9 runners met on a sunny night to run 4km whilst wheeling trees around Peckham.

With the sun shining, transport only slightly delayed and some willing hands, legs and backs, we ran a short distance to Peckham Multiplex to meet Asha, Creative Director for the inaugral Peckham Festival celebrating all things and people cultural in Peckham and around.

She had a load of trees in metal wheeled bins to be pushed about 1km from the Cinema to Copeland Park where the festival is taking place.

We split into teams of 3 with Asha as our front woman leading the way and making sure cars had spotted us and that we were still going to get under the bridges and powerlines with the super big trees.

Trees on wheels

It took some serious muscle pushing the bins particularly on some road that could do with attention. It was a task that took brains as well as brawn with some tight spaces to squeeze through.

Celebs for a night

I'm not sure the people of Peckham have witnessed wheelie trees before so we were snapped and have no doubt been posted to social media sites.

We did the effort twice, moving all the trees that weren't being used as bicycle racks. 6 trees in place two weeks before the festival is pretty good going and the festival team were pretty pleased with our efforts and very grateful for the help. We beat their pb!

Special thanks to Asha who was wearing jeans and carrying a handbag but still jogged with us on our way back for round two.

Not content with moving the earth, we went for a quick session on the Rye involving pairs, running round a Willow Tree and various core exercises to help speed.

We finished up sweaty and pleased with a bit of a different task complete and an all over workout.

Special thanks to Will's brain for this weeks pun title.

26 runners ran between 5k and 3k to paint for Kentish Town Tenants Association and help at Skip Garden

A thick layer of cloud hung over Camden this Wednesday evening, June certainly wasn't bringing us summer and it wasn't bringing us Paul 'PB' Bown either!

We did have two new faces - welcome to Sarah and Lewis and for the second week in a row we had some GG Bristol visitors in the shape of the infamous Paul 'PB Sr.' Becker and Dave Guest! Great to have you all in Camden :)

With Paul off sick (get well soon!) myself and Polly took charge and we split into Team 'PA' and Team 'UL'...PAUL...geddit?! With the briefing done and a great warm up from Polly off we went. Here's what the teams got up to:

• Team PA led by Pritesh

Team PA headed up to Kentish Town to help the tenants association with the upkeep of the estate. With Chris ably leading the way we got there with plenty of time to continue our painting efforts.

It's not creosote!

We met Vaughan, donned our gloves, split into teams and got straight into the painting. Richard and Steve bumped into a local resident while painting and filled him in on what we were up to - he thought GoodGym was an excellent idea and asked if he could take a photo for his social media streams and we duly obliged - check the pic here.

Everyone did an excellent job - we got the smaller fences done before a few started on the larger fence and before we knew it it was time to head off. We said our goodbyes to Vaughan and then Chris led us on an alternate route. This led us to the canal where we bumped into some of Team UL. We cheered them on and then completed our run back to Somers Town.

• Team UL led by Polly

Team UL went off to Skip Garden to move logs, a water butt and turn the Ridan composter.

Four runners took off to the canal with trolleys to collect chopped wood which will be used to make a bug hotel. Steve led on this having previously done this task - thanks Mr C!

Bug Hotel

The remaining six helped to relocate a water butt, so it can collect rain water from the roof of a new shelter. Paul “chief gnome”, told us rain water is best for plants because of its lower pH value versus mains water. Next, the team then got to work churning the contents of the Ridan composter with a particularly enthusiastic Will managing to get most of the compost down himself...well done Will, no harm done!

Paul said he was always surprised how much we get done on our visits and was very chuffed with the work.

Next we took to the canal to run 3k & 5k and coo over the goslings.

With everyone back we had a stretch and a few of us headed for a well-deserved drink and some sweet potato fries!

Thanks for all your help in supporting us with Paul away and don't forget to sign up for next week here and tell all your friends about #volunteersweek and the starter session on Sunday!

PSB & PM out!

28 GoodGymers ran 5km, did some fitness drills and shifted 3 tons of soil!

In the news this week we talked about GG monthly drinks next Thursday and had a Race Chat focus with New Forest 10 Miler, Regents Park 10km (August Edition) and Cardiff Half Marathon in October. Well done GG Camden taskforce for leading on these races!

Mr. Horse himself Tom Benson has written the run report this week:

Last night we returned to an old Camden GoodGym stomping ground. My major dilemma before the run was whether to take a jacket or not as the conditions on the ride up were keeping their cards close to their chest, would it be too cold, rainy, I won’t lie I just couldn’t tell. However I took the solid advice of Megan and I’m pleased I ditched the jacket as we had quite a work out.

