A lovely Saturday morning to go and help the Friends of Fishponds group. Elliot was thrilled that three GoodGymers joined to help. It was a very productive time - fruit trees were planted in the orchard, a newly planted hedge was tended to and a dead hedge was tackled by the volunteers.

Litterpicking unearthed all sorts of treasures - the highlight was a bike! It was removed to deter more dumping in the gardens.

Well done to all that attended. A big welcome to Anna and Jasbinder on your first task. So happy to have you on board. And hello to Mira - a regular of Tower Hamlets - thrilled that you came along to one of our missions. Hope to see you all again.

Now now calm down, this group run was not as sordid as the title suggests.

On a hot summers night, 4 Kingston regulars gathered at the Kingston base ready for the long awaited (longer for some than the rest of us....) final part of Dave's run leader qualification process. After being warmed up from toe to top and sprinting between benches on Fairfield, we were off to Fishponds. But first was St Mark's hill. Only the brave tackle this beast and only the strongest survive it. Never again please, run leaders - never again...

An old friendly enthusiastic face of Kingston's bio diversity officer Elliot Newton, welcomed us in and quickly set out the task in hand - weeding the rose bed and ridding them of their dandelions, green alkanets, bind weed and sticky willies (cue childish giggling from the crowd). Elliot also outlined plans for some raised vegetable beds off to one side and suggested that we may be able to take one over ourselves, which could be exactly what we've been looking for for sometime now...

After time was up, it was back down the hill to base for a good warm down stretch and to congratulate Dave on another task done on Rachel's to do list. Now hows about that garden makeover...

5 of the Kingston and Richmond Goodgym gang got together to take part in a "Community Action Day", a regular event organised by Friends of Fishponds Park and led by Citizen Zoo to bring together the residents of Surbiton to improve the wildlife habitat and green spaces.

We arrived to find a crowd of about 25 locals, young and old, already on the scene and laying out tools and setting up a gazebo in case of rain (a very good plan it turned out). We chose our weapons and headed off to the area Jeremy pointed out - ‘The Dell’, where apparently there used to be a pond but now all could be seen where hordes of giant brambles.

We got stuck in and started to make an impact on the overgrown jungle of weeds, nettles and brambles. The best tools for the job were none too plentiful and frequent calls of “anybody got shears” or “where’s the rake?” were heard across the work area.

Merry workers we were, shearing raking, lopping and mattocking (look it up!) our way through the bushes and gradually fighting them back. Soon enough a stream area started to appear, having been found by surprise by Derek (one of the locals) who lost his footing and toppled into it...

After a short time huge piles of undergrowth were appearing all around us, as well as a few big logs blocking the old stream and branches cut from overhanging trees. Then the inevitable rain came - and came in a torrent - and we huddled under the gazebo for a welcome cup of tea until it stopped.

It was a huge task and certainly not one for a day - even with the big crowd on the ground - but deeply satisfying to see the difference we made in our patch of the park. More of the same would be great, but hopefully with more shears (and rakes) next time!

For the second sunny super Saturday task Kate, Caroline and Laura headed to Fishponds Park to help at their community action day. This is a regular event, organised by Friends of Fishponds Park and led by Citizen Zoo, which brings the residents of Surbiton together to improve the green space and wildlife habitat. On arrival we were greeted by a crowd of locals all ready and raring to get their (rake) teeth into the tasks (including a group of D of E students who Laura was very pleased to get mistaken for!) After an intro talk and safety briefing on the selection of tools we would be using, the group divided up to start the various jobs. We found it difficult to decide which one to choose, as us goodgymmers are not known for our ‘take it or leaf it’ attitude and are always ready to help no mattock the task! However we finally settled on some rose bush cutting and headed off up the hill. After a quick tutorial from an experienced local resident about cutting below a bud and at a downward angle, Kate and Caroline rose to the challenge and got stuck in with the loppers. Meanwhile Laura tried to stem the growth of the cuttings pile by shovelling it all into heavy duty bags. After an hour or so, the area had been transformed from a big mass of messy branches to lots of lovely distinct rose plants, ready to bloom over the next couple of months!

Three GoodGym musketeers (Karoline, Nicky & Kate) met at the Fishponds Park in Surbiton this morning. We were excited to get involved in supporting this Community Action Day, bringing the local community together in order to improve Fishponds Park Surbiton as a park, a wildlife habitat and community green space. There was a large group gathered to volunteer and it was lovely to see so many members of the community giving up their Saturday morning to improve their local environment. We met a pair of brothers bonding over the conservation work and many family and friends groups coming together as well as Duke of Edinburgh students (which we were kindly mistaken for a couple of times!). It was so great to see everyone coming out and braving the chilly autumnal sunshine.

