Bucks Fizz anyone? If you’re under 30, ask your mum!

Tonight’s task took us to the magical land of the Royal Pavilion Gardens where head gardener Robert explained how the gardens were designed to reveal ‘tantalising glimpses’ of the Royal Pavilion itself, so as to make it appear even more enticing and interesting, which indeed it does!

Before we set off we welcomed back Laura for her first group run since tripping and breaking her wrist and congratulated Michael on completing the Great North Run on Sunday.

Tasks tonight included raking leaves, picking up litter, cutting back vegetation that was obscuring signage, weeding and turning the compost, which required wearing some interesting facial protection to protect from spores. Robert was very grateful for our efforts, as the garden is maintained by a small team of volunteers and it takes a hell of a lot of work to keep it looking so natural!

Task complete it was time for a 1km time trial from the pier to the playground. A couple of the newer members of the group made the big mistake of trying to keep up with Helena at the start, who absolutely stormed it to a cracking time of 3 min 10 seconds! Everybody ran a blinder tonight with several runners easily cracking 4 minutes. Well done!

A 5 minute circuit followed, then the return run to base for our monthly social. Social secretary Nipun had selected our lovely base the YHA for our get together, where we enjoyed playing foosball so much that Nipun jumped up in excitement and landed on her own ankle (hope its ok) and I uttered the immortal words ‘we’re good at this’ before losing our 3-1 lead to a whitewashing I’d rather forget!

Salvation Army next week, see you there!

Five fabulous new faces to welcome to Goodgym Brighton tonight! A very warm welcome to Monique, David, Cal & Luke for their first Goodym experience and also we welcomed Belinda who popped along the coast from her regular Goodgym location of Worthing. Big ups went to Rose for completing Beachy Head marathon a couple of weeks ago. Blimmin’ awesome!!

Tonight’s task was just a stone’s throw away at the Royal Pavilion Gardens where we were met by head gardener Robert and regular volunteer gardener Kris. Robert told us how the John Nash designed garden is managed according to the principles of Regency gardening, with a natural, informal, unmanicured feel. The garden is a beautiful city centre oasis that is fully open at all times so it takes quite a battering, especially in the summer where there have been issues with anti social behaviour. But tonight’s behaviour from Brighton Goodgymers was anything but anti social as we set to work on the two main tasks.

Belinda, Rose, Michael & Frances headed off with Kris to set to work on turning the compost. As the garden is totally organic the compost plays an essential role and there were four large ‘bins’ in various stages of decay that needed turning. Kris told us how they utilise the coffee grinds from a few local cafes and we could smell the coffee as we turned the steaming compost.

Elsewhere the rest of the team set to work on sweeping and raking the leaves from the path and barrowing them back to the compost area. There are some beautiful trees in the garden, including a hollow elm which has sadly developed Dutch Elm disease. Barrowfuls of leaves were collected leaving the gardens looking neater and providing some new material for the all important compost.

Task complete it was time to get the fitness work in. We headed to the seafront for a kilometre time trial ending at Peter Pans playground where we used the various pieces of equipment for our fitness circuit. After a minute on each station we headed back for our second kilometre time trial before stretching off and enjoying a chat and catch up at our monthly social.

If one social in a week isn’t enough for you and you find yourself in London on Thursday then details of the monthly all areas Goodgym social can be found here.

Hopefully see you all at Hove Prom parkrun on Saturday for our monthly parkrun meet up, let me know if you’ll coming here and/or our indoor task next Tuesday painting a community cafe, you can sign up for that here.

Well done to all for tonight, we got fitter, we did good, feel proud!!