What a way to start January 2022! - 10 GoodGymers & 10 Christmas trees freshly delivered from the kerbside to the tree-cycling plant.

We kicked off at the Bridge House discussing our intentions for 2022 - some great goal setting from everyone 💥 before hitting the road and making our way through Sydenham, to Mayow Park.

Fir trees a jolly good felon

When we arrived there was already a pretty spectacular pile of trees but our goal was to make it bigger. It turns out that the local residents are actually quite good at dealing with their used trees, so it was a proper mission finding them...

Trees A Crowd

We split into 3 teams and got searching the nearby streets. After a pretty bleak start, word of Nick, Katy and Sam finding one gave us hope... Half an hour later we met back at the recycling point having picked up 10 trees between us!

Tree-mendous!

A cracking start to twen-tree twen-tree two! 💥🤪🎄

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Next Tuesday we're helping the wonderful friends of Alexandra Recreation Ground - they always have a fun task for us. Sign up here.

Fancy more tree hunting? Next Thursday we've got a starter session (everyone is welcome of course!) - click here.

Dayum it's getting chilly! But that didn't put off seven absolute heroes from hitting the pavements and running to do some good. 🏃‍🥶♂️

Shout out to Freddie for joining for his first GG Bromley run - great to have you along!

Tonight after sharing our weekend highlights, we took a different route to normal (no park warm up today!) heading up to the Triangle via a mostly steady incline... (and a little sprint up the sharpest incline) to one of St Christopher's Hospice's charity shops. St Christopher's is the OG hospice that decided to start actually caring for people who were dying and they continue to this day as one of the world's leading hospices. 🏆

We were going to help to sort stock, divvying into bags of good clothes, bad clothes, kids clothes, shoes and gift-aided items. Teresa and Susannah showed us the system and we got cracking, and found some fantastic pieces (see pics), from sequined dresses to some organic Scandi mushroom-covered baby clothes. Hannah seemed to take a liking to a fancy batman(?!) mask.

We did a solid hour, partly fueled by water and coke, and then hit the road for an elongated journey home.

Ace work gang! 💥

Teresa and Susannah were so pleased that we'd managed to make such a huge dent in their piles of donations. What a great use of a Monday evening! 👍👍

See you next TUESDAY - we'll be flyering because Santa Claus is coming to town! 🎅🏻 Sign up here.

Oh what a night

We were lucky enough to still have the warm weather from the weekend to greet us on Monday night as 16 eager runners turned up ready to #dogoodgetfit.

We begun the night as usual in the Arsenal hub where we discussed the night’s plan and Goodgym Olympics. Then we headed outside for a warm-up ready to jog the 2.5km down the road to the night’s task. This week Islington we’re off to Sunnyside Community Gardens. We’d been asked to come back and help them turn over their compost piles.

Many hands make light work

Paul had warned me that we might not finish this task on the night. However, the gang got stuck in straight away, including a couple who quite literally climbed into the compost piles and the task was finished in 5 minutes before we were due to leave. Their handy work included turning over a giant 3x2m wide by 1.5m high pile and a smaller pile of ready to spread compost. We also had the additional task of cutting up branches on a third compost pile with long telescopic bypass loppers.

After a really good arm workout, some very impressive compost piles created and a new boy band formed - we popped all the tools back in the shed and headed on our way back to base.

Once back at the stadium we went up the steps to do a group voted circuit session. We used the concert benches for different exercises station and rotated around in pairs. Each station length was dictated by how long one pair took to push each along a set distance.

Then for a final speed exercise and fun we played stuck in the mud with a difference - One could only release someone from the mud by doing 3 squat jumps with them. Then that just left us time to stretch out our well worked limbs.

Lovely stuff. Thanks for having me Islington.

PSB out.

16 GGers ran 5km and helped Freightliners City Farm with various jobs

On a cold but surprisingly beautiful evening we were off to do good and get fit. Welcome along to Sarah, Dan and Freddie whose first time it was last night - welcome along :)

In the news this week:

1. A huge well done to Alex whose 50th Good Deed it was last night! He has been doing good in York, Islington and Harringey and loves the physical ones.
2. GoodGym Newcastle had it's first run last night, tell your geordie friends and get them along :)

Well last night was a bit busier in the Arsenal Hub than normal, the Youth FA Cup Semi-Final was on at the Emirates and there were lots of people around, some flagbearers, others not. Interesting to see it all happening around us. After a quick warm up we headed past the Emirates and over to Highbury Fields for a lap before we headed to Freightliners City Farm.

Muckers!

Upon arrival I for one was surprised and elated that how big the farm was and all the stuff going on! I've only been to the farm in the dark and the depths of winter so haven't seen any of the beautiful gardens, various animals and outdoor areas. Liz explained our tasks for the evening were to pull up some decking, shovel some muck and do some gardening.

Task Muck: A team of five shovelled and forked the muck at the back to the front of the pen, this makes it accessible for use the farm. Despite wearing wellies and gloves several people nearly fell into the rising mountains of POO! Various tag lines for Green Party Candidate and mucker Ernie were discussed... it kept the muck morale high...

Weed Time: Frances, Steve and Alison trimmed the grass, cut back weeds and tackled nettles in the beautiful gardens of the farm. They made a big difference in the lush green of the shrubby.

Decking doers: The rest of the group armed with various tools pulled up an area of old decking which is going to recycled on site or off. Aidan and Graham got the fun job of sawing the bigger pieces down to size!

Fitness Sunset

After a cuddle with the animals we said good bye to Liz and headed into the sunset. Once we arrived at Highbury Fields we got going with our fitness session, using a semi-circle of trees as our route - x3 90 seconds with the final 30 seconds at 5km pace! Everyone did amazingly and got muck coloured bourbons as a reward ;)

Next week we are off to help Thornhill Square Gardens, another place I am looking forward to seeing in the light! Sign up here.

PB out.