A small but mighty team from GoodGym Crystal Palace headed over to Alexandra Rec tonight to help out Millie from the Friends of Cator Park and Alexandra Rec.

Our mission? To help prepare the railings around the playground for a fresh coat of paint by removing the old, flaky layers that had seen better days. Armed with wire brushes, safety goggles and plenty of elbow grease, we made decent progress and got a good arm workout in the process. Check out Mark's cool video of the task here!

Thanks to everyone who came out!

Lots of litter picking happened in Lewisham over the weekend.

Adi was making a difference in Sydenham's Mayow Park early on Saturday morning and managed to take a lovely photograph of a young fox at the same time.

Paul went backwards in Deptford's Brookmill Park late on Saturday afternoon, starting at the point he usually finishes. It took a bit longer than his normal Friday morning picks as he was stopped by several park users, getting positive feedback and he explained about who GoodGym are, and what we do. There was more litter this week as one of the secluded drinking spots was full of bottles and cans.

The usual Lewisham duo of Adi and Paul were busy litterpicking in parks that were messier than normal. Adi was in Sydenham's Mayow Park enjoying early sun; Paul was just over the borough boundary in Southwark Park where he met up with friends from Green Runners for a post-parkrun pick.

An almost perfect a-litter-ation .... Both Adi and Paul were lucky with the weather whilst litterpicking in Lewisham parks - Adi enjoyed glorious early Saturday sun in Sydenham's Mayow Park making sure that the park was litter free; Paul had sun too on Friday morning in Deptford's Brookmill Park watching egrets, herons, coots and mallards as he litter picked alongside the River Ravensbourne.

For this week’s task we returned to one of our longstanding tasks, Alexandra Recreation Ground, and their current project to repaint the metal fence that extends around the children’s play area. Last year we helped scrape the paint off the Alexandra Road side of the fence before the park’s Friends group repainted it, and this year they’re doing the Maitland Road side.

The GoodGym group met at the Bridge House before we took the short run along the High Street, into Penge Lane and under the railway bridge, then up Parish Lane to meet Millie.

She doled out wire brushes and we got to work, scraping off old paint and lichen. 40 minutes of work got the fence looking less flakey - a great start to this round of work.