Despite the early start - post Saturday Brighton Pride festivities - a crack team of GoodGym-ers assembled to help keep Brighton beach litter-free and stop those pesky pieces of plastic from making their way in to the sea (as lovely a day as it is for a swim!)

We joined a great big bunch of other volunteers organised by our friends at the Brighton & Hove City Council Tidy Up Team as part of the BIG Pride Beach Clean, kitted up and litter-picking our way along the beach and promenade. Litter grabbing tools - also sometimes referred to as 'reaching tools' - fully justifying the tenuous S Club reference in the title :) - just one of the Brighton Pride 'Fabuloso' acts that the litter pick fabulously rewards us all with free tickets to.

Welcome to Edward who joined us for the first time and thanks to all of the returning GG team.

I miss the summer, I really do! Don’t you? Regardless, it was such a great pleasure to be running with other 8 brave GoodGym-ers at yesterday's group session. We also welcomed Mariam, who was not discouraged at all but the rainy introduction to GoodGym Brighton!

Armed with rain cover ☔, weeds scrapers🧹provided by the B&H Tidy Up Team, loppers ✂ and other garden tools borrowed from Brighton Borrowers, we joined forces 💪 with a few other brave volunteers from Round Hill: the community hero Rob, my lovely neighbour Josh and the super active Aurelie from the Sylvan Hall Residents Association.

Together, we managed to clear Cat-Creep (ie the long steep stairway connecting Wakefield Road with Roundhill Crescent, where tods are crossing 🐸), a great length of the pathway of Wakefield Road, and the surrounding of the orchard at the East end of Sylvan Hall, which is aimed to flourish as a secret biodiversity spot of this residential estate. Mariam also managed to save cute snails from the green clearance! 🐌

This was a great and fully appreciated effort! Thank YOU all, GoodGym! Thank you also for helping to save good bread loaves and pasties from being wasted. Hope you enjoyed them for dinner 😊.

To the next one, and to the summer to come (hopefully).

This Tuesday, GoodGym Brighton has been Running Out Of Time, and we made a few pledges to act together as a community for climate and nature!

On this lovely warm evening, ten GoodGym-ers ran 2km to the beach where we picked up litter grabbers and Surfers Against Sewage's sacks to collect the litter. We spread out along the beach towards the iconic i360 and up on the path above the beach finding plastic bottles, cans and wrappers, but not too much litter this time, which was good to see. Some tourists gave us their rubbish and one asked an unusual question, ‘Can you fly a drone on the beach?’ It was explained we were not the council (!), and just volunteers so weren’t really sure.

After the task, we ran to the square near the i360 for some fitness exercises. Stefania divided us into four groups for two circuits of four different exercises: squats, tricep dips, step ups and press ups. Although it was tiring, it was also great exercise!

This week it is the third in the run for the GoodGym January Challenge! From the 1st to the 31st of January, across the country, we are going to walk, run and cycle to complete as many good deeds as we can.

Yesterday however it was an hard core call for Brighton GoodGym-ers to convince ourselves to get out for a run, but we did it! New GoodGym-er Amaryllis returned to run with us, so we did something right :-) We helped OffTheFence and joined effort with the B&H TidyUP Team to collect Christmas Tree that have been fly tipped and left on the pavements of our city streets.

We think community only works if everyone is included. So Off The Fence do! Somehow we believe that we contributed to OffTheFence fundraising mission to recycle Christmas trees into cash for the homeless. Certainly, we helped to clear our city streets by those xmas trees and fly tipped green waste that can be now responsibly delivered to the B&H recycling waste centres.

We found a few of those trees on our route and moved them to the designed collections points for xmas trees that are still open to the public until 22nd of January! And, we kept up with moving and GoodGym fitness action to avoid freezing!

This week, there are a few more training sessions to keep ourselves active during this cold but dry winter week of January. Plenty of opportunities to have some social runs together!

What next? Tuesday next week we are returning to the Brighton Workshop & Tool Library. Sigh up HERE to come along!

The sunsets on the Brighton & Hove seafront are amazing in September! Always.

Following a great sunny week at the end of what was a bit of a “blink-and-you’ll-miss-it” summer, yesterday’s weather forecast was not to be believed, and so Brighton GoodGym did (not).

There was in fact a great atmosphere and we had a very pleasant litter picking on Brighton beach, regardless of Met Office’s weather warning with risk of thunderstorms, I wonder where 😊?!

GoodGym Brighton welcomed new member Georgia and Shaun the Sheep, who is visiting Brighton from the 9th September to the 5th November. Shaun by the Sea brings together a fantastic flock of 40 individually designed sculptures of Shaun, which represent the individuality and diversity of Brighton & Hove. We already met two Shauns and we will indeed keep welcoming all to join our next GoodGym sessions in Brighton.

Litter picking galore and FABULOSO reward. This was what made Brighton GoodGymers proud of helping Brighton&Hove Council Tidy Up Team to clean our city with a Big Community Mission!

Thanks and welcome to GoodGym Helen, Wairimu, Rebecca, Sue and Alex.