A fantastic four met Sharon at Ripley Arts Centre this morning to scrub some windows clean. It’s a place with an interesting history and lots going on, including music groups, art classes, poetry and filmmaking. It was almost shut down last year so it’s good to see it’s now still going.

We devised our respective strategies for cleaning the windows and set to work, also using various tactics/ladders to reach the higher parts of the windows. The result was pretty shiny and satisfying! At the end we even had a special tour of the building, learning about the musical family that once lived here and left their marks (literally) in the brickwork…

Snow way?!

Two unexpected things tonight:

SNOW, or some blossom that looked like snow, and a LIZARD loose in Cator Park. We didn’t see it but we were shown pics. Wild.

Before all that excitement, we met at the bridge house, named ourselves, partially numbered, and told everyone our favourite races/future races.

We jogged a cool 2-3km to the park via the snow to meet Gill, Lou and Ian aka some of the friends of Cator and Alexandra parks for some Tiny Forest weeding, mulching and watering of the thirsty trees.

Lou showed us a pic of the lizard, which someone probably let loose. No one saw it.

300 trees, 1000 weeds and several wheelbarrows of mulch later and we were done. Nice one everyone 🦎

Emergency rescue efforts were needed to save a new hedgerow in Ladywell Fields when, after weeks with no rain, the young trees were starting to wilt. A shout-out to park volunteers, neighbours and GoodGymers resulted in a valiant team assembled with buckets and Sunday morning energy to haul water from the River Ravensbourne and tip it onto dry ground around the thirsty saplings. This amazing work paid off… a few days later, new leafy growth was already beginning to appear on the branches of the hedgerow. And we even had a bit of welcome wet weather!

One thing I love about goodgym is how many skills I've picked up along the way.

I've learned how to fit loft insulation in a church, how to plant and look after trees to ensure they survive, and improved my flatpack furniture assembly skills (from terrible instructions).

Today I (mostly) single-handedly made a planter from some wooden sleepers. I had some good advice from Bromley Mencap's facilities person Michelle, and Caroline from the charity provided her steady hands and I sawed and connected the pieces together. Another skill for the collection.

Forgot to take a pic, so here's a birdbox I made (with some of those transferable skills...)

Tonight we were back at Brunel's old water tower, or what's left of it at least... There are grand plans to make it a part of the Crystal Palace museum story, but first it needs emptying out, which is where we come in! We've been removing weeds, soil, rubble and rubbish and are making steady progress.

First up, we met at the Bridge House (shout out to Jess for joining for the first time 🙌) and had a super windy route up through the park, trying to not get hit by the bike race...

At the tower, our tools were nicely prepped by David and we got straight to work, this time focusing on the entrance which had become overgrown. Clare, James and Fi were also building a fab structure of bricks (rather than a pile...) in order to access some of the plant roots.

By the end, team entrance and team brick had made a really big difference, in such a short space of time!

Nicely done everyone - a well deserved beverage at the pub 🥂

Cheers for the before & after shots Catherine!