A Sunny run and some serious shovelling: GoodGym gets Grounded 🌞🏃🌱

It was one of those evenings yesterday — the kind where the sun’s shining, the city is buzzing, and the pavements stretch out before us. We gathered by Temple Station to greet some new faces - welcome to the group Emily and Siobhan to your first session! Lovely to have you join us. After a quick warm up we took off along the river, weaving between after-work revellers spilling onto the Embankment, and soaking up every golden ray.

Our destination was a community garden with a view so iconic it could distract even the most focused of GoodGymmers. Tower Bridge at golden hour? You don't get much better than that. We didn't have too much time to admire the view though— there was work to be done!

We arrived to find the ever-enthusiastic team already grafting away, tools at the ready, and preparing for their reinforcements (us) to jump in. Under the guidance of Grounded — a brilliant social enterprise using gardening as ecotherapy — our job was to help transform a neglected patch into a green oasis of calm and healing for the city’s residents.

We split into teams with some of us lugging bags of compost up the stairs, others transporting around sacks of Leca (clay pebbles good for drainage, although it could also pass as the name of an Indie band from the 90s), while the rest of us found ourselves elbows-deep in soil emptying old beds before setting up a brand-new irrigation system. The heat of the evening just highlighted how important watering is!

It was sweaty work, but spirits were high - the combination of transforming a garden and seeing the progress already being made was inspiring.

If that wasn't enough of a full body workout we just had time to squeeze in a fitness blast to finish, this time a strength workout with a twist. While one of us ran a lap around the garden in the stopwatch role, the rest of us got stuck into push-ups, planks and tricep dips. Thankfully, nobody pulled the “I’m just walking this lap” trick, and we even inspired a few people sitting nearby to join in — next time we'll get them to help carry the bags of leca too! Anyone else got shaky arms today or is that just me?

All that was left was the run back, with the skyline lit up like a movie set. After all that hard graft, it never looked more beautiful.

Well done everyone — you smashed it. Next week, we’re heading to the oldest youth club in the world - see you there!

A dash through the sun to help with Ms S' garden. Weeding sycamore saplings, goose grass and stinging nettles from between the slabs and getting rid of bind weed. We agreed to leave a bit of garden wilder and Ms S is a fan of foxes and wildlife in general. She also suggested I become vegan. Measured the window as requested, 143cm. All went well apart from I forgot to take an after pic.

Great shift at Borough food cooperative, mainly sorting carrots for tomorrows opening between, off, edible and good condition. Great to meet lots of other friendly volunteers but was not to meet Brenda who was working on other jobs. Borough Food Cooperative such a well run org, thanks to Clive for making it so welcoming and positive 😃😃

A team of at least a dozen goodgymers (I lost count) came to help out the lovely Janet and Eileen at Cranbook Community Food Garden. Thanks to the clocks going forward we were treated to some actual daylight for the first time in ages. Shout-out to John for reminding me to take some photos to prove that we weren't slacking off in Laura's absence.

We split off into mini groups, each with a dedicated task. Some performed quality control checks on folding tables, keeping the good ones and retiring the rest. Others sorted out sheds at the back, clearing out any rubbish. Litter and leaves (oh the leaves) were were picked/raked/bagged up. Special mention goes to the new rake sourced by Janet which was red and white - a homage to our Goodgym colours perhaps? Or most probably, just a rake.

By the end of the task, the impact of a hard-working group of Goodgymers was clear with Eileen showing her appreciation by bestowing a bar of chocolate on us (thanks Eileen!)

We parted ways (without a stretch this time) having all enjoyed an evening in fine company.

Shout outs to:

• Vidur and Jason on their first Goodgym task. A very warm welcome to you both!
• Ilana on her 50th task. Congratulations!

Until next time...