Paint, No Sunshine, Then Weeds Gone.

If I had a favourite number, it would be 13, which is the number of fantastic GoodGymers we had at our session last night.

We kicked off in the Bridge House, named ourselves and shared favourite beverages for a warm day and promptly hit the road. Our task(s) were at the lovely Betts Park,

🎨 Bringing back some life to a few old raised beds

🌱 Weeding between the cracks in the play area and

✂️ Trimming back a few overgrown branches.

We met Alan from the Friends of Betts Park who gave us a quick history lesson on the Croydon Canal (the last stretch of canal in south London 🥲) and grabbed all our necessary tools.

Team DIY (aka Sandra and Millie) screwed a couple of dislodged planks back onto one of the raised beds. Team Paint (aka Hannah, Fiona, Shauna, Meg, Angela and Egle) were turning the beds a deep shade of green, Team Trim (aka me and Harry) cut back a few branches overhanging the paths before helping out Team Weed (aka Cat, Catherine and Alex) with eeking out a load of grass and weeds that had been growing between the tarmac in the play area. And somewhere in there, we managed to cart over a load of soil (fresh from Crystal Palace Museum's water tower!) and empty it into the beds.

The play area looks so much neater now ("Are you guys making the park look nicer? Do you get paid for that?", said the teenager), the paths are a bit safer, and the raised beds are finally ready to have some herbs and veg growing in them again!

Amazing work team. And a few km and plenty of leg exercises to boot. 👌