We kicked off the evening naming ourselves and expressing which form of art we would give a go if we could, from improv comedy to lino printing to songwriting. After a nice jog through Crystal Palace, admiring the newly regenerated Italian Terraces, we arrived back at the Paxton Centre for our second annual table tightening championships.

The Paxton Centre is an arts cafe/workshop space with a built in gallery. It's cool. They're also a non-profit. Super cool.

We upturned the tables, unscrewed the legs, tightened them up on the inside, rescrewed them on, and levelled them out with the bits at the bottom. I'm not sure who won the championship. Everyone I guess.

After that we took a photo on the stairs as if we're Blazin' Squad and set off on our merry way.

Nice one, team. 🔥🔥🔥🔥

Five GoodGymmers ran from Penge to Beckenham Place Park last night where we met with James and Tilly from the BPP Ranger team over at the newly-landscaped East Gate area. This was our longest group run in a while and, after some initially confused weather (sunshine and hail?!), we were treated to a beautiful rainbow as we made our way up to Beckenham Hill.

Once we arrived, our task was to move woodchip onto the new flowerbeds to help to suppress pesky weeds. After 40 mins of shovelling, we made our way back through the park and enjoyed the last of the evening sunshine.

Well done team!

It was so nice to be back on Monday evenings! We kicked off our new series with an easy 1k run down to Penge Congregational Church from the Bridge House. The church group were setting up to host a music festival and needed some tables, pews and cupboards moving to create space for a music festival. Our team got to work creating space to move some very long pews, and luckily we had the turning space available in the vast church. The church group were really grateful for our help - we were grateful for the indoor task 😅

As is customary in the south eastern pocket of London known as Crystal Palace, the first GoodGym session of the year was a Christmas Tree Scavenger Hunt - clearing the streets, reducing waste going to landfill/incineration and saving others a job.

Our team of 5 were in high spirits to start with until no trees appeared...

Fortunately, a good 45 minutes after starting our mission, one tree presented itself to us!

And then minutes later, nestled inside someone's garden... another! We nicked it anyway and shifted them up the road to the tree-cycling spot in/surrounding Mayow Park where they will be churned up into woodchip. Nice.

Top work gang. See you next year?