Swiftly getting things done ✅

This wasn't our usual Wednesday night group run as we welcomed not just one, but three newbies: Alex, Damian and Louise came to claim their first good deed with GoodGym. Tonight was our special collaboration with Swifty Mondays running club.

Despite it raining all day, there was a dry window of opportunity, which happened to land on Wednesday evening. Our regular runners started to trickle into Old Spike in Peckham and as 18:45 arrived, Sam promptly went through his usual GG intro speech, but adding the 3 ways of getting involved with GoodGym for the newbies. Tonight, his ice-breaker snap-poll was to do with National Love Your Pet Day, which was on Tuesday. The options were: Cat, Dog, Other or Neither? There were a couple of votes for "Neither", one for "Other" (Goat) and "Dog" took the snap poll over "Cat" by a few votes. Sam even prepared an ice-breaker question that correlated with National Margarita Day (on Thursday) and he asked "Favourite cocktail or mocktail?"

Some found cocktails too sweet and opting for Gin & Tonic, there were a few saying "that cocktail with the mint..." Mojito, Manhattan and Long Island Ice Tea, but no one said Margarita until Rosalind said it at the pub.

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Thank you very mulch, Swifties

After a quick warm-up in the alleyway, Sam led the group through the backstreets of Peckham and up Chadwick Road (the hill) and down towards Denmark Hill. We made a couple of stops along the way to re-group with Maria backmarking (both ways). Arriving at Thorlands on time, we met Simon, Rosalind, Jo and Vic who opted to walk / cycle to the task.

After gathering our tools needed for the various tasks from the "Walled Garden", we proceed to the "Forest Garden" to put down the tools and split the group, but not before Sam could explain the vision of this brownfield site.

There were three tasks available:

• Lindy led a group to the mulch / woodchip depo to bring wheelbarrows of mulch for the beds where we will grow exotic trees. Alex, Damian, Louise and Rosalind joined Lindy.
• A team consisting of the "True Swifties" - Jo, Maria, Nelly and Vic concentrated on weeding the beds as they needed to prepare this in time before the mulch movers came with wheelbarrows of mulch.
• Alex, Daryl and Isaac continued with the woodchip path. They dug, flattened (by raking) and put a layer of cardboard and woodchip.
• Louise was our resident photographer for the night, but also helped with the weeding.

In 40 minutes, we managed to take out all the weeds, bring eight wheelbarrow's worth of mulch and continue with the woodchip path by over 2 - 3 metres! Well done team! Maybe the extra motivation came from those Taylor Swift songs...

With the clocks hitting 20:00, we quickly put back the tools before running off back to Old Spike for a quick stretch as most of us were up for a pint (or two) at The White Horse.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! A great collab night with the Swifties! It was lovely to meet you Alex, Damian and Louise. Hope we can do another session in the Spring/Summer. Finally, a massive thank you to Maria for backmarking on both runs. We're off to Salvation Army Camberwell Corps. next Wednesday to put on a second coat of paint in their entrance room, so why don't you join us?