It’s was time to 🎵Step in to Christmas🎵 at the BHF.

Upon arrival Christmas was in full swing with garlands going up and Christmas stock piling out of the lifts.

After refuelling on Pizza Luke and Jonathan tackled fairy lights, a somewhat fiddly task but a sparkly one, whilst Levita became Santa - can you spot her?

Meanwhile Jana found display places for fancy ball balls, Martel and Levita - no longer Santa hung the garlands over the arch and Tom, Claire, Ellie, Louise and Sabir displayed everything on the shelves from Xmas stockings to socks, Santas, fir trees and a catus!!

In no time we had the shelves full of Christmas treats to fill Santa’s sleigh.

This morning Saber and myself met Danni and a few other volunteers to get on with the tasks that needed to be done. We set to work pulling up the pumpkins plants, weeds. Then chopped down the budelia all to a similar height and bagged this all up ready for the council to take away. Some of the cut down budelia also went on the dead hedge to replish it. With lots accomplished and a chat about goodgym, hopefully a new recruit we left satisfied with our mornings work.

We headed over to Full Cycle for our group session tonight, where a big list of jobs was waiting for us on the whiteboard.

Spllitting into pairs we tacklrd a variety of tasks: - Helping with recycling cardboard, old tyres, inner tubes, and scrap metal. - Reorganising bikes and sorting numerous bike parts, including stems, handlebars, and pedals.

As we reached the bottom of the list we left behind plenty of tidy space where chaos once reigned. Then finished up with taking a moment to celebrate an amazing achievement - Rachel completing 500 good deeds! What an inspiration - well done!

On a bright Autumn morning we met at the Goodgym flowerbed to prepare it for winter. The first job was to find the flowerbed underneath all the leaves. Sabir got to work with the rake followed by Mark and created a massive pile of leaves whilst Emily, Sahil and Julie picked the leaves out of all the tricky places in between the plants. Once Claire arrived back from her trip up the gardens for rubbish bags we will filled them with the leaves and Julie was queen of the leaf castle as we tried to squash them into the bags.

It was then time to plant the rest of the bulbs that Claire had donated from her garden. It was tricky to find a spot without any bulbs already so it should look pretty in the Spring.

We left the flowerbed full of Autuumn colour with the Aster and Salvias still in full bloom and will return next year in the Spring. Welcome to Sahil on your first mission and we hope to see you again soon.

It was a busy evening as we returned to the Malden Centre to help KVA's Surplus to Supper Hub.

There was a full van of deliveries to be unpacked and sorted, from fresh foods to clothes, mugs and even desk fans and a bird cage.

Tom, Marcos, Luke and Sabir quickly helped move crates out of the refrigeration unit so it could be cleaned, followed by some expert pressure washing from Dave and Jonathan. There was a huge amount of moving and sorting of the goods, handled swiftly by Claire, Rachel and Louise.

After cramming into the store cupboard for another typically unconventional KVA photo, we GoodGymers even got a cool water bottle to take home.

Another great task, full of variety and a fun atmosphere.

After running walking and cycling our way to Refugee Action we met Heidi with a long list of tasks that some may have considered impossible but not GoodGym.

The craft materials were moved for future sorting to free up space on the racking for children’s clothes and shoes which were sorted out by Claire, Levita and Susannah.

It was a case of many hands make light work as we all lifted a suite of desks and turned them 90 degrees to make more space for moving over the ladies wear racking.

Marcos, Sabir, Luke, Dave and Anna got stuck in moving the ladies wear department before a brave team headed to the depths of the building armed with torches to visit the recycling bins. Dave also fixed a safe to a wall with his trusty drill.

After a quick tidy of menswear and moving the toiletries the list of tasks was complete and it was mission accomplished.

Yesterday, our big-hearted GoodGymers came together at Elm Road Playground with one clear goal: to make the space safer and more welcoming for little ones to play. Armed with determination, gardening tools, and plenty of head torches, we rolled up our sleeves and got to work, clearing dry autumn leaves and digging out stubborn weeds rooted deep in the soil. Every minute was powered by our shared love for the community and a strong desire to give back. It was a chilled, productive evening, filled with hearty conversations, teamwork, and good vibes. We combined fitness, friendship, and social action, proving once again that doing good really does feel good.

Last night a large group of GoodGymers made their way to Canbury Gardens for some autumnal chores. At the Canbury Community Garden, Susan and Marie-Noëlle split the team in three groups. Dave, Lordi, Anna, Kento moved the tyre towers around & re-filled them with fresh compost. A second group - Luke, Saber, Marcos - dug and turned the compost in the two large compost heap areas whilst a third group - MN & Tom - collected water from the river to refill the garden's water containers. We finished our mission with some light pruning and praking of the vegetable beds.

Meanwhile over at the GoodGym flowerbed Louise, Claire and Levita filled a massive sack with all the leaves that were covering the flowerbed and hiding some plants. Saber and Anna then joined us and helped Levita collect water from the river to water the plants and keep them going until it rains. We ended the session planting a few spring bulbs. Join us in our next session at the flowerbed to plant the rest and create a colourful Spring display.

Kingston River Culture festival needed some help with setting up some gazebos, stalls and exhibition stands. So I met Levita and Saber there at Canbury Gardens and we managed to put 8-9 gazebos up together in our session time.

None of knew how to set up a gazebo so we needed to look it up by watching a short Youtube video which helped! We also needed to watch another video on how to close a broken gazebo which took us longer than to open and set it up.. However, when we needed to set up a replacement, we did it very swiftly within 10 minutes (a record!)

We also had 1-2 people helping us in some parts but we mostly did it all.

Organiser was pleased and thanked for our help!