St Christopher's Hospice Charity Shop 🛍️ on the Crystal Palace Triangle is a regular haunt for GoodGym Crystal Palace. We returned this week to do our usual tidy at a very welcome indoor task!

Before making the epic journey uphill, we met at the home of GG Crystal Palace, the Bridge House pub, where we introduced ourselves and answered this week's question - 'What's your favourite thing about Irish culture?' (it being St Patrick's Day ☘️). Consensus on Guinness 0.0% as a breakout star of the mid-2020s!

We jogged up Crystal Palace Park Road on the outer edge of the Park and across the Triangle to meet Theresa. Cat got stuck into steaming clothes ready to be hung, James was reunited with his pal Henry the Hoover for the third time, while the rest of the team set off on tidying the clothes on racks, giving the shelves a dust down and polishing the mirrors.

With a good 30 minutes of work we'd given the shop a spritz and were ready to head home.

Fab work, GoodGymers!

The moment has arrived! We got so big that we had to split into two 😱 GoodGym Bromley will move its axis eastwards, and we're rebranding as GoodGym Crystal Palace 🗼 No need to worry about poaching, though - you'll be seeing a lot of overlap between the two groups.

It might be a new name, but the team and task are familiar 😊 For this Group Run we were headed back to Dorset Road Allotments for round 6 of breaking up an old and overgrown chicken coop so that the land could be added to the communal space used for events and gatherings.

We first met at the Bridge House, where this week's question was "What's your favourite month?", spurred by Stephen's relief that the sunny months were on the way. We had March, June, November and more, all for a variety of reasons - nice!

Without further ado, we got our run on as Dorset Road is a huge 3km run from the Bridge House 🏃 We scrambled to the Allotments to meet Jeannette, who helps organise the upkeep of the space.

When we last came here in 2024 we did a lot of work to snip all the weeds to stop them growing, and this had paid off in in spades as this time as everything was dead and brittle - you could almost say fried - so it was easy to remove. We also managed to extract a good amount of the wood structure and wire roof covering. You could really see the impact GoodGym had made!

Awesome job, and I think everyone had loads of fun. Looking forward to coming back 🎉

GoodGym Bromley (soon to be GG Crystal Palace 👀) were on top form tonight for some fence brushing, helping out the magnificent Friends of Cator and Alexandra Parks before freshening up the kids' play area fences.

We met at the Bridge House as per. Cat's Q of the day; Cook or be cooked for, and what is your meal of choice? Be cooked for obvs?

It was just a short jog down the hill to the park where we nailed the timing as Millie swerved round the kerb to meet us.

Brushes at the ready we flicked off lichen, flaky paint, slugs. You name it, we brushed it.

We completed a serious chunk in our 45 mins or so and stopped off for a quick snap with some pigeons before heading back for stretches.

Nice to see everyone. Shout-out to Cat for leading. Next week, it's decided, it's going to be the first GoodGym Crystal Palace group run.

Two things to do at our brand new task tonight at the Paxton Centre, a community creative hub on Anerley Hill.

We met at the Bridge House and answered tonight's icebreaker - What's your favourite paint name? We had the bright: razzle dazzle rose to the more sombre: gunmental grey.

Setting out, we did a spiral out along Oakfield Road and then onto Anerley Road and up the hill to our destination. On arrival we met Beth, the proprietor of the space, who wanted help with touch up paintwork downstairs 🖌️ and fastening the legs of a set of tables upstairs 🔩

James led the way in taking apart the tables so we could get to the nuts that needed to be tightened, while GoodGym returnee Matthew and team got to work taking down the various prints on the walls and painting behind them where the colour beneath had chipped off over time.

Both teams did a great job and we were done by 8pm, ready to head off home with Beth grateful for our help. Alone, it would've taken her a long time to do those jobs, but with a few helping hands we could get lots done in 30 minutes! 🕗

Join Cat next week for some wire brushing at Alexandra Recreation Ground (and warmer weather! 🤞)

We had a duo of tasks last night to pick from.

Team Gazebo (Fiona, James, George, Nathan and Charlie) popped along to the scene of last week's gazebo erection to deliver said gazebos to a shed the other side of the estate ahead of a community event there this weekend. They also put up a couple of posters up to advertise the event to residents. Top stuff.

Easy PEASy

Down the bottom of the hill, team planter (Paul, Cat, Clare and I) headed to some weedy community planters to give them a little tidy. It was a big job so we just tried to do one section, removing some sticky weed, grass and dead sweet pea plants (but emptying the pods and spreading the seeds amongst the other beds).

Nice job and jog everyone 👍