Last night, 14 Goodgymmers came out to help out at Galleywall Nature Reserve.

First to arrive at our meeting point, Old Spike, was Steve, who had been away recently. Whilst we caught up, newbie Chong arrived - and then nipped back out to check out a bike shop. Similarly, Isaac came dashing in, only to dash back out to do a quick lap of the Rye. Emma, Sarah, Nelly, Fi, Tim and Katy arrived and stayed 😅

Once everyone had arrived, I started welcome speech, and we gave a proper welcome to Chong. Our ice breaker question this week was related to the task... "Imagine we're going on a nature walk together, what do you see?". Tim started us off with a caterpillar, Chong gave some insight into his favourite sports team, and everyone else built a beautiful scene with a river, a waterfall, some salmon swimming in the river, some light filtering through the trees...🥹. It was a great team effort!

After a quick warm-up, we set off on our 4k run to Galleywall. I think it was the warmest day we've had this year, so it was a sweaty one!

When we arrived at Galleywall, James, Richard, Daryl and Andrada were already there. Eddie from Galleywall welcomed us and explained to us the task: we had to move some logs out of a ditch, and then put them back in a less haphazard manner, so that it would be safe for children.

Even though outcome was clear, we were not certain about how to achieve it initially. Steve came up with the idea of taking everything out the ditch, and then putting the big things back first, to give a stable base, so we rolled with that. We got into pairs and started to self-organise, and we completed the task surprisingly quickly.

Eddie came to inspect out work, and during this, he had the idea to dismantle some of the bug hotels so that people at the bus stop would be able to look through the "windows" to see into the nature reserve. After some discussion and experimentation, we opened up two windows.

At some point Daryl got separately picked to mow the grass.

Just as I started to worry that there may not be enough work for us, Eddie came round with laminated booklets which was a guided nature walk of the nature reserve. We split off into fours and off we went!

We finished at 8pm exactly to run/walk/cycle back to Peckham, perfect timing for our social at Skylarking. 🍻

Four of us went to St. Faiths to sort out the donations ready to be handed out to rough sleepers tomorrow.

We were a little surprised at the amount of women and children's clothes but sorted them dutifully. When Andrea arrived, all became clear, as we realised the rough sleepers and refugees donations had been mixed.

Never mind, we quickly sorted them out again and sent them on their way in the van..

Maria arrived slightly earlier, and with the help of Dylan, a new volunteer at SE5 Forum (and fresh Goodgymer), set up the gazebo and tables before Daryl arrived and helped with displaying all the products and freebies.

Another quick setup for the stall!

It was great to put up Old Spike Peckham and welcome back Sophie who has been in Australia for the past few months. It was also good to see Lucy who hadn't been around these past few weeks. As Maria, Isaac, Rosalind, Daryl, Paulin came in, they discussed about the precious six inches of top soil that is the life blood of humanity. Some deep stuff and quite fitting as our ice breaker snap poll had to do with Earth Day: if you had to go with one policy: clean the ocean of plastics, stop deforestation or embrace cleaner and sustainable energy, which one would you go for? As it hit 18:45, Sam got on with his usual speech and asked for his ice breaker question, he asked which charity people have run or would run for if they did the London Marathon?

In the snap-poll, most want to embrace cleaner and sustainable energy, a couple said clean the ocean and no one went for deforestation. For the marathon question, we had a variety of charities including GoodGym.

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Bath time

Opting for a warm up in the alleyway due to the route taking us out that way, Sam had to do a quick warm-up as the ice-breaker question took too long. With Maria backmarking, off the group went through the backstreets of Peckham/East Dulwich to arrive at East Dulwich station, through the park and the backroute to get to Sunray Avenue near North Dulwich. They had to push and run up the hill for the final part to make it to Denmark Hill Community Garden. Here they met Rose, her partner, Richard just arrived and shortly afterwards so too did Jo and Phil. After a quick introduction, Rose outlined the two main tasks. Firstly, to move three bathtubs out of the way to make space and room for the second task. The second task was to dig a trench a spade deep and a forearm wide.

We split into teams with the girls diving into moving the bath tubs as a group. Paulin, Sophie, Lucy and Rosalind took on the first bath tub finding it somewhat easier than it looked as these bathtubs were filled with soil. The others soon followed to move tub two and three, but Louise, Maria and Jo picked up the dutch hoe and shovels to make a start on the trench. With limited tools, each person took it in turn to help out dig this trench as we soon realised it would be harder than we thought as we couldn't dig deeper than 20 centimetres before encounting gravel and brick. We realised with 10 minutes left that we could only prepare as much as we could and opted to come back next Wednesday - splitting the group with one half going to Thorlands Gardens in Camberwell and the other coming back here.

All was not lost as we had the first HIIT session with Louise and Jo being the only ones joining in and right at the end, we were treated to fresh mint tea, which was a blessing as the night took a cold turn after such a promising sunny start.

After sipping down a warm cuppa, we ran down the hill down to Old Spike in no time and made it back for 20:30.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! Rose was really pleased that we made a start and happy that we can come back next Wednesday to finish the job. Thank you to Maria and Paulin for backmarking.

Quick work setting up SE5 stall on a sunny April morning 🤙🏼🤙🏼