Ultimately, it was two Teams on either end of the Church grounds making a small difference. One mission was to clean up the war memorial and the other, involved two sections where we had to lift up some of the turf a few inches off the ground.

Thanks to the tools we had available. This included a post basher, a tape measure, a string for the border, some wooden posts and a small shovel. It was pretty evident that the surrounding lawn around the Church was steeped in history so we took note of that from the beginning. The two areas in question was pretty close to a previous trench that Goodgym previously got involved back in 2024, where we also spotted the sow that reaped its rewards with full flower.

We took a section of the lawn at the back of the church (or depending which way you look at it) and started digging. We found no artifacts, perhaps some dust from previous stone diminished.

Shortly afterwards, we completed our mission. The vicar invited us in for some refreshments afterwards. It's pretty amazing when a team comes together!

A busy evening by the river this evening as the group set off along the sunny path past pubs, cyclists and picnic-eaters, as well as dancing midges, mozzies and mayflies as the path opened up towards Petersham.

Arriving at the Sea Scouts, Scout leader Russell had already put Chris and Mazin to work mixing concrete and wheelbarrowing it across the field where the scout group were adding to the adventure practising archery! The rest of us go stuck straight in too with active tasks happening everywhere: shovelling the fresh concrete into position for the new firepit, measuring up, pumping up the dinghy, moving bags of soil around, moving logs about on the trolley and clearing invasive balsam plants.

An all-round perfect example of a GoodGym task, keeping us all fit by doing good! We are back there on Saturday morning to help further, sign up to join the fun!

Saturday looked to be the best of the long weekend days weather-wise and the 5 GGers gathering at ETNA (the East Twickenham Neighbourhood Association) for the second leaflet drop of the week were rewarded with warm sunshine.

Our task was to finish off distributing a stack of leaflets advertising the Volunteer Fair at the RHACC on Wednesday 21st May, added to which were a stack of cards promoting ETNA’s 40th Anniversary event on Sunday 18th May.

We welcomed back Maz who joined for his first GG task on Monday and bizarrely wanted to do more leafleting. Our route took us around the streets behind ETNA before cross Richmond Road and finishing up on the streets off Crown Road, where we rewarded ourselves with a coffee after dropping the last leaflets.

Details of the CVS volunteer fair at RHACC can be found here: https://www.rhacc.ac.uk/events/volunteerfair And ETNA’s 40th Anniversary event is on their page here: https://etnacentre.org/etna-events/

A beautiful early summer evening to keep fit by doing good. We started at the Tap with a warm welcome to Mazin for the first time, and a lot of celebratory chat after Lucy completed the London Marathon yesterday 😍

Chatting away, we headed to Richmond CVS to collect this evening's leaflets before dividing up to cover the roads on the way up to Kew. Lovely doorways, demon letterboxes and evening sun kept us company as the wedge of leaflets receeded until it was time for us to call it a night and head off in our own directions!