Major dilemma

Aside from my clothing dilemma, the task in hand was returning after a long absence to James Wiggs GP practice, where we were tasked with the following; we had three one ton bags of soil that needed shifting, small tree roots needed pulling up and a strange grass like weed that had appeared to have embedded in the soil needed putting back in its place (basically needed pulling out). In short we were clearing a space in their garden as they wanted to transform the current space into a sensory garden for the patients to come and use, lovely stuff.

Everybody's shovelling!

Melissa, from Free Space Gallery was there to give us a warm welcome and armed us with spades, forks, gloves and wheelbarrows to get the job done. As there were quite a few bodies we split into two groups one going off with Paul to do some drills while the others got on with the task. In true GoodGym style there was no messing about and straight down to business, and once both teams had completed the drills we still had some soil to shift.

Hats off to newcomers Bernard and Andre who were on shovelling soil duty and kept the soil coming to ensure we got it all shifted, well done everybody. Just before we completed the one and half mile run home, Melissa showed us a space that 2 years ago GoodGym Camden came for a task which we dug up and made ready for planting. In the two years that followed the foundations we laid have allowed the space to turn into a lovely garden for the Practice.

Liv Rowe's Yoga Stretch of the week!

On our return Liv gave us another cracking set of Yoga stretches to help us warm down. Afterwards a gaggle of us found time to sink a jar or two in the local boozer and talk about many things including combining normal potato chips with sweet potato fries for the ultimate pack of frozen chips - McCain's Sweet and Plain* (it’s like a chip version of sweet and salted popcorn, it’s a winner I tell you…..happy trays). *Other frozen potato providers are available

Next week we are painting fences for Kentish Town Tenants Association and helping Skip Garden with various tasks, sign up here!

PB out.

A crew of 12 ran an amazing 7.5km in 40 minutes up to Surrey Docks Farm to help sort out some overgrown flowerbeds.

Creative license over distance was unintentional but panned out well as everyone absolutely nailed it!

The last few weeks have been all about weeding and people being able to finally plant things that won't get frosted to death. This week was no different. Aside from all of the animals, the epic run and the delicious sunshine. And did I mention the babycham bucket?

Our group assembled and welcomed Amy along for the first time. Gorgeous sunshine in Peckham meant that we were bobbing and weaving our way up Rye Lane a little but made it clear in no time. As Beth mentioned, it felt like a mini tour of some other tasks at Peckham Platform and Galleywall Nature Reserve but onwards we went. All the way passed Surrey Quays Station and towards proper docklands areas.

We were welcomed to Surrey Docks Farm by Gemma who promptly got us water as it was such a warm and lovely night. She showed us some of the animals there, a calf who was born in October, pregnant Esther the pig and some very, very cute lambs. After we'd gotten over the sight, we set to work clearing some overgrown flowerbeds that are to be raised and used for community allotments. This is as well as making the unused areas less of a buggy runway and more engaging and nice to look at.

The farm is used as a learning experience for children and to engage the local community. It's a welcome sight in the shadows of Canary Wharf and the hustle of the city.

We cleared mint, potatoes and lots of nettles as well as some hefty rocks and made progress, as ever, in no time. Well before we wanted it to be, time was up and we got a quick feed in with the pigs and the calf.

Sun setting, it was time to race down Rotherhide New Road for some to run the full distance and others, taking a leaf out of GoodGym Westminster, to catch the overground back to Peckham.

Luckily, we made it back at not too dissimilar times ready to stretch off and discuss food.

For the second ever GoodGym Southwark social, we were meant to be off to Forzawin but due to our massive and wonderful group, we ended up on a table hunt and found just the thing at John the Unicorn. Beth and Michael celebrated by being the first people to ever order the Babycham bucket. Despite the suggestion, I'm not sure babycham will become a 'thing' for us to have everytime but it's always good to have a throw back. Menu aside: Salted shortbread is not the one

Well done runners. That was a lovely evening well spent and excellent effort on the distance covered.

3.5km for a sunset bonfire, weeding and wood cracking.

We welcomed a couple more new faces to the GG Southwark fold tonight and some old faces that we'd missed. After a quick GG intro, we set off up the familiar hill of Chadwick Road to Grove Park Allotments and to meet Lizzie. She already had a good fire going and lots of different tasks for us to get stuck into.

The optional task of bursting through the bonfire smoke in a Stars in their eyes manner may have occurred more than once.

(Watch this space for a karaoke social!) We were weeding the paths to widen them for wheelchair access, watering plants and clearing dead wood either into the fire or to dry for one of the allotment users wood burner. Sorting the thorny bits from the non-thorny bits was a bit haphazard but we survived relatively unscathed.

Once we'd finished up, it was another skipping warm up special as we made our way to Warwick Park for some glute work to finish off the session.

Hopping, clam walks and frog leaps were the order of the evening. This, in hindsight, was a little mean given two of our group had spent the previous days travelling back to the UK after epic trips. Nonetheless, the drills were finished with finesse and we ambled back in the final light of the day. Lovely.