Our group run this week was flyering for Coco Collective which is a community garden in Bellingham, they also have a site in Catford. We were promoting their volunteer sessions and also their wellbeing sessions which started in April.

Welcome to Mo - your first group run was a long run so hopefully you join us next week for a short one to St Mary's Church!

When we arrived at the community garden, the first task was locating the flyers which was super easy after the last time when we had to find them in the pitch black garden having never been there before!!

We then ran to meet Marta at the designated flyering start point, only about 8 minutes later than I'd said...

We split into 2 groups: one coming with me and one with Steve. Armed with highlighted maps of the area, we went our opposite ways with the aim to meet back at the start point at 8pm.

100's of flyers delivered, all fingers in tact and hopefully we have spread the word about this wonderful community project!

I will admit it was further than I expected but everyone made it - well done!!

A small but mighty group of GoodGymers gathered to tackle the remaining woodchip at the Tiny Forest. Part of the group even gathered at a new start point and then met Linda at the Tiny Forest with all the tools.

The main task for the evening was to make the area around the benches look more inviting. We pulled up the weeds that we could and cut back the grass and any other weeds then covered them in a big layer of mulch to hopefully stop the weeds coming back through.

Hopefully the space will be more inviting for people walking through Ladywell Fields so they can sit and admire the growing saplings!

On Monday, we're heading to Catford to continue flyering for Coco Collective Community Garden.

This group run was a 2 task week and we had 12 wonderful GG-ers ready to tackle the litter at The Albany and the mulch at the Tiny Forest

We gathered outside Glass Mill and as I approached it was great to see a group forming after last week's bank holiday lowering our group run numbers. We split into groups and one group headed to the Tiny Forest guided by Steve and photographer for the evening Julian and the other group to The Albany with me.

The Tiny Forest team were joined by Linda and a couple of Tree Keepers and most importantly joined by Suki - our favourite Tiny Forest dog! There was lots of mulch to be moving to the main Tiny Forest (we covered the extension last week) and involved filling buckets and pouring those over the fence.

Meanwhile at The Albany....there was barely any litter!! That's never happened in the history of group runs at The Albany, usually its a satisfying clean up of all the cans and chicken shop wrappers that have blown in from the streets.

We did still fill 3 GIANT bin bags, when I say fill I mean to about 50% as they were so big I could fit in them and they got heavy quite quickly, with the litter, not with me in them! The litter we did find was described as level 10 litter i.e. nappies etc not pleasant - bring back the cans and chicken shop wrappers (although no litter at all would be encouraged)!

At both tasks it started to rain slightly then it started to pour down!! We made the decision to pack up our litter picking at the same time as the Tiny Forest text to say the rain was too much and they were heading back to Glass Mill.

We regrouped at Glass Mill and headed off for our social at the local, Guardian recommended Turkish restaurant. After some confusion over the booking which Marta handled, we were all seated and ready for a catch up and refuel.

This dedicated bunch weren't phased by the prospect of 2500 flyers...maybe we were still when we were down to 4 (hope your knee is feeling better Adam).

The first task of the evening was to find the community garden - ✅

The second task of the evening was to get in the community garden - ✅

The third task of the evening was to find the flyers hidden within the community garden - ✅ after me and Julian reading the instructions a couple of times and a paving slab falling on Julian's foot!

By then it was finally time to start flyering. We split into 2 groups and gave ourselves 25min to get as much flyering done as possible within a specific area on our maps (thanks for highlighting Oli). We then regrouped at the community garden to check how many leaflets we had left.

Restocked (or returning our optimistic pile of leaflets) and we headed back out for another 10min to tackle another area before it was time to head back to Glass Mill.

Well done Team! We are going to be covering another area in Catford to spread the word about the project at the end of April.