Graham Lee

8 runners met on a chilly, foggy evening to deliver some COVID leaflets to some of the streets of Welling. After no time at all, our dedicated road was finished and all leaflets delivered. We then took the opportunity to take a short detour past our favourite Christmas house!

A small army of volunteers, including a platoon of 8 from Bexley goodgym assembled at Danson Park’s English Garden this morning. Three of us completed a not-parkrun before the task, although in my case, mine was a not-half-parkrun. Orders provided by Nicky and Tom, we set about pruning the lavender bushes and weeding flower beds. After an hour or so, task completed, we. downed tools and cleaned up just in time as the drizzle turned to more persistent rain. Big birthday greetings to Emmanuel on his 40th birthday on Thursday.

It was good to see some familiar faces this morning following lockdown, with Matt, Emanuel and Gemma making a welcome return to the Goodgym mission team. They joined 10 other Goodgymers in the latest effort to clean up Bexley’s green spaces. After two weeks at Hall Place we returned to Danson Park. It may have been we were a bit earlier but Danson seemed a lot tidier than when we were last there but we still managed to collect a fair amount of bottle tops, gas bottles and cigarette butts. A number of park users thanked us for efforts including a woo woo from Jan Lake. For parkrun participants she’s the enthusiastic volunteer at the turn before the shale path.

Last week we headed over to Hall Place for a bit of litter picking. Much to our surprise, the fields seemed to have been used for some lockdown Al Fresco partying. We stumbled across the aftermath of outside bbqs and picnics so decided to go back this week to pick up where we left off.

Luckily, it seemed the bins had been emptied since last week but we still managed to find lots of litter along the back of the field.

After a bit of a walk and each filling at least 1 carrier bag each, we headed back to call it a day.

12 GoodGymers assembled at Hall Place this morning for the latest instalment of litter picking in Bexley’s open spaces. Rather foolishly, I was not expecting much of a task today, but was unpleasantly surprised. A quick tour around the car park filled up carrier bags before heading to the main green area. Awaiting us was the remnants of what appeared to be a party as there were discarded three vodka bottles, various food items, enough laughing gas bottles to make even Victor Meldrew chuckle. There was even a full petrol can so who knows what that was for. Fortunately there were some discarded bin bags left which we used to tidy up the area. With bags fully loaded we made our way back to the car park discarding the bags next to appropriate council bins. It was good to see some new members, Francis and Michelle, who both enjoyed the morning’s task.