This Tuesday, 10+ of the GoodGym Brighton crew ran, cycled and walked over to Lavender House for a full perimeter clear-up. Headtorches on, we weeded, detangled and plucked our way through the edges of the building, filling up multiple wheelbarrows for compost and giving the outside a noteworthy November glow-up.

Jane had a moment of magic finding a red admiral butterfly and having it stay still on her hand long enough for a photo and a video. A flash of summer in a little bit of a November drizzle!

Also on this week's GoodGym Brighton’s wildlife watch: an honourable shout out to the many ‘bench bugs’ we had to yank coats and jackets away from, and a healthy, stocked-for-winter looking worm. Christophe’s ‘bright’ idea to light our group photo with headtorches gave us a more sinister, ghostly energy than our normal group shots, but it’s not been too long since Halloween so I think we got away with it.

Weeds tackled and all equipment returned, a few of us ran over the road to the Sidewinder for some burritos and much-needed trail run chat.

Today we combined our October parkrun meet up at the Bevendean Downs parkrun with a community mission helping The Bevy pub’s gardener Dave with some autumnal gardening.

It’s that time of the year GoodGym is often called to help planting bulbs. We helped Dave to clear the big planters to be ready for some bulb-ACTION to spread colours and a little joy next spring in the outdoor lounge of the pub.

We love parkruns! Today was a lovely day for our 5K parkrun-ing up there, with Philippa & Rosie as time keepers and 10+ participating GoodGymers. It possibly goes without saying, but parkrun really isn’t about running at all - despite it’s name - it’s really about community cohesion, wellbeing and the coming together of the community. Pretty much like Good-Gym!