13 GoodGymers helped tackle a bed of nettles in Fulham Palace Gardens

On a rather damp and grey Saturday morning, 13 wonderful GoodGymers met in Bishop's Park to lend some volunteer power in Fulham Palace gardens. A few had joined following another big and busy, Fulham Palace parkrun, while others had run, walked and cycled to our meeting point at the Bothy in Fulham Palace gardens - the shelter used to store all the gardening tools at Fulham Palace.

Too much of a good sting

One of the Fulham Palace Trust volunteers, Chris welcomed the group at the Bothy and explained today's task was to remove some nettles for composting. The GoodGym team wheeled across the wheelbarrows filled with shears, forks and spades to the very nettly part of Fulham Palace gardens where the shear size of the task was revealed.

Chris explained that the nettles, 'urtica crescet myrtus' in Latin, spread and grow quickly and were now overruning the area and needed to be removed. They needed to be dug up at their roots and then cut down in the large gardening bags so that they could be composted on a bed that reached around 50 degrees!

Everyone tooled up and began the battle against the nettles. Luckily for us, Matt 'in a hat' Nash for whom it never rains on a GoodGym task...and so it appeared to be the case again as the weather man changed the rain to beautiful sunshine!

Shear brilliance

Katie, Matt, Jade, Hannah and Jenny did a chop notch job in chopping all the nettles that were being dug up ✂️.

The digger picture

Aine, Analise, Anthony, Annabel and Drummond made the nettle removal look like a fork in the woods as they all efficiently removed and shuttled across the dug up nettles to the large gardening bags.

Rolling with it

As Tom, Matt and Chris worked on a wonderful roll of nettles as they went the roll nine yards with Chris approving of it with a celebratory jump.

Pogo a-go-go!

Beth swapped a fork for a spade and used it very much like a pogo stick in order to break through some tough and thick roots that still remained.

They spade this one up

In removing one tiny nettle, the mightiest of them all, Katie had managed to bend her shears so tried a variety of things to bend them back...she tried standing them, bending them against a tree and then asked Tom to help with the force of a few spade hits...

...and eventually they were back working! Hooray! 🙌

A nettle of honour

After 90 minutes of hard graft that tested our nettle the team had filled up 2 large gardening bags full of chopped up nettles. Check out the transformation...

Thank you all very much for coming along and for all your efforts tackling the nettles!

It was absolutely fabulous to welcome some new faces to GoodGym and some tourists from Croydon and Lambeth. Hopefully see you all again soon 😊.

GoodGym will be helping out the Fulham Palace Trust volunteers on the last Saturday of every month with a variety of tasks! Sign up for March's session here.

Despite a last minute cancellation, we had TWO tasks on offer.

Nicky lead the run to option one: ☝️

Our group of excellent group of GoodGymmers braved the cold to run to the beloved Remakery. After a quick introduction to the brilliant work they do there, reusing and upcycling materials into furniture/sculptures etc, our first challenge was to divide into three groups - one large, one medium, one small.

Two groups were sweeping and hoovering the woodwork workshops. Armed with a Henry Hoover and very attractive face masks, they quickly made a huge difference. The other group were moving large piles of wooden planks and sorting them into small, medium and large. They quickly got a system in place and GoodGym efficiency won again. On our way back to base, we did a quick meet and retreat fitness round Myatts Fields park. And then it was time to head home and warm up.

Good work everyone! - Nicky

The rest of us headed had a longer run to flyer for Brixton People’s Kitchen, actually nearer Vauxhall...

By day, it’s a cafe serving good value grub to locals. By night, it provides cooking workshops using food from supermarkets that would otherwise go to waste!

We split into 3 groups to cover 3 separate areas in the immediate vicinity. Unfortunately we couldn't get into the upper flat block levels... but hopefully those on the ground floor will spread the word to their neighbours! After a solid 20 minutes avoiding finger-biting dogs, we took a few beautiful posed photos and headed back.

Oh and there was even a lovely lit up heart. GoodGym's theme for the month is #GiveItHeart so that was nice :)

Cracking running guys!

And nice one Clem and Michael for joining us for your first ever GG run! 💥

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See y'all next week for another two tasks: Clearing out furniture at Brixton Rd Youth Centre and pulling up the rest of the ivy at the YELLOW QUBE. Also, it's pub week! 🍻 🍻 🍻

33 marvellous GoodGymers hit the pavements last night to run to Jubilee Primary School for a mystery task...

WOODEN you like to know!?

First we welcomed first timers Jen, Emma and Oscar to the gang and had a speedy warm up.

Steve lead a 4k route and the rest of us took the direct route to Jubilee where we were greeted by Juan. He had a big pile of wooden sticks/rods/planks hidden under a staircase which we awkwardly removed and took round to a shed - the kind of job we do so well!

So well that unfortunately by the time the splinter group had arrived, pretty much all the wood had been moved.

All that was left to do then was a serious HIIT sesh in the school hall. It was a hot one and everyone smashed it.

We then headed back for a well needed stretch.

Top work everyone!

Wooden it be nice...

...if you came along next week for some furniture removal at Brixton Road Youth Centre? You can sign up here.