This Tuesday, seven of us headed to Brighton Youth Centre again for a task that promised ‘moving fun action’. In GoodGym style, that turned into a full-body workout featuring sofas, cushions, cabinets, giant boards, and several floors’ worth of stairs.

We started by hauling furniture and sofa pillows up those multiple floors, honing our pivoting and manoeuvring skills from the last time we paid a visit. Then came a deep dive into the mysterious workings of power drills as we freed shelves from their wooden casings. We then hoiked the remains into the lift for their journey up to the (busy!) skate park to be repurposed and, by the sounds of it, reassembled(?!).

Outside, in classic UK November fashion, the weather treated us to rain and hail as we battled big wooden boards over to the bins. Sometimes with brute force, sometimes with the saving grace of a rolling trolley.

In between all the heavy lifting, we managed to get lost between floors (more than once), locked out of several rooms (trapping Annette’s beanie hat in one) and learned the increasingly odd system of codes needed to activate different lifts - some of us needing to link them to different historical events to be able to memorise them.

And, during one of the ‘we’re locked out’ journeys down the stairwell to find some help, I spotted a text announcing that my niece had just been born! Definitely a GoodGym mission I won’t forget anytime soon, a ‘where were you when...’ moment for the books :-)

Great work GG-ers - Brighton Youth Centre is clearer and looking better than ever!

A core group of five valuable GoodGym-ers run and cycled to Leach Court – a large Brighton and Hove County Council’s senior residential housing with a communal patio-garden needing some care. New host, known task, great team! The fame of GoodGym Brighton preceded our entrance in the building. Only a few weeks earlier, we were in fact at Lavender House with a “weeding” force of good!

Arrived a Leach Court, we were welcomed by Tony and cheered by the astonishment of other residents lounging in the grand central salotto. “Are you going out there for gardening, REALLYY?? NOW??” – a resident’s question. Our answer: “YEESS! This is GoodGym. We Do Good and Get Fit every Tuesday after our working day and, this evening, we will be shining our torches 🔦 ON 😉 your garden. You are welcome to join us, next spring maybe?!” 😊

We scraped out weeds from the patio pavements, we cleared the pile of green/brown waste from the noticeable non-biodegradable plastic contamination to make it ready for composting, and we swept the autumnal leaves that were invading the most hidden and darkest corners of the Court’s outdoor space. Torch essential to shine on all the Good done all around🔦 😉

The last but not least task of the evening was to make a draw to decide who would represent GoodGym at the Active Sussex Award Ceremony 2025. GoodGym Brighton is a runner-up for the Environmental Sustainability Award! Great achievement all.

This Tuesday, 10+ of the GoodGym Brighton crew ran, cycled and walked over to Lavender House for a full perimeter clear-up. Headtorches on, we weeded, detangled and plucked our way through the edges of the building, filling up multiple wheelbarrows for compost and giving the outside a noteworthy November glow-up.

Jane had a moment of magic finding a red admiral butterfly and having it stay still on her hand long enough for a photo and a video. A flash of summer in a little bit of a November drizzle!

Also on this week's GoodGym Brighton’s wildlife watch: an honourable shout out to the many ‘bench bugs’ we had to yank coats and jackets away from, and a healthy, stocked-for-winter looking worm. Christophe’s ‘bright’ idea to light our group photo with headtorches gave us a more sinister, ghostly energy than our normal group shots, but it’s not been too long since Halloween so I think we got away with it.

Weeds tackled and all equipment returned, a few of us ran over the road to the Sidewinder for some burritos and much-needed trail run chat.