“BUY - FIX - RIDE - DONATE YOUR BIKE” is the strapline of Brighton Bike Hub, a volunteer-led community bike workshop open five days a week for anyone to drop in and get help repairing their bike. Their mission is reducing wastage of abandoned bikes and enabling members of the community to access affordable cycling.

“RUN - FIX – RIDE”😊 is what 10 Brighton GoodGymers did yesterday at our group session at the Brighton Bike Hub. We ran and cycled to the Bike Hub East workshop in the Big Lemon bus yard, not open to the public, where there is a mountain of bikes needing lots of TLC. Paired for mechanical action, our task was dismantling old and rusty bikes and recover all the good parts that can be used to refurbish other bikes and make them suitable for riding. The hub offers to help people fix, maintain and get their bikes back on the road for free. Euan was tempted to donate his bike but then convinced to get it fixed. Let’s see if he will show up at our next session on the two wheels 😊.

We fully enjoyed the session at Bike Hub and welcomed Christophe, who recently moved to Brighton from GoodGym London. Let’s keep getting active together at our next GoodGym Brighton’s sessions.

Worth remembering that the Bike Hub runs regularly monthly free cycle maintenance sessions as part of Cycling UK’s Big Bike Revival, and NEW! Bikeability Adult Cycle Training. You can book HERE

Change (the garden) Grow (some vegetables) Life (enjoy it)

That’s what eight GoodGymers did this week, at Change Grow Life in Richmond House. We removed bind weeds and brambles to shape the ground of what will become a green oasis for gardening activities and growing vegetables.

Change Grow Live (CGL) offers support services to help people make positive changes in their lives, including help with substance misuse, mental health, and social challenges. They also have a gardening project where they are creating a new garden space, potentially aimed at providing therapeutic or social support through gardening as a tool to help people make positive changes in their lives. This could involve creating new garden spaces, growing vegetables, offering gardening activities as part of their support programs, or collaborating with other organizations to promote gardening for wellbeing.

With this social mission GoodGym Brighton also helped CGL to get ready for the memorial service that they hold annually on National Remembrance Day, which is the last Friday in July, to honour those who have lost their lives to drug and alcohol addiction. In 2025, this falls on July 25th. The garden might not be fully ready by then, but it shows some flourishing plants that were hidden by the brambles until now.

This was a very satisfying social mission!

"The bindweed roots pierce down/ Deeper than men do lie" (Walter de la Mare)

Following an already legendary mission at The Bevy which saw the gang split into idyllic orchard/ pungent backyard areas resonant of heaven/ hell, this week GoodGym Brighton looked forward to all the carefree associations that a bed of roses might suggest in sunny Portslade. However, the latest challenge was no walkover, instead the sisyphean task of removing bindweed, whose rope-like roots can plunge 4m deep, from an attractive rose plot in local open-space gem Vale Park.

No number of hurdles, including sharp thorns, stinging nettles and even an errant deadly nightshade, could deter the vigour of the GoodGym gang's gardening or dim the volume of its high-tempo zeitgeisty chatter. Lucy, from Friends of Vale Park, heralded the group 'angels' and bestowed ice pops in orange, lemon and pink flavours. Meanwhile, the group applauded Olivia's recent milestone of 50 good deeds, and finally celebrated with a collective vertical leap, appropriate in a week when GoodGym founder Ivo Gormley is featuring at a B2B event called Elevate, exploring the link between "physical activity, community connection, and climate action".

Friends of Vale Park is a recently-formed community organisation in Portslade, keen to improve and use the park for the benefit of the local neighbourhood and residents. Formerly a hazardous flint pit and training ground for soldiers in WW1, Vale Park is now a popular leafy space with outdoor exercise facilities, scout hut and book swap chest, and events run by the Friends include an Easter egg hunt, a pumpkin carving workshop and picnics in the park.