Normally your author would start the report with a summary of the task, but today seems a perfect opportunity to remember who we are and what we bring.

So firstly, I want to shout out our newest member, Cecliia, who has just dived in to Good Gym, doing not one but three missions on her first weekend of Good Gym volunteering.

And secondly, we have the genius of Khai. Many of us are happy to write run reports but struggle with a good pun for the title. Khai has made this task so much easier with many amazing suggestions including today’s report title.

And so to the task. Today we were back at St Richard’s church hall in Charlton to continue clearing the garden of weeds. For some time, we’ve been slowly clearing out the weeds, the alkanet, the general overgrowth and the brambles. In fact, one of the tasks today was bagging up the huge pile of cuttings we’d cut down on Wednesday. Four of us got down to work digging and cutting and after an hour we’d cleared a huge space. And dare I say that, after many months of work, we’ve finally cleared all four sides of the church ready for them to start work on creating a paths and green spaces or all of the local community to use.

Well done to everyone involved. Our next run is a rare Thursday trip to perennial Good Gym favourite More2 childcare https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/group-run-helping-at-more2-nursery-6826c8ed-1377-414f-bb6e-91f3aaf528cb

On a cold and clear evening, 6 of us arrived at the naval college for another run and good deed. Special welcome to Iyad for your first official session! And welcome to Bilal down from Birmingham for the week- great to have you with us! After a run to St Richards up the hill we got to work out the back pulling up brambles and grass and the odd beast of a root which was very satisfying. After half an hour of chatting and listening to the live music inside, we had a massive pile of weeds to show for our labour. We're making great progress clearing the garden!

We're switching our days the next two weeks with a Thursday session at More2 next week and a Tuesday session at James Wolfe Primary School the following week.

We're back at St Richards this weekend to pick up where we left off.

Until next time!

It was brutally cold this morning as 8 of us arrived at St Richards. Special welcome to Viktor for his first good deed with us, and shout out for bringing four more members of your family to help out! We were out in force today and we had plenty of jobs to keep us all busy. 💪

Julian was a smooth lopper-ator*, lopping all the the branches he could reach off the trees, or should I say, pollarding lime trees as I learned it was called today!

Jenny and Marta worked up a sweat sanding down the lovely wooden door and giving it a fresh coat of varnish - what a difference it has made! And Khai, Cat, Linda and Viktor gained some ground in the war of the weeds out front and back. In fact, Viktor's family practically excavated half the back garden in very little time. A great effort in our mission to clear all the weeds and get the garden ready for planting. 🌻

An hour and a half later and we were ready to warm up with a nice coffee before heading home for some lunch.

Great job team. On Wednesday we're back at Dee's Nursery , continuing to create a roundabout for the kids in the garden!

Until next time 👋

*Credit to Khai, the GoodGym Greenwich Pun King

GoodGym Greenwich's first Wednesday task of 2025 brought us to the brilliant venue of St Richard's Church & Community Centre in Charlton. Our tasks here have generally involved weeding the open space around the building , but plenty of tasks in the upstairs hall kept us busy this evening: from a ladder climb to sweep away the cobwebs of 2024 (long vacated by their resident spiders) to a good scrub of some chairs donated by local schools.

Whilst some of us got on with touching up some paintwork, cleaning & vacuuming, some DIY experts competed in a shelving rack building competition. By the end it was more a case of us vs the shelves but GoodGym won and the shelves were completed! A nice start to the year I think. Great to see everyone again & Happy New Year! 🙂

Next week we're at WSUP on Tuesday and Charlton Manor Primary on Wednesday. This weekend we've got Westcombe Woodlands and charlton litter picking .

Until next time!

I say we, but the bush lopping was entirely the mighty Jenny, but I get ahead of myself.

This evening started with meeting Markella for a document check (Markella, you will make a perfect GoodGym social visits member - and hope to see you at a task or our Christmas social soon!) We set off sharpish to tackle Maze Hill and a what we think was a 4km run to St Richard's - rather a long one for us but a good work out! Julian had already got to work by the time we arrived, weeding down the side of the church where we left off a few weeks ago. We split into two groups, one to continue weeding and the other to tackle a bush that needed cutting down to size. > Enter Jenny with her loppers*

A perfect task for flexing those muscles out after a day of meetings. This particular bush was tied into place and all twisted around itself but after half an hour of lopping it was a mere stump, ready to be dug out. One step closer to getting this area cleared for disabled access.

Meanwhile the other team were doggedly making their way further up the path, clearing brambles and weeds and laying down cardboard to prevent their return. We're almost at the top of the path now after a couple of sessions here - Look how far we've come since last the last group run here!!

Well done team. Next week we're at Glyndon and we've got our Christmas social on Sunday, looking forward to it!

St Richard’s Church in Charlton is a much-loved space where many local events take place, from band concerts to craft fairs to cinema showings and of course regular services. But the grounds surrounding the church have been allowed to overgrow over the years. Fortunately, Good Gym excelsin sorting this out and having been for a group run on a Wednesday night we were back on a Saturday morning to continue. The first job was naturally to clear all the weeds we’d missed on the previous occasion, but from then on it was a continuous pushing back of the rows of weeds and brambles. Soon we had cleared a good amount, enough to fill three big bags, one for each of us helping out, and all that remained to have some fun tearing up boxes for cardboard to lay to avoid having the weeds come back.