Sunday saw the sun out and a welcome return for Good Gym to Crofton Park Railway Garden. It was also a special day as we welcomed Pavani for her first community mission. Welcome Pavani, we hope to see you for many more sessions.

The main task for the day was one of our favourites: applying coatings to something using a paintbrush. Rather than painting, this time it was priming a pallet, modified with holes for people’s heads to be stuck through, ahead of the pallet’s future decoration with animal heads. Julian kicked off the task but when Vic appeared dressed for painting it only seemed right to hand the task over. The other part of the session was general gardening, with a mix of weeding, dead-heading, watering and general tidying tasks requiring doing. Soon the garden was looking lovely and we had a chance to discuss with the volunteers which animals to decorate the pallet with, there being a distinct leaning towards owls, foxes and other nocturnal creatures.

This was a lovely task at a lovely location and we hope to be back there again soon.

There are two types of heavy sleeper. One, that this insomniac author dreams of being, inhabits the magical dreamscape of a good nights kip. The other is much more tangible and it is this type that brought Good Gym to Crofton Park Railway garden.

Today's task was simple; the volunteers had received a delivery of several new railway sleepers that will be used to build up the garden, but these were not currently in the right place and needed to be moved to the right place. One Good Gymer arrived and met the volunteers and after much huffing and puffing the sleepers were relocated into a storage area ready for deployment in future

The Grateful Dead were a band beloved of hippies and Good Gym, like hippies, has a great love of nature. And so it was that one Good Gymer (kind of) ran over to Crofton Park Railway Garden to help out with their regular gardening party. On arrival they were met with pair of secateurs and shown to a patch of lavender, which sadly like so much at this tine of year was past it's best and in need of dead heading. After about an hour and a quarter the lavender had received a well deserved haircut and with the smell of it's perfume in his nose the Good Gymer wandered off into the last of the summer.

Met with Paul and Kay, who introduced to the following tasks: planting some plants, bit of weeding, chopping some sticks, twigs to support the bee hotel. Made very good progress with some help of a small group of local volunteers until a torrential rain started. Only a small hard core team left to finish, but made noticeable progress.

This was the second time GoodGym were helping out with the new work at Crofton Park Railway Garden and there were still a few jobs to be completed before the garden reopens next week. I nipped down after Hilly Fields parkrun and was joined by Isaac who was on his second mission of the day, having come straight from pruning at Iona Orchard. Along with the other garden volunteers we set about applying wood preservative, painting, raking leaves, sawing logs and cutting twigs for the bug wall. We even had time for a quick go on the wooden train!

It takes commitment to venture out on a cold, dark, and windy evening. It takes something on top of that to come out for your FIRST group run; well done and welcome to Grace who joined us for a visit to Crofton Park Railway Garden.

After a much-needed warmup outside Glass Mills, there were plenty of gritted teeth as we headed uphill into a headwind to meet our hosts outside Crofton Park station. On arrival, our instructions were clear; leaves are the enemy and MUST be composted!

With a combination of rakes, brooms, dustpans, and one wheelbarrow, the group spread ourselves out along the length of the garden, running adjacent to the railway tracks, and set about tidying this lovely space.

Once the paths were clear, we set about the plant beds with equal gusto – honourable mentions for Paul and Adam who ventured down the mini-embankment to tackle the deepest leafy deposits against the railway fencing.

45 mins of hard (and chilly!) graft saw the garden’s compost bins bursting with leaves as we carefully gathered up all our tools and did our best not to shiver during the group photo – “Say ‘freeze’” as someone put it!

The return leg was just what the doctor ordered, as we ran downhill with the wind at our backs and arrived back at basecamp nicely re-warmed.

It’s one of the group’s all-time favourite tasks next Monday as we run to Seniors to put up their Christmas decorations!