A beautiful September morning saw 8 of us head back to a local social care charity to ‘finish what we started’ after our Dirty weekend in Southsea in July. Three of us headed from Parkrun via the local beach café to meet up with the rest of the group outside. We were all looking forward to this one as it was a painting task (which we love).

A great welcome back to Carolyn who arrived with her painting cap on and gloves at the ready. Also a fantastic well done to Mel who has reached 100 good deeds and gets her wings. We look forward to seeing you with those on our next group run.

Our task today involved painting the wall, painting the fence and building two new storage units. Prior to starting we realised that we needed some more screwdrivers and tools for the job and Jo headed back home (not far away) to collect some extra screwdrivers. We were kindly offered, teas, coffees and also they had made a delicious cake for us. We’ll definitely be heading back there if there is anymore work to be done.

The Flat Pack

Angela and Maxine took on the challenge of the storage units, these were two large plastic units that would house some of the wheelie bins stored in the garden. This was tough job as it involved screwing it together without any pre drilled holes whilst also keeping the structure of the unit tight. Angela sustained a small graze to her knuckles when screwing some of the unit together and will now be known as Angela ‘Knuckles’ Chick. Maxine had a few close calls when clicking the parts together to make sure her hands weren’t caught.

The Masonry ‘paint’ position

Katie, Judy and Sarah tackled the painting of the side wall in the garden. This was originally where the smoking shelter was which we dismantled in July and the wall needed a refresh of paint before the storage units could be placed there. After removing an old wall hanging and the flower holders they cleaned the wall then grabbed their paint brushes and did a brilliant job.

The De-fence

Carolyn, Mel and Jo took on the more messier of the tasks which was the painting of the fence and we did manage to get most of the paint on the fence panels. Mel did a great job of getting a large amount of paint on herself (good job the 100 t-shirt will be arriving soon) and Jo did a great job of arriving with less freckles on her arm than when she left (thanks to the paint).

One the walls and fence were painted, Carolyn, Judy and Mel cleaned the garden and moved some of the furniture around and the rest of us helped to build the remaining unit. We all went over the time of the task but as we wanted to finish everything and didn’t have to rush off we made sure it was all done before we left.

Seeing the garden transformed after the painting was amazing it’s a great task when we can really see the difference that Goodgym makes to our communities.

After the hottest week so far this summer, the weather returned to normal this morning where the temperature dropped and it was raining. This didn’t damper the spirits of 12 Goodgymer’s who headed first to Southsea Parkrun to celebrate Katie’s 100th run. The rain certainly didn’t affect the runners and 4 celebrated new 5k pbs. Well done to Angela, Judy, Maura and Vicki . Great running all.

As our community mission today was walkable from parkrun it gave us the opportunity and time to have a celebratory ice cream from the pier and some of Angela’s cinnamon bread and Tracey’s cakes. I mean its breakfast right?

Our task today was to help a social care charity who want to create a sensory garden for their residents. Before this can be done they needed help to remove an old flowerbed, a smoking shelter and do some painting. Once arriving and being offered hot drinks we tackled the flowerbed removal and shelter first as it was still raining.

Demolition Men

Tony and John started with the dismantling of the old smoking shelter which was fastened very well to the wall and ground. They first started to be methodical to remove the holding screws and then remove the parts but it turned out to be more stubborn that anticipated and they resorted to sheer brute force to remove the roof and then supports.

Getting diggy with it

The rest of us tackled the flowerbed, we removed any plants that could be saved on the advice from our resident gardener Judy and placed them into any spare flowerpots they had. Angela, Katie, Maura, Jo, Sarah & Vicki started to remove the rotten sleepers that held the structure together and put them outside for collection later. The earth that was in the flowerbed was very compact so it took a number of us to take turns with spades to break the earth down so that it could be carried to the front in bags and emptied out into a larger bag. Sam, Rachel and Tracey did a great job moving the dirt from the back garden to the front. Tony and John helped us with the final part of the flowerbed removal by carrying large amounts of soil to the front and we started to clear up the area where the flowerbed was.

Seeing the difference it made once the flowerbed had been removed was amazing, we couldn’t believe how much soil was actually in there. We unfortunately ran out of time to do any painting but we’ll arrange another community mission to finish that off and also assist with putting up some storage units.

A very dirty and enjoyable day was had by all