We had a great time today at the Community Hospice Shop in Welling.

Our visit began with a comprehensive tour of the premises, guided by our host, James, who gave us an insight into how everything operates behind the scenes. We also received a health and safety briefing—an essential part of the process when dealing with such a vast amount of donated items.

We learned that this location serves 16 charity shops across the borough, which means an incredible volume of donations constantly needs sorting. It’s a big task.

With our team—Caroline, Ann, Zita, and me—ready to get stuck in, we rolled up our sleeves and set to work sorting through bags of donated clothes, linens, shoes, handbags, and even the odd toy here and there.

The sorting process itself was a real eye-opener. Donations were separated into various categories: 🔹 Quality – pristine, gently used, or worn-out items 🔹 Gender & Age – men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing 🔹 Specialist Items – vintage or designer labels, set aside for specialist charity shops 🔹 Condition – freshly laundered and neatly folded vs. those with stains, paint marks, or signs of heavy wear.

It was interesting see what had been donated. There were some high-end and vintage items, lots of decent quality stuff all the way down to unusable. The good news? The majority will be resold, raising essential funds for the charity.

All in all, it was an enjoyable experience. The three-hour session flew by, and we met some nice new people along the way. I imagine we’ll be back before long—there’s always more to do, and it feels good knowing that every bit of effort goes towards such a worthy cause.

We had so much fun tonight, sorting out the musical instruments at Holy Trinity Lamorbey RC Primary School.

Jane, the Deputy Principal, explained that the music room had become a bit of a dumping ground and the time had come to give it a new lease of life.

We got busy adding the bars back onto xylophones and glockenspiels, restringing triangles and finger cymbals, mending jingle bells, testing the keyboards, checking the strings on guitars and organising the all the different recorders and percussion instruments into separate trays. 🥁 🎹

There was some spontaneous dancing with castanets 💃 , and our guitar-playing GG-ers gave us music while we worked. Our team photo was properly tuneful!

We'll be back in a few weeks to paint the music room so the nicely sorted instruments have a smart new home where the children can enjoy using them.

It was a beautiful sunny Saturday morning that led us to St Paul's Church in Thamesmead where one Greenwich GoodGymer and three Bexley GoodGymers joined forces with some lovely folk from the church. We met Ruby who has been doing a wonderful job of landscaping and planting in the garden and who set us to work digging holes, turning the soil and planting roses. We were joined by Chris and Sandra, who came to help on her birthday no less - big respect!

All of the group were far more green fingered than me....yes I did check which way up the rose goes (I was just testing you Caroline).

After a good deal of blood, sweat and tears, we enjoyed a welcome cup of tea and biscuits (we'll work off the second packet Simon) and heard all about Simon and Caroline's work with Habitat for Humanity (think that's right?) and Ruby's project in Ghana building a** 120 acre community**! Piece of cake, right?!

I am so grateful to meet so many inspiring people through GoodGym!

We'll list this task again when Ruby is back from Ghana. Look out for more Thamesmead tasks over the coming months - there's lots of projects in the area needing support so I'll be drumming up more interest across Greenwich and Bexley members. Do you have any friends who might be interested in getting stuck in the mud?!

A morning well spent and well enjoyed. Nice work team!

After parkrun participation at Bexley, Dartford Heath and Greenwich, runners plus other GoodGym members arrived at Christ Church Erith to help setup approximately 40 Xmas trees for the Erith Christmas Tree Festival. 🎄 As a result of COVID, this wasn’t held last year so it was our first visit back since 2019. This year the task was made easier as the trees arrived already in bases so we were required to move them to specific locations in the church. Some of the task force used the time saved to select and partly decorate the GoodGym tree. Thanks to Peter, Nick, the Lees and the Wrens for donations towards the sponsored tree 🎄 Mince pies consumed, a number of us were still hungry enough to make our way for a Xmas brunch at the Old Library.