The rain held off and we cleared nearly a dozen black bags out of the 'Spinney' area, which is being managed as a nature reserve

Goodgym Merton officially launched with a bang (or rather, a lot of enthusiastic clearing, wrecking and digging!) at our inaugural group session.

With an amazing turnout including guest appearances from Councillor Caroline Cooper Marbiah and Merton Council everyone was full of energy and quickly got to work clearing the area of debris and unwanted items. Within minutes we had made space ready to hack into the foliage and dismantle the decking.

Undeterred by the inevitable mud we were soon rolling up sleeves and removing layers as things warmed up with the unearthing of hidden treasures (including a rat tunnel).

In less than half the allotted time we had filled the large skip to the brim, cut down a tree and levelled the soil, proving that even the most daunting projects can be conquered with a bit of teamwork. Plenty of time left to celebrate our first group effort success and chat over tea and brioche buns, courtesy of the Community Fridge.

What a mud-tastic morning and start to the weekend. Fancy joining us with a future task - keep checking our sessions page and/or follow us on social media @goodgymmerton.

It was our second visit to help Wrap Up London in their initiative to get a warm coat to everybody who needs it this winter and it was lovely to see some familiar faces, some we hadn't seen in a while, and we even got to meet the very newest GoodGymer - hello Finn and welcome to GoodGym!

The scale of the job was immense with over 20 000 coats to sort through and pack, so we wasted no time in getting started!

There was a surprising amount of maths involved as we tried to work out how to fulfill the requests that charities had made and get the right number of coats into bags. Luckily Catherine has a head for numbers and we soon had a seamless production line on the go.

We packed bags for various organisations including refugee centres and shelters across London, and then we moved on to an enormous pile of baby clothes, discovering some very natty babygros and sleep sets!

After a productive stint we had packed, sorted and bagged and had made a good dent in the donations. Great work everybody!

Despite the windy weather 2 Goodgymers joined the Merton Friends of the Earth team and other volunteers over at Morden Park today.

Early on Andrea joined for a brisk half hour shovelling mulch into wheelbarrows and pushing them to the saplings, earning a well derserved Sunday roast! Later on Jade stopped by to continue the mulching, along with a little weeding of thistles and ball throwing for the dog ;). Goodgym Merton have adopted one of the saplings and will be back to check out it's development over the coming months.