Wednesday saw 5 Good Gymers arrive at a surprisingly sunny Charlton House for our weekly group run. Tonight, we were off to Brooklands Primary School, a lovely little school with a big pile of soil to move. It was a long run so after some short formalities off we set, through Charlton and Kidbrooke and over the edge of the heath to the school. On arriving we made sure we all showed our best sides as Nadirah and her team were patiently waiting for us to continue creating their Good Gym documentary opus.

And so to the task, having moved a huge quantity of woodchip the last time, tonight it was time to move a large quantity of soil to the raised beds. Wheelbarrows and tools, both adult and child size, were assigned and most of the group started on the soil, with one person taking a bit of time to remove the weeds from the bed. The production line was hyper-efficient and, before you could say “I’m ready for my close-up”, the pile was soon shrinking. And despite the hard work some of us still had time to answer questions from the film team relating to our Good Gym experiences. After half an hour we were all done, we said our goodbyes to the file crew and ran off into the sunset.

This morning 10 of us gathered, with four mini litter pickers in tow, to join the Friends of Woolwich Common for their monthly litter pick. Such is the GoodGym community that several of us bumped into each other in Charlton Park - on that note, special welcome back to Ibrahim on your third task in a week! Seems like someone's got the GoodGym bug!

After gathering all the necessary equipment, we all headed off to different parts of the common, filling lots of bags of rubbish and a couple of dumped chairs and lots of chats along the way. Thanks to Robyn for sharing her snacks at the end! And to Ashton for pumping up my running buggy tyres. No excuse now!

On Wednesday we're back at Brooklands School for more soil shifting.

Until next time 😊

Rachel

I signed in at the Felix project, Towner Hamlets 10:50am in the morning and we signed out together with one of the lady from GoodGym at 2:45pm. As afar as am concerned there is know issues at place of workday. Thanks

Wednesday was no ordinary session. Firstly we had two newbies join us, big welcome to Ibrahim and Bobby - it was great to have you along!

Nadirah brought her team of students to film their documentary on an interesting run club- thanks for picking us!

After a quick interview, we introduced ourselves and shared our best binge worthy shows (books for those who don't watch much telly) and then did a little warm up and headed off for our run. We did feel rather important, with Nadirah sprinting ahead to get some action shots of us all. Now we know what it's like to be chased by paparazzi.

At the garden, Annie got us to task, with Robert and Ibrahim watering the trees. Shout out to Sarah for managing to open the padlock, we wouldn't have got far without the hose! The rest of us got to work weeding and cutting back the grass while chatting away and the crew filmed the lot. A lovely evening in nature and a good reminder of the positive impact of exercise, community and doing good- it does us so much good too!

After a group pic, Bobby headed back with Annie to take the wheely bin back and the rest of us headed back to Charlton House for a little stretch and a few shots of us walking away at the end of the session.

Well done team. It makes such a difference for 10 of us to do a load of work at the garden and Annie's always so grateful.

Next weds we're back at Charlton house for a run to Brooklands to do more soil shifting!

Until next time,

Rachel