There was a large range of tasks for people to volunteer for from clearing woodland paths, pruning bushes, cleaning out the ponds, litter picking and more all explained by Elliot Newton – the very passionate conservationist and founder of the Kingston Biodiversity Network. He also gave us a demonstration of the use of certain tools including safety warnings and instructions. The Citizen Zoo team (focusing on ‘rewilding our future' and ‘helping you help nature’) provided many fantastic brand new tools including mattocks, slashers (‘slash’ ahhhh), bow saws, forks, spades, wheelbarrows, litter picks and loppers. We were feeling a little thorn between taking the loppers, forks or spades so in the end decided to carry as many as our hands could hold and more!

The musketeers (or rather – ‘lopperteers’) collected our tools of choice and headed for the rose bushes that needed pruning. What a* lopper* pruning and snipping we did too! There were concerns that the overgrowth promoted antisocial behaviour and some dodgy deals were going on in the park. We were instructed by Jeremy Wadia of the Citizen Zoo to reduce the overgrown bushes to waist height. With no time to waist we put the petal to the metal! It wasn’t long before we felt Seal calling about a Kiss from a Rose as the thorns showed signs of attachment issues! There was a great deal of team work required by the ‘Three Lopperteers’ as one was being gripped by thorny branches, another snipped her free and the third pulled the bindweed and branches tangle away to the bags. As persistent as those thorns were, we remained positive, keeping in mind that our rose-coloured glasses (helpful to have eye protection) would keep us blind to thorny issues. Our great satisfaction of the task stemmed from the clear result of our hard work. We can see clearly now the thorns are gone!

Once we’d filled the big bags of greenery, we hauled them down to the truck and hoisted them up to be tipped out and re-filled. Nicky didn’t hesitate to jump into the back of the truck to help while Karoline passed the bag up so I opted to take over the task of photographer briefly so that there is evidence of Nicky’s contributions too! There was a *rosy *time had by all!

As an added bonus, when we stopped for a break and refreshments we were treated to two short talks. The first by the conservation expert Elliot Newton about wildlife in the park and the second by local resident Rob Eyre-Brook about the history of Fishponds Park and Fishponds House. We thoroughly enjoyed the educational experience and really admired Elliot’s passion for nature. Now we know that there are three species of newts in our local area, how to distinguish a toad from a frog and that they do in fact hibernate in winter! Every day’s a school day! We will be keeping in touch with Elliot to find out when we can join in on their next conservation event. Hopefully we’ll have more Goodgymers available to join us on the next one. Watch this space!

Thank you Karoline for organizing this community mission for us and Nicky for taking on the role of photographer.

Plogging: the latest Scandinavian trend to rock your world (According to BBC 3, that is.)

What do you get when you move a Scandinavian trend to a very rainy Kingston? Splogging (or soggy plogging). Aside from standing in a queue and tutting, this was about as British as we could make plogging.

A rather last-minute community mission, we ventured to do good to get the ball rolling for community missions in Kingston. It was a rather rainy route there, and we both spoke about how having a reason to run ensured that we still got out running despite the weather. At our meeting point in not-so-sunny-Surbiton, a YMCA worker remarked how much Samia seemed to be enjoying her post-long-run stretches - and that wasn't even her favourite stretch (although of course the moment that Nicky turned up happened to be when Samia was doing the stretch that she makes very well known to be her favourite stretch at every group run....)

I really am at my happiest when I am doing this stretch.

Looking like we'd been for a dip in the pond, we made our way to Fishponds Park in Surbiton to help clear up the rubbish that seems to have accumulated as a result of lots of people enjoying the open green spaces in Kingston and unfortunately not taking their rubbish home with them. There is a community litter pick scheduled for Saturday, so we gave them a helping hand with a headstart through some plogging. We nattered away whilst getting some squat practice in through the plogging - and realised that every time we stopped to take a photo, one of us seemed to be holding a beer can or wine bottle...

And you know how Kingston is becoming famous for mission-related ducks?!! Well, we found a pond of REAL ducks (no rotating heads or water fountains coming out of their heads, thank goodness!).

And a slight confession: it was more like Slalking (Soggy picking up litter whilst walking) - but we did go for a run together afterwards!