Operation ‘clear up’ for Rotary Club at Evolution, Battersea. Cleaning up and sorting after the Christmas Day party for the elderly who were apparently working the dance floor!

Christmas cheer was high for the last group run of the year to Mortlake where Achieving for Children have their Powerstation Youth Centre, managed by the brilliant Danielle who always provides a wide variety of tasks to help with the centre.

Following a steady 4km run from Richmond, the group was very happy to hear the help needed this time was to bake cupcakes for a football tournament taking place later in the week! Using a plant-based egg substitute that had been donated by City Harvest, the group created five trays of cakes and left them baking as they ran back off into the night!

Tonight was not only about one of our favourite tasks of the year and welcoming Nadine to GoodGym for the first time, but about celebrating Adam reaching a phenomenal 250 tasks! The evening started at our run meet-point in Richmond where Adam was adorned with the ceremonial cape, given a card with lovely messages from the group and a warm-up was led involving a lot of his signature move: double thumbs up!!

A lovely steady group run along the river took us to Lynde House Care Home where task owner Gitana had two Christmas trees to put up, many balls of lights, four reindeer to build, a light-up snowman and a lot of tangled baubles! The home was already well-decorated inside which made for a lovely festive welcome as we walked through to the gardens.

An hour later, the lights were all on and the garden looked wonderful! Double thumbs up all round before the final run home!

GoodGym Richmond’s Monday 11th November Group Run was a ‘second Monday’ task at our sponsored plots in Buccleuch Gardens.

Despite the cold and the dark evening we got a huge amount done: repatriating fencing; sweeping cleaning and cobweb dusting in the Arcade; strengthening the ‘twiggy barricades’; weeding and leaf removal on and around the Arcade lawns.

However the evening was really about celebrating Ken’s 100th ‘official’ GG Good Deed, although we know he has really done many more.

And we also salute his incredible input as a task provider to GG Richmond, inviting us to help with improving Petersham Common and teaching us about bats, hedge and fence building , horse troughs, planting, drainage, ecology, woodland management, haloing and so much more.

So we salute Ken Mackenzie. Environmental hero . Richmond’s Green king.

Starting at Tap Tavern, Jp celebrated his 600th task, an additional 100 tasks from his milestone 500 in just 11 months!

Beyond the bright lights of Richmond, an intrepid group of GoodGymmers headed off into the dark lands of Petersham to the hidden lair of Petersham and Ham Sea Scouts.

One pair set about emptying a broken trug of soil, one pair helped to level ground to put slabs down for the wheelie bins, and the remaining people got stuck in to a task to filter the ash from the huge bonfire and remove any metal nails that were in the palettes that were burned! A good team task that had everyone doing their bit to get the job done and keep fit while we did it!

The evening ended as the temperature dropped quickly and the group ran back towards the high street and home!