Hilary lead some of the team from the Print House in the absence of Brahma who is unwell......Get well soon B

The Print House team went along the greenway to meet the rest of the team at Park Village Oasis

Suzie met us with a couple of jobs this evening,clearing a disused area that they plan to plant a wild meadow and dismantle a gazebo which had become twisted and broken in the recent high winds.

Jobs completed Suzie invited us to their Oasis embrace the Irish event on Sunday 24th March

Next week are heading to help Get Out so Sign up and hopefully Brahma will be well enough to join us

Rolling into the New Year with double digits and making a sizeable impact at one of our local community partners, I ask you - what's not to like?

The group caught up at base and had the pleasure of meeting and welcoming new member, Ian. Hopefully a good experience for him - and the first of many for our man from Sheff. The RWQ was "highlight and or lowlight of your festive period?" Christmas dinner, persuading a whole family to do a parkrun, hosting NINE people, spending time with family, walking up a big hill and dinosaur lego were some of the positives. Illness, train delays and making a million teas were the downsides.

Xuan welcomed us at Abbey Gardens, having been there since 9am, that's a proper shift. Creating a wildflower meadow and weeding the 'gabion' stones were on the agenda. Much digging later at the bee enclosure, the little life-givers were buzzing away in hibernation, we'd filled about half of a rather huge meadow section. The weeding team seemed to fill up a load of buckets, a good spread of work done I'd say. And importantly, we finished with cake, thanks to Boxing Day Birthday girl, Rosie. Jaffa Cakes are never a bad way to conclude an evening's work.

Next week Up Garden awaits, along with Suzie's infamous to-do list, be ready! Sign up here - let's keep the momentum rolling through January guys. There's also the January Challenge (do as many deeds as we can in Jan) to keep us on it, let's compete with the other GoodGym areas through Group Run attendance and the load of incoming community missions (mostly Saturday).

Good to see you all, and Happy New Year again.

Till next week,

B

Just back from a wonderful long weekend in Bournemouth.

Glad the tube strike was called off as made getting to Waterloo easier for those who traveled down to Dorset on Friday.

Quick stop for a beer before heading to our accommodation for the weekend,after a freshen up we headed towards the beach to find fish a chips for lunch.....which took a lot longer than we anticipated but it was worth the wait as they tasted wonderful.

Rosa and Graham had decided to add to the weekends entertainment by setting us Taskmaster challenges.Graham was our taskmaster and Rosa played a beautiful Little Alex Horne.

One of the tasks was to by another team member an outfit to be worn at our pasta party on Saturday night,sadly we had missed the shops on Friday so we headed for more beer and to play shuffle board before going out for dinner a slow bimble back to our apartments so we would be ready for parkrun on Saturday.

Paul with much persuasion agreed to go to his first parkrun,I think he decided that was easier than the taskmaster forfeit for non attendance which was to write a poem so Dimple,Kevin and I began to regret not getting up but on the plus side for the park runners we had a full english breakfast ready for the runners on their return.

Dan and Tim also had the joy of poem writing while taking the replacement bus service to Bournemouth.

A trip to buy the outfits was followed by a beach picnic with Dan and Tim finally able to come and join the fun,a few of us went for a swim and it was fine once you got in.

Pasta filled the teams stomach and the fashion show was so much fun as was watching the videos that 'Alex' had recorded of us completing a task from earlier in the day.

Dan was crowned taskmaster champion with Tim coming last and gaining a forfeit of the Taskmaster picking his outfit for when we went out for Sunday dinner post race.

Sunday was a very early start for the 10ks as we had a bus to catch to get is to Hengistbury Head for the start of the race at 9am. A lovely course with a little up hill at the beginning before turning round to head down to the prom to run in to Bournemouth including out and back along Boscombe and Bournemouth pier.

A lie in for the half marathon team who had John join them after making his way down late Saturday evening. A few more hills for the half and because it started at 11am was a lot warmer for them.

Post race we headed into Boscombe for dinner and a few drinks Dan and John had to leave as had buses/trains to catch to get back to London.

A couple of the half marathoners headed for a nap while the rest of us took a walk along the beach to watch the sun go down. After a nap and batteries recharged most of the team headed in to Bournemouth for some beers and a quiz night.

As I had an upset stomach before the race I decided an early night was in order and Kev stayed to look after me.

A final walk to the beach this morning to have breakfast over looking the sea.

This is our 6th GoodGym Newham on tour and planning discussions have already started for our next trip.

A new task for us this evening helping Bille from Greener Together Alma Street

Alma Street is a play area which was upgraded to improve the sports facilities for local residents,it includes a seating area.

Weeding and litter picking was the task for this evening.

Hilary and Brad arrived via the Olympic Park with the rest of us arriving from our homes due to late finishing at work.

Kevin,Hilary and Hilary set about clearing the area around the tree.

Brad was king of litter picking.

Paul and Rosa tackled the thistles with help from Billie.

I started clearing the bed near the play area entrance.

An hour passed very quickly but lots of weeds and rubbish removed.

Still work to get the last of the thistles out so we shall be back for part 2 in August.

Hils, Rosie and I jogged down to The Up Garden together, to intercept the other three. Not before discussing our "favourite animated film of all time?" Hils picked a french film about Tour De France, Rosie picked something i've forgotten, I bumbled and literally couldn't think of anything. We'll do bettter on the question front next week!

After some hot and humid running and putting the world to rights we arrived. Luckily Matt, Dimple and Paul beat us to it, already turning the soil as requested and getting a head start. A local group called Sustainably Muslim are doing a butterfly and moth workshop next month, so we were there to prep the beds for some insect friendly flora. We all agreed the soil was lush, as we chomped down on a few of east london's finest cherries, almost a pleasure to turn it up, unless you are of the 'no-dig' persuasion, of course. Felt quite content after getting that done, but mostly just wanted to get off the midges menu, they were ravenous! Obviously we finished off with transporting tens of breeze blocks across the yard, the six of us slicing through it in quick time, uncovering a huntsman-tarantula-scorpion cross on the underside of the bottom blocks, lovely.

Next week we have a BRAND NEW TASK, going to list it in a mo and get it online. Hoping we get some solid numbers.

Have a cracking week all,

B