27 GoodGymers ran between 3-5km to paint and garden.

After tropical weather recently the sun was shining and the evening was set for doing good. We collected together with the news this week:

• Polly has hit 50 Good Deeds and earned her black t-shirt!
• Everyone did amazingly at Run Hackney on Sunday - well done!
• There are DRINKS tonight at the Joker of Penton Street, come along
• Also GoodGym Croydon starts next week, tell your Croydon friends and get them to support!

We had two tasks again this week. Firstly we were continuing painting for Kentish Town Tenants Association, they are a community group who help improve the lives of those living locally, especially those who are elderly and isolated. Secondly we did some gardening at Cecil Sharp House, this is proclaimed as the home of English folk music and does lovely events from ceilidhs to weddings which require the grounds to be tidied.

Home of English Folk

After an active warm up and some talk about socket to pocket the group split and we headed off in opposite directions to #DoGood and #GetFit.

Cecil Sharp House Report:

After a lovely 1 mile run through the streets of Camden we arrived at the spectacular Cecil Sharp House to do some active weeding and gardening. We'll be heading to this task monthly for the rest of the year to help keep the place ready for events and community work.

Interesting tools

When we met the task owner Susannah she explained the importance of having us come along and already expressed gratitude for us being there. There was orange & blackcurrant squash on offer before picking various tools, including some interesting ones! The team scraped, weeded and swept the front and back gardens. Lucia seemed addicted to sweeping continuously falling blossom, Steve seemed to have lots of garden chat as always and George got the technique of using the interesting tool down. We stayed until the task was done with everything looking lovely and tidy. Well done everyone!

Jess's Painting report:

The other group sprinted off to help the Tenants Association finish painting fences for local residents. We’d made a great start last week, and Vaughan was happy to see us again.

Black paint beard

After a nice run there we got to work quickly, sprucing up the shabby fences with a slick coat of shiny black paint. Some of the group managed to give themselves a new coat of paint too - special mentions to Jackie for her very thoroughly painted arms, and John who accidentally (we think) gave himself a rather striking black paint beard.

Laurence Llewelyn Bowen has nothing on us.

Shout out to the many snails and other insects we came across - hope they’re enjoying their surprise new home makeover. Laurence Llewelyn Bowen has nothing on us.

Finally our time was up, and after a quick scrub with white spirit for some of the paintier members of the group, and a refreshing round of orange juices kindly provided by Vaughan, we sped back through Kentish Town to the community centre, just in time for PB’s stretch session.

As always brilliant work everyone! See you next week, we'll be going to Skip Garden and Alara, sign up here.

Remember drinks tonight and our taskforce member Frances is organising a 10 mile trail race in July, go along and enjoy the picnic afterwards.

PB out.

3.5km for a sunset bonfire, weeding and wood cracking.

We welcomed a couple more new faces to the GG Southwark fold tonight and some old faces that we'd missed. After a quick GG intro, we set off up the familiar hill of Chadwick Road to Grove Park Allotments and to meet Lizzie. She already had a good fire going and lots of different tasks for us to get stuck into.

The optional task of bursting through the bonfire smoke in a Stars in their eyes manner may have occurred more than once.

(Watch this space for a karaoke social!) We were weeding the paths to widen them for wheelchair access, watering plants and clearing dead wood either into the fire or to dry for one of the allotment users wood burner. Sorting the thorny bits from the non-thorny bits was a bit haphazard but we survived relatively unscathed.

Once we'd finished up, it was another skipping warm up special as we made our way to Warwick Park for some glute work to finish off the session.

Hopping, clam walks and frog leaps were the order of the evening. This, in hindsight, was a little mean given two of our group had spent the previous days travelling back to the UK after epic trips. Nonetheless, the drills were finished with finesse and we ambled back in the final light of the day. Lovely.

What a glorious evening!

10 runners met in the dusk sunshine at the top of the very busy Peckham Rye to run a short run to get our hands dirty at Cossall Park.

After a warm up with a variety of different jumps whilst giving a mini intro, we set off in a totally different direction to Cossall Park to help the lovely Jaki and Allen. They manage the community grow beds which are built into the local park, engaging school children, scouts and local residents in outdoor activity and growing veg and plants. They also look after nearby Kirkwood Nature Reserve which they reclaimed which was an overgrown den used as a sharps dumping ground and a dog toilet.

It was lovely to see what they've been up to and we got set to work weeding in 3 areas with some wonderful gardening tools. With the radio playing, local kids playing near and a beautiful sunset to boot, we made light work of the weeding despite finding lots of hidden mini potatoes and lots of impressively long worms.

Jaki was pretty pleased with how much we had gotten through and had the orange squash ready for us once we'd finished. Deepak had to be torn away from turning earth so we may have to revisit or continue the gardening run (ha) this spring. Matt also had his nettle cuttings ready to brave making nettle risotto - we have a very practical group here in Southwark!

We said our goodbyes to the lovely couple but not yet to the park... when we arrived, it was clear that the play area could been used for a bit of fun so Jo set up a mini obstacle ... plank, sideways bear crawls, squats on the most unstable platform and a run through the rope gauntlet. The squats were pretty tricky but everyone survived (don't panic headoffice!) and finished by hanging off another implement and realising how difficult chin ups were.

Warmed up and a bit sweaty from the obstacle, we ran the short distance home at a quick pace, fuelled by squash and sunshine. If that's not a perfect Wednesday evening...