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?

Wire we here again?

Oh yeah, to finish dismantling a big old chicken run!

We had a nice run past Penge's latest street art down to Dorset Road Allotments where we were greeted with a wheelbarrow of tools and half a chicken run left after last month's dismantling sesh!

This time in the dark, we got snipping and chopping the chicken wire off and pulling apart the wooden frame, leaving only a few bits left to do for next time.

Nice one, gang!

We had our second outing to help Jeannette and Alan dismantle the smaller chicken coop at Dorset Road Allotments tonight. Assisted by some power tools (handled by Alan) we made great progress and managed to take off one of the sides and most of the roof, not to mention many wheelbarrows of weeds and brambles that had grown since the last time we visited. Special shout out to Laura who was visiting from Mali and chose to spend her limited time off helping us out!

Once we'd finished the task, we were treated to a selection of allotment-grown fruit and veg as a thank you for our hard work, which was a lovely surprise!

Another session at the amazing water tower base and we're (sadly?) gradually getting to a point where our work will be done on this 18+ month project!

We had a top team of excavators in the form of Catherine, Kelsey, Hannah, James, me, John and new-to-the-crew Livia! 🥳

We were digging the remaining soil out of the old pipes, removing soil and digging down until we (hopefully) reached concrete, and pulling out weeds and dead tree roots.

We ended up with a decent-sized pile of soil, a big collection of dead vegetation, a little more knowledge, and even some smiles for the photo 📸

Nice one, team! 💪

We had a NEW TASK tonight helping Mary and Rachel from Barnmead Road Allotments clear a big patch of brambles so that the area can be turned into a community garden. Many hands and some decent tools made light work and we managed to clear a good chunk of the area in just 45 minutes (see photos). After working up a sweat, we were treated to some delicious fruit (and spare strawberry plants!) by our lovely hosts while Catherine made friends with an allotment cat .

Great work team!