After assisting Elmington Community Gardens with maintaining their spread out garden for the past four months, it was time to say goodbye and see you in 2025. As the autumn months creep in, the residents of Elmington estate can manage the gardens by themselves.

Sam arrived at Old Spike Peckham nice and early to welcome in Cecilia, Daryl, David, Gemma, Isaac, Louise, Maria, Nelly, Rosalind. He went through his usual speech and welcomed Mansur and Rosemary, who came for their first group run in Southwark!

There was not one, but three awareness days happening this week - International Day of Charity, Read a Book Day and National Beer Lover's Day. Sam asked an ice-breaker question of each: "What charity is close to your heart?", "What book are you reading currently?" and "What is your favourite beer?"

We had a mixture of GoodGym and Women's Aid as favourite charities, I can't read what people are reading...apologies and lastly, we had from Neck Oil to Guinness as people's favourite beers...yes, Guinness is a stout...

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We were all so chipper

After a quick warm-up in the alleyway, Sam led the group out through the backstreets of Peckham and climbed up Chadwick to reach the top and head down the other side towards Camberwell. Maria backmarked the run and we met Benjamin) and Elena at the task as they had cycled/ran there from home.

Catalina was running late as she had just come back from work, so we patiently waited for outside the allotment as that's where the tools were stored. Since we had only 35 minutes by the time she arrived, we limited the task to just moving the rest of the woodchip from the pile near the Wildlife Triangle to areas that needed mulching. This was conducted by Gemma, Maria and Rosalind were part of team shovel woodchip, Benjamin, Mansur and Rosemary moved and transported the woodchip by wheelbarrows and a makeshift barrow from a shopping trolley. Louise raked the woodchip across the area that was mulched.

The rest of the team: Cecilia, Daryl, David, Elena, Isaac and Nelly took the limited tools we had to pull out the thistles and nettles from the Wildlife Triangle.

As we arrived closer to 20:00, we called it a day and luckily, there was only a little bit of woodchip left for the residents to finish off the task. We put away the tools back to Elmington's allotment for safe keeping. We can't believe that is it for the year and we will be back in the Spring of 2025!

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! Despite the limited time and tools, we managed to get a lot done. Thank you to Maria for backmarking the runs.

After noticing Nelly had signed up during the day, Sam rushed home from work as he needed to get a vital GG item...as when everyone arrived at Old Spike Peckham and Sam went through his usual speech, he announced that it was Nelly's 100th good deed tonight! He brought out the wings for her to wear as well as the customary party hat, balloon and no ginger cake this time, but lemon cake instead.

Although, Sam did mention his ice-breaker question which was to do with National Allotment Week and National Relaxation Day, which was happening the next day: "What would you grow in an allotment?" and "What do you do at the end of a working week to unwind?"

Everyone had named every fruit and vegetable possible, but David does have an allotment and really wants to grow Brussel Sprouts. For the relaxation question, people answered from going to the gym to meditation and yoga. There were also a couple of people mentioning a stiff drink.

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Sides and back: a hedge trim

After a quick warm-up in the alleyway, Sam led the group out through the backstreets of Peckham and climbed up Chadwick to reach the top and head down the other side towards Camberwell. Paulin backmarked the run and we met Phil and Emma at the task as they had cycled there. Also, Rebecca walked over from her flat, five minutes away.

Zulieka and her girls called us over from the Wildlife Triangle as some residents had already got going on a big hedge that needed some trimming. We split the team in three as Zulieka needed three tasks to be done:

• Emma, Steve, David, Cecilia and Rosalind took a pair of loppers each and proceeded to help the residents shape this big hedge.
• Nelly, Isaac, Nathan and Paulin took four watering cans to water the plants around the estate.
• Phil, Emma, Rebecca and Sam were the last group to be given a task as Zulieka directed them to a tonne bag of soil that needed to be emptied out into a corner as the soil was surplus.

All the tasks were done in on time with the team even taking the hedge trimmings and tools back to Elmington's allotment for safe keeping. Zulieka was very pleased and can't believe next month will be our last for the year!

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! It was our penultimate session at Elmington Community Garden for 2024 and we got a lot done. Thank you to Paulin for backmarking the runs.

Tonight's group run was going to be different. Why? It wasn't going to be Sam leading the run, but Maria. She did her Run Leader webinar the previous Thursday and wanted to apply her newly found knowledge straight away.

Before we could all get going with the group run, we needed people. Sam and Maria waited in Old Spike Peckham for Rosalind, John, David, Emma, Daryl, Nelly, Mikhail, Benjamin, Cecilia, Laura, Louise, Fi, James and Paulin to arrive.

As 18:45 arrived, Sam asked Maria to start proceedings before he went through his usual GG intro speech highlighting a few sessions happening over the weekend. Maria asked the ice-breaker question, which was a poll on whether people liked the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics or not?

It was a "Non" from most of the runners with about five saying Yes...the rain didn't help nor did the athletes parade on the Seine.

