An interesting change from the weekday office normality….

Three Goodgymmers and three local volunteers arrived at Dacres Wood Nature Reserve.

The task was to tackle the over grown pond weeds.

First thing, think PPE…. We all got kitted out in wadders and rubber gloves and made our way to the pond.

With forks and stabilising sticks we set about the task of clearing the weeds, and remaining our balance (I am please to report no one fell over).

Kat, Kat and Paul (Goodgym) along with John, John and Oscar (Local volunteers) made large inroads into clearing the reeds.

A pleasant two hours was spent talking about all things running, and local history with one of the Johns who has lived in the local area for over 50 years!

Two hours flew by, and after the tools were put away and we were hosed down everyone went on their separate ways to get some well deserved sustenance.

With a bit of determination, it will be possible to move Mr L’s spare bed for him to sleep downstairs but sadly the efforts of Cat and Linda were scuppered by bad luck on this mission today. First we found the bed frame was just slightly too wide to fit round the stair bannisters, no matter how we manoeuvred it. Then, after carrying it back to the upstairs bedroom and turning it upside down, we managed to free the metal sprung base from brackets on the wooden end-boards… only to hear the disappointing sound of one of the four legs snapping under the strain. Now the leg will need repairing before the bed can be reassembled for use. We moved the mattress and frame sections to the downstairs sitting room, and Mr L declared himself happy that at least the job was started!

We stayed indoors on fireworks night, so the only bangs we heard in our task were the shuttering up of other shops in The Glades Shopping Centre as we worked after hours to brighten up Greener and Cleaner's unit with some white painting.

Tamsin first asked us to coat a sign board that had its fair share of scuffing. We got out the roller and brushes and made it look a lot smarter! Other painting tasks were to touch up walls where adhesive tak had taken off bits of paint, and the doors and door frames, which had only had one coat of paint to begin with. Finally, we coated a trolley for the sign boards in white too.

Linda did a cracking job of painting the sign board, and Hannah coated the door, with Louise covering the sign trolley beautifully. In between some cutting in, I helped Tamsin raise some bunting :)

We'll be back at Green and Cleaner in a couple of weeks for Christmas decorating - would be great to see you there!

Some top teamwork tonight as we took on two tasks at St John’s The Evangelist (many other St John churches are available).

We met at the Bridge House as usual, chatted over our favourite forms of light, from the horizon’s blade of sunlight at dawn to candles that smell of lychee, it was a warming selection.

We jogged over to the church where they have a beautiful community garden, some wild patches and a hell of a lot of leaves. We met Sara who had prepared many rakes, shears and a couple of big bags so we could...

🍂 Rake up all the leaves

✂️ Trim down the weeds in the wild area

🪵 Add the sticks to the bonfire pile

💰 Bagging up everything so it can rot down into 'brown gold' (I watched a film about soil the other day 🧐)

40 minutes later and we were all done - a good deed for the book and some nice chat and exercise too.

Nice one team 🏆

Kelly, Mark and I met at the obelisk in Betts park for a spot of bulb planting on Saturday morning. And what a pleasant time we had!

We experimented with a few areas around the park - which we will monitor in Spring to see where is best for bulb growth!

Highlight for me was mark finding a strange carrot looking plant! If Anyone can identify id be interested to know what it is!

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.