5 of the team took part in Morden Parkrun this morning wearing their Goodgym t.shirts with pride to mark 1 year of Goodgym in Merton. Well done team and congratulations to Alex on your first parkrun.

Tonight we headed to Raynes Park Station to assist FORPS with a monumental task: shifting two bags of topsoil for their planters, along with some essential pruning.

We knew the topsoil challenge was steep - on previous visits it took ten people who could access the platform to shift one bag, in 30 mins! Tonight, with half the hands on the platform and the rest of the team helping outside, we had our work cut out!

Challenge accepted. Everyone flew into action, carrying bucket after heavy bucket, while keeping to safety protocols (no running etc), and avoiding disruption to passengers disembarking. Despite a huge effort and an extra ten minutes, we had to concede defeat with a small amount of soil remaining.

A massive welcome to Alia who completed her first mission, we hope to see you again soon.

After helping pack up we headed to the pub to drown our sorrows knowing we gave that topsoil our best shot.

Great work, team! We may have been defeated by the soil, but we definitely won the battle for community spirit, marking our one-year anniversary with cake and celebrations.

Last night our trusty crew tackled a truly rewarding task, proving once again that a little sweat and a lot of smiles can make a big difference. Our mission after running to the Methodist Church was to extract the sunflower seeds from the flower heads, retrieve the last tomatoes from the plants in the greenhouse, pulverise the sunflower stalks with a mallet (Jo particularly enjoyed this) and generally tidy and prepare the garden for the colder months. By the end of the evening everything was shipshape and there were heaps of green tomatoes ready to be transformed into chutney. Now that's something to relish.

This was a post-parkrun mission teaming up to support Merton Friends of the Earth with vital tree care in Morden Park. The windy weather guaranteed a physical workout as we dove into the saplings, carefully clearing the competing weeds, vines, and grass. The job was finished by applying a good layer of mulch to nourish and protect the young trees. Mission complete, followed by cozy coffee and chat with other volunteers before heading off having had a very active start to the weekend - well done team!