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.

It seemed like the end of the summer holidays as we had 17 GoodGymers sign up and come for our group run tonight. Andrada, Daryl, Fi, Lindy, Maria, Nelly, Paulin, Rosalind, Steve. Once everyone had arrived, Sam talked through some changes happening at GoodGym Southwark after his time is up before continuing with his usual speech.

Tonight's ice breaker question, Sam asked everyone to think of their favourite beach as it would be National Beach Day on Friday. Yet, everyone didn't answer the question until we arrived at Salvation Army Camberwell Corps.

We had British beaches, Mexican, Greek, Indonesian, Icelandic and Thai.

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Cleaning frenzy

Our last visit to Salvation Army Camberwell Corps. was in May, so Valentina was happy to see us as we met up with her, Mikhail, Elena and Jessie who ran to the task. After going through our list of beaches, Valentina had 4 jobs for us tonight. The first group with Steve, Lindy, Rosalind and Isaac had to clean and oil the newly donated chairs. As the other groups:

• Daryl, Alex, Andrada, Gemma helped more donations from a cupboard to the newly installed donation bin outside before helping the next team.

• Paulin, Fi, Maria, Jessie and Sam started on the disinfecting and cleaning the baby toys.

• Nelly, Nathan and Elena were tasked with the outside activities which included window cleaning and sweeping.

As we busily cleaned in various ways, the time ticked towards 19:55 as Sam called "time" knowing that it would take 5 minutes to pack up and take a group photo. Some of us were up for a pint after the run, so as we headed back we made our way to The Old Nags Head.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! Valentina is always happy to have our help and can't wait to have us back in October! Thank you to Mikhail for taking the photos and to Maria for backmarking the runs.