We had our first properly dark task of the season tonight as we helped Millie and the Friends of Cator Park neaten up foliage ahead of the annual Paws in the Park competition on Sunday. Work lights set up, Millie taught us how to scallop the bramble edge so that more of the path was accessible but we still left enough greenery for the birds and insects.

It was Elna's first task and she got stuck in with the shears straight away. We were also joined mid-way through the task by Millie's schnauzers who did a great job of supervising.

Nice job all!

Inspired by shopping for a water butt, tonight's dilemma of the day was "What's your favourite vessel for drinking liquid?" It turns out everyone has a very specific mug, broken bottle or tankard, unless you're James for whom it's much more important that the liquid itself delivers after a tough week of work 🍷 Fair enough!

We split into two cohorts to get to our task - Cat led a longer run with Stephen as trusty backmarker, whilst Charlie and I took a stroll!

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Bark in the Dark...

Our task was at Cator Park, filling up barrows and buckets with woodchip at one end and ferrying it over to the new Tiny Forest at the other end. Maybe we should actually install a boat to carry it along the stream?

In what was apparently the final mulch run of the year, we got a solid 10+ barrows-full from the pile to the tiny trees.

The wee saplings will be much better protected from competing weeds now that it's knee deep in woodchip!

Ace work team, and don't forget to bring head torches next week 💡

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NEW LOCATION! 🎉 We headed to Churchfields Recreation Ground in west Beckenham for this session to meet Amanda, who leads a group aiming to make the park look a little nicer. Starting out from Bridge House, we first of all did our intros - this week's question, Which is your favourite bank holiday? (since we missed our Group Run last week). We had a nice spread - Easter, August Bank Holiday, May!

We took off east, unusually for us, and explored some new streets in Penge, crossing over Maple Road and the tram line to get to Churchfields Road, completing a cool 2.1km in the muggy evening air.

Amanda had a dream that the entrance to the park would look a lot more inviting with neatly edged paths, and the playground would be free of litter. GoodGym Bromley were only happy to make this dream come true, so we picked up tools from her well organised cart and got to work.

Fiona, James, David and I edged some paths, while Millie and Molly collected litter, with Catherine and Hannah tackling weeds using trowels.

As the light drew and the clock struck 8, we tidied up and enjoyed some flapjacks kindly provided for our hosts, then heading back via the main road to Bridge House for another 2km on the board.

Amanda was super pleased with our help and we're sure to return to Churchfields soon ❤️

Well it was an hedgucation for me tonight as it was my first time leading a group run without Mark's supervision but luckily I had 12 awesome GoodGymmers to rely on for moral support. After a run down of our favourite ice creams (why do other countries always have cooler flavours than the UK?!) we made our way to Alexandra Recreation Ground to meet Linda and the other Friends of the Parks volunteers.

Big shout out to Hannah for leading the walking group, Stephen for backmarking the runners and Jing who was attending her first session and bravely accepted the challenge of running the long way round up the hill to the task!

Once we got to the park, Gill and Linda had us pulling out weeds that were diverting nutrients from the hedge saplings planted earlier in the year. Many hands made light work of this task and we had cleared most of the bed within 40 minutes before taking the shorter route back to the Bridge House for some post-run stretches.

Nice work team!