this space ready for something brand new 😎

Awesome work, everyone! 🎉