Goodgym Southampton is one year old today!! 🎉🎂

To celebrate we went to city farm with an army of goodgymers ready and eager to help with whatever task Tom may have had in mind for us. We were pretty sure it was going to be more goat mountain shenanigans but were shocked when farm volunteer Danni mentioned that this evening we would be helping put all the animals to bed and meeting them all by means of celebration and thankyou.

We were thoroughly spoilt - getting to feed the sheep and goats, getting walked by the new pygmy boys, putting the chickens and ducks to bed and meeting all the reptiles from the blue tongued skink to the gecko and giant african land snail.

After our tour of the farm we were kindly given use of the community room to celebrate our birthday with cake and drinks kindly supplied by Energise Me and Ellie.

We were also delighted to see Paul and Simon back with us after last weeks litter pick and to welcome Aimee for her first goodgym task.

Its been an incredible year with 157 tasks(!!!). Heres to seeing what year two brings!

Before birthday celebrations could commence at the farm this evening we were back to work delivering the 10,000 leaflets alloted to us to deliver.

We had 8 super helpers this evening and it really did prove that 8 and not 3 is the magic leafleting number! We even held a guard of welcome honour for Leszek who found us.

we very quickly got through 200 leaflets with some time for frolics thrown in before heading back to the farm. Great job team!

On a wet and windy Thursday morning, India and Angela headed out for a run, armed with gloves and bags and the determination to tidy up the area they spotted on their run on Tuesday. It was very wet and windy but they were treated to a visit from a seal who made sure they were doing a good job. With plenty of fast food wrappers, beer cans, plastic food wrapping, various fishing waste (Angela found a half used bag of bait with a very stinky squid in it), plenty of wet wipes and cotton bud sticks. They each filled a bag before emptying them into the bin and heading off home to work. Now… for many cups of tea to warm up!

What started as an extremely soggy day on the Common soon brightened up ready for the RunThrough Southampton running festival. Wilson and Sarah set to work registering runners for the 5k, 10k and half marathon events. We also had India from GoodGym Portsmouth joining us to help for the morning. Great to see you! Philip and Stephanie headed to their marshalling positions out on the course full of cheer. Blue and I set off tail running for the half marathon and finished with someone doing their first ever race at that distance. A great morning everyone, well done.

An absolutely stellar team of 15 goodgymers came together at the farm to help tackle a hefty task Tom the farm manager had set us.

We had a fantastic time with excellent support from our buddies at Goodgym Portsmouth who had travelled to help out (and also partly to see the goats and sheep) 😊

Our task for the evening was to lay a new path in the garden area of the farm using woodchip the farm had had donated for use. The woodchip was outside in the carpark and the garden was located a very nice distance away! We quickly split up with different people covering different tasks, Wilson and Val helped muster the troops at the woodchip end, shovelling large quantities of woodchip into wheelbarrows. A notable mention goes to Lauren a newbie who had travelled from Portsmouth for her first session and who got stuck straight in! Lovely to meet you Lauren!

At the other end of the farm we had Vicki and Judy in charge of raking over the incoming woodchip onto the new path.

The rest of us were on transportation duties ensuring the wheelbarrows made it safely to the other end. It was quite the workout! I clocked 2 miles alone in running up and down with a heavy wheelbarrow.

Ellie was quite literally our guiding light making sure the paths were well lit and also got stuck in with woodchip shovelling.

Tom and his team were pleasantly surprised how much many hands make light work. The farm volunteers were saying this task would have taken them a week. With a team effort we were all done in 45 minutes and able to get some cuddles in with the sheep as a reward.

We look forward to next month!

Our first festive task of this season brought a little bit of joy to plenty of GoodGymers this evening. We joined volunteers at Baffins Pond Association to put up the Christmas Decorations around the compound.

Everyone got in the spirit and there were plenty of super Christmas jumpers, hats and leggings on display.

Wilson's commitment to detail extended to all of the little statues in the compound who are now sporting very dapper Christmas bow-ties!

The compound looked absolutely fantastic by the time we were done - Christmas basically threw up over Baffins Pond this evening.

We welcomed Lily back to GoodGym after some time away this evening - lovely to have you back again, Lily!

Many hands made light work of our leaflet drop. Splitting up in to small teams, we got through our stack of flyers so quickly we even had time for a cheeky drink in a local pub garden.

I think more time was spent trying to come up with a Madness related pun as the event we were promoting included a Madness Tribute Band... "Claggy Trousers" as it got rather warm... it turns out our Ska Music knowledge wasn't really up to much!