Yesterday session was held at the Brighthelm Centre, a well-known community venue in central Brighton that hosts a wide range of social, cultural, and support services and other community-focused volunteering activities.

The main objective was to help out the centre with practical maintenance tasks to improve the accessibility and appearance of the community spaces, currently disrupted by building works that are in progress since weeks. After a warmup tuned by Zumba moves (courtesy of Zumba with Mon), we engaged in a combined sweeping action of stairwells indoors and of leaves outdoors, accompanied by a festive weeds scraping workout of the garden pavements. The grace of Ewan, the building manager, revealed just how meaningful our contribution was to him and to all who benefit from this vital community centre in Brighton.

Yesterday mild night turned to be a bonus, bringing most joy to our GoodGym-ing and chit-chatting about the coming up Xmas GoodGym social events. We welcomed Pavel at his second GoodGym session on a personal mission to do as many good deeds as possible by 2025.

More to come? Plenty!

It is that time of the year when our friend Stuart from the Friends of Palmeira and Adelaide reaches GoodGym Brighton for some Autumnal conservation of the community green spaces in Palmeira Square. Despite the chill air temperatures of this week Tuesday evening, 10 brave heart GoodGymers cycled and run to our weekly task, where Stuart, the lead gardener Jan and the lovely Andrea welcomed us with garden tools ready for some speedy (and warming up) raking action in the outdoors.

Have you ever raked wet leaves from a city park? Like (or even better than) exercising with a Power Tower Gym – Rachel’s quote, enabling you to perform functional exercises that are the most efficient and effective training regimen out there. With this powerful piece of equipment, you would be able to perform 4 major kinds of workouts, namely, Chin-ups, Press-ups, Dips and Vertical Knee Raises.

We managed to rake 4 big bags of green waste, 2 tons plus of minus, which will be collated in the new composting area enabling to recycle food and green waste separately, to close the biological cycle and produce lovely compost to regenerate new grass for the park next spring.

We welcomed returning new members Amy and Dagdas, and lovely Sarah who is commuting every week from PeaceHaven to what has now become her regular weekly appointment with GoodGym! Tell your friends WHAT's ON at GoodGym Brighton.

This Tuesday, 10+ of the GoodGym Brighton crew ran, cycled and walked over to Lavender House for a full perimeter clear-up. Headtorches on, we weeded, detangled and plucked our way through the edges of the building, filling up multiple wheelbarrows for compost and giving the outside a noteworthy November glow-up.

Jane had a moment of magic finding a red admiral butterfly and having it stay still on her hand long enough for a photo and a video. A flash of summer in a little bit of a November drizzle!

Also on this week's GoodGym Brighton’s wildlife watch: an honourable shout out to the many ‘bench bugs’ we had to yank coats and jackets away from, and a healthy, stocked-for-winter looking worm. Christophe’s ‘bright’ idea to light our group photo with headtorches gave us a more sinister, ghostly energy than our normal group shots, but it’s not been too long since Halloween so I think we got away with it.

Weeds tackled and all equipment returned, a few of us ran over the road to the Sidewinder for some burritos and much-needed trail run chat.