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Litter Pick Bingo - Peckham Rye Park edition

With Maria leading the run, she took all the runners onto the Green to get started on the warm-up, which Sam normally does. She asked assistance from Emma to back-mark the run whilst she led from the front heading towards and around Peckham Rye Park to end the 2.5k at The Round Cafe where we met: Isaac, Folarin and Vic. However, we said our goodbyes to Mikhail as he was still jet-lagged from his trip from Malaysia.

Sam split the group into four groups of 4/5 and each group had at least one litter picker, a litter pick bingo card of 25 items, a black bin liner and someone recording their distance as the Litter Pick Bingo began! 30 minutes to find as many items on the litter pick bingo card as possible.

It was a tight contest as after 30 minutes all the teams came back in time....meaning no points deductions:

• In 4th place, we had Team "No Vapes" with 22.5 points (18 items found and covered 1.25km)
• In 3rd place, we had Team "R.E.A.M." with 23.1 points (22 items found and covered 1.05km)
• In 2nd place, we had Team "Trois3" with 25.5 points (17 items found and covered 1.5km)
• However, in 1st place, we had Team "Milibae's" with a staggering 35.68 points (23 items found and covered 1.55km)

With that, we had our winners: Team Milibae's who went into the lawn bowls social competition with confidence.

A few of us ran back to Old Spike Peckham to collect our items whilst the rest walked to Peckham Bowls to get setup for the inaugural GoodGym Southwark Bowls Championship. With two rinks booked, we split the semis into the two teams with five people against the two teams with four. Team "No Vapes" and Team "R.E.A.M." plus Sam took to Rink 6 whilst Team "Trios3" and Team "Milibae's" claimed Rink 5. It was a tight game on Rink 5, but on Rink 6, Team "R.E.A.M" took the first end, 4 - 0, but struggled to finish off their opponents quickly. After a few more ends and a pizza break, Team "R.E.A.M." took the game 8 - 3, whilst Team "Trois3" got their revenge on the litter pick bingo second place and book their place in the final.

Battling time and the light conditions, we played two more ends to determine the gold and bronze medal matches. Team "R.E.A.M" plus Sam took the Gold over Team "Trois3" with a 2 - 0 scoreline and Team "Milibae's" had to settle for Bronze as Team "No Vapes" came last in both competitions.

A great way to end July and I am glad we had two summer socials.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! We did good and we had fun! A massive thank you to Maria for leading the run and can't wait to have you as an official Run Leader. Kudos to Emma for backmarking and to everyone for getting stuck in with the litter picking and social!

Is it coming home (it did for the Women's back in 2022)? That was the thought on everyone's mind as England's Mens team had their Semi-final game against Netherlands on the same night as our group run. Yet, 13 GoodGymers opted in for doing a good deed before the game. Sam messaged the task owner to bring the task forward and asked those who signed up to come between 18:30 - 18:40 to Old Spike Peckham, so that they could fit everything in within an hour and a half.

Tonight, we had not one, but two newbies. Well, technically, Audrey is not a newbie, but new to coming to GoodGym Southwark. However, we welcomed Hannah who came for her first good deed! Welcome!

Andrada, Cecilia, Daryl, David, Maria, Nelly, Paulin and Rosalind all came along on time as Sam started his extended speech due to the newbie and then presented his ice-breaker question. Tonight's ice-breaker was about the Euros, so he asked: "Who will win the tournament?"

Most said it would come home, but a few Spain and one Netherlands vote...

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Kick off...

We headed out without a warm-up as Sam knew he had to get to the task within 18 minutes. Paulin backmarked to ensure no one got left behind as we climbed up Chadwick Road to come down the other side to Camberwell. We made it in time to meet Zulieka and her girls as Emma arrived with her bike.

Zulieka had three tasks for us to do. We left Daryl, David and Andrada with a pile of woodchip, a wheelbarrow and a tonne bag in a shopping trolley to move to a site where woodchip needed to be laid. As we went around the estate, Adrian and Audrey with two pairs of shears were given the task to cut back a tree/bush in order for the residents to get to a watering unit as the hot summer days are a head of us and plants would need to be watered. The rest of the group went around the corner to weed a garden bed that was temporarily taken care of by the council, but they didn't finish the job. Using hand tools and shears, Cecilia, Emma, Hannah, Maria, Nelly, Paulin and Rosalind took of the task of transforming this space within 25 minutes.

Running around to ensure all groups were fine, Sam counted the clock down as there was a hard stop at 19:30 to ensure the team could run back in time to see the start of the game. However, Zulieka wanted help to take back the tools and two wooden pallets she found on the estate, so we duly did so before rushing off back towards Peckham. The boys probably clocked a few PBs as they sprinted the 3k run back to Old Spike as we had a table booked in 80-20 wines next door. Everyone arrived just in time for the kick-off...

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night. A very quick session due to the football, but we did get a lot done in the 30 minutes that we were there for. Zulieka sends her thanks and looks forward to see us next month. Kudos to all and if I don't see you next week, see you soon!