The Forest School at St Mary's School in Lewisham is a lovely space - GoodGym was heavily involved in clearing the site to create it a few years ago. Today's mission was an ongoing task of clearing brambles and nettles to keep the space safe for the children. There were lots of them! A large sack full was collected. I am sure that we'll be back for more before the end of term.

It was lovely to be back at St Mary's Forest School. GoodGym had helped clear the site around 2021/22. We spent ages clearing both rubbish and brambles. There were a few places that children use where brambles had grown back so today's session was to clear those and some nettles along with rebuilding barriers around the pond. The Headteacher came to see what Id been up to and brought with her photos of GG clearing the site.

Having not personally been to the St Mary’s Forest School for a few months, I was impressed by how much it has changed and turned from a blank canvas to an exciting space with a number of reshaped and themed areas, helped in no small part by a number of recent GoodGym visits.

Upon arriving this week our team split into two groups, with group 1 continuing last week’s efforts formalising the pathways around the emerging gardens many features & areas, whilst group 2 prepared other areas for cultivation with wildflowers. These pathway preparations again entailed the shifting of a top layer of wood chips to reach and also flattening of the earth below, so that weed-controlling membrane could be laid.

Meanwhile, by torchlight, group 2 were raking through and clearing the flower beds-to-be before deftly scattering wildflower seeds and treading them into their new home. As if to support the seeds’ settlement in-situ, we were even treated to a light passing shower mid-task!

Meanwhile, drawing on last week’s experience, group 1’s pathway work was proving swift and efficient as multiple section of membrane were laid and the top-chips returned before being spread and levelled. A final all-hands effort saw additional wood chip harvested from neighbouring areas to ensure the new paths received a good and even covering.

We will return to St Mary’s again next week to continue on this exciting project – who knows what further changes we will see then..!

It was that time again...time for a warm up quiz! The rules are simple (sprint to either the true or false light) and winners do star jumps/losers do squats. With questions including it takes a sloth 2 weeks to digest a meal (true) and theres 202 bones in the human body (false), safe to say we had all warmed up and learnt something new.

It was a short run to St Mary's Forest School where Anne-Marie was waiting for us. It's the first time we had seen the space since we were sifting the soil for glass and digging up other rubbish back in July and the space is AMAZING now. A huge transformation that couldn't have been done without our hard work.

Last nights task was moving the bark (that the parents had carefully laid but minus the weed proof membrane), laying the membrane, pegging it down and then replacing the bark. With 2 areas to cover with split into 2 groups, making sure not to lose the tiny hammer and the scissors (we have marks against our names for losing tools)!

45min later we had the path completed and with everyone getting involved in replacing all the bark in the seating area and a rush to get it done - we achieved our goal!

The post-group run social is definitely taking place on 31st October, for those that have watched me move the listing around over a few Mondays.

After a week off group running due to the extreme heat, we were ready and raring to go! It was a shorter run this week over to St Mary's Primary School to continue clearing that space which will eventually become a Forest School. We are lucky to have been involved in this task right from the start and it has been amazing to see the progress since our first visit.

Our main task tonight was a fairly simple one: to remove all the rubbish and glass from the site. The school don't want the rubbish surfacing at a later date when there are children using the area. Armed with thick leather gloves, we began clearing years and years of rubbish including a lot of tennis balls and the more creepy, a doll with matted hair and the more strange, a metal pipe covered in plastic bamboo.

The other tasks that needed to be completed this evening included moving the larger branches and pieces of wood into a pile as these will be used for building structures in the Forest School. And also moving the fence panels to the rubbish pile.

With 5min to go our last task for the evening was to move a pile of concrete that had been dug up to the rubbish pile - the group got stuck in and it was done in no time. All that was left was for me to remove the bramble thorns from my leg and it was group photo time and back to Glass Mill.

We haven't been back to the site of the Forest School for a couple of months as the designers and landscapers have been beavering away and making plans for the space. It was fantastic to be back there in daylight and to see how big the space actually is.

We had 2 tasks for the evening, 2 very big tasks:

• take down the fence that was splitting the space in half
• clear as much brambles and weeds as possible to allow the landscapers to see exactly what they're working with

We split into groups and began clearing the space. As it was a shorter run, we had plenty of time to get stuck into the task and make a real difference.

After a missing pruning saw was found, it was time to head back to Glass Mill slightly later than planned but time flies when you're having fun!