A Bitter Litter Picking

On a freezing damp Tuesday evening 14 intrepid Goodgymers braved the elements to help clean the soggy streets of Hanover. After an enthusiastic warm up led by Helena (too cold to stay still), we ran down to the Alms Houses at the foot of Elm Grove and met with Councillor David Gibson for a spot of competitive clean up.

Armed with plastic bags and litter pickers, 4 of the group took on the jungle like gardens in front of the Alms Houses, the rest of the group split into teams of two and raced up the streets of Hanover to see who could fill their bags with the most rubbish and recycling in 20 mins, with the strict instruction that raiding kerb recycling boxes was cheating and would result in instant disqualification…as if we would!

We soon returned with bags bulging with detritus (including a couple of unopened bottles of beer!) and disposed of it in the recycling bins, it was pretty much neck and neck across the teams in terms of how much collected, about 15 bags in all. Everyone's a rubbish winner.

Task complete we headed over to the playground to get some fitness done. However as Tara started to brief us on the exercises we were joined by some rather inebriated chaps who despite Tara’s very diplomatic discouragement were inclined to be a drunken nuisance.

Not to be discouraged we headed to Victoria Gardens and got to work on squats, toe taps, lunges and sprints. Everyone worked hard and managed to stay upright despite the muddy conditions and we headed back to base happy, sweaty and breathless.

Back at YHA a squall of rain passed and the moon rose over Kemp Town as we did our final stretches. We grabbed our bags, said our good byes and headed off into the night, glad to know we’d done our bit to clean the not-so-mean streets of Brighton.