It's nice to do goodgym with friends, but sometimes solo is the one. There was a lovely bunch from the Friends of Kelsey Park but I mostly just stuck by myself this time, at one with the brambles.

The task was to remove brambles that were tangling themselves up with the other plants and taking them over a bit. So armed with a pair of seccateurs (never know how to spell that word), I got as close as I could to the base of the brambles, putting them off growing more.

It was suuuper satisfying yanking down the really long ones that had reached up around the tops of the trees and I actually only got spiked a couple of times.

It's a bloody beautiful park, even in the rain (see pic), and was so nice to get out in some greenery for an hour.

As is customary in the south eastern pocket of London known as Crystal Palace, the first GoodGym session of the year was a Christmas Tree Scavenger Hunt - clearing the streets, reducing waste going to landfill/incineration and saving others a job.

Our team of 5 were in high spirits to start with until no trees appeared...

Fortunately, a good 45 minutes after starting our mission, one tree presented itself to us!

And then minutes later, nestled inside someone's garden... another! We nicked it anyway and shifted them up the road to the tree-cycling spot in/surrounding Mayow Park where they will be churned up into woodchip. Nice.

Top work gang. See you next year?

After quite a rainy day, it turned out quite a warm evening, and the ground was made softer for our little digging session.

We jogged to the park, met two more Goodgymers and Millie there, and loaded up a barrow with spades and spring bulbs.

Working after dark can sometimes be hard on the wildlife (no worms were harmed, only disturbed and then placed back in the freshly dug holes) but it's a bonus that it being after squirrel bedtime means they're unlikely to immediately dig the bulbs back up for dinner.

With it being a mast year, too (super bumper acorn crop) likely due to the hot summer stressing many trees into panic mode - the squirrels are already delirious and overstocked for their winter.

We happily dug, chatted about slow worms, running events for next year, and dinner plans - and placed tulips and snowdrops in a couple of places in the park, in little clumps, where with this unpredictable weather they could come up in February.

How many GoodGymers does it take to put in a few hundred bulbs? Only 4 apparently.

After a short jog we arrived in a dark Cator Park where Millie and Linda had hundreds of bulbs ready to go underground.

Linda showed us the best technique and we got to work, losing holes in the darkness and having a nice chat.

Doing it at night means the squirrels can't see where to dig them up - perfect.

After emptying a couple of huge sacks of daffs and tulips and some other ones too, we called it a night.

Top stuff.

Three goodgymers made it to Bette park on Saturday morning to clear an area of weeds and ivy to make room for planting bulbs!

Unfortunately during the clearance, we stumbled across a hibernating been (or two)! Quite unusual to see a bee at this time of year. After a quick google of what to do after disturbing them, we covered them up as close to where we found them (apparently that’ll be near their food stores) and let everyone know not to disturb the area again or when planting bulbs!

Thanks team ❤️

Today's rain cleared in time for our task last night, yay.

Learning fun facts on the way (like Mark's friend played Elton John's hands playing the piano in 'Rocketman'!) we jogged up through Crystal Palace Park, wondering of 'StonePenge' will survive the park's remodelling the next year or so.

Arriving at the museum gates we met two more Goodgymers (Megan and Anna) and David, who was showing us round.

We set about our recurring task here, first weeding with trowels and hoes, then clearing soil down as far as possible to the water tower floor.

The soil when sieved (through a now-decrepit shopping trolley) makes it to various local gardening projects. And we WILL eventually get to the floor of the water tower all the way round, ready for its makeover.

We whiled away the time a little too well, me forgetting to check my watch so we ran over a bit, so absorbed in our work and the chat about the size of spiders this year.

Thanks all for turning out and doing this fantastic job :)