We joined The Charlton Society for a special litter-pick to clean up Charlton Village ready for the Christmas holidays. At first glance things didn't seem to be too bad but our team have a nose for rubbish and soon found some hot spots - down Charlton Church Lane, in the car park and round the back of the Co-op. Our finds included a broken chair, quite a lot of vapes (going to a scrap metal dealer for disposal), lots of bottles, two boxes of nitrous oxide cylinders (reported to the Council).

An hour of walking, talking and picking resulted in nearly 12 bags and a sparkling village. Thanks to the Village Greengrocer for rewarding us with apples, pears, tangerines and bananas - a really fruitful morning's work!

Despite the December chill, Julian led a determined crew of runners to yesterday’s GoodGym Greenwich task. Khai, Ceci and Kerry joined him on the run, while the rest of the team met us at the Brooklands School. We were especially pleased to welcome back Sevan, making a triumphant return after a work Christmas do, and Aman, who left Bristol early just to make it in time. That’s the kind of commitment that keeps GoodGym glowing - heroes, all of you!

Our mission for the evening was to paint the staff room and finish cleaning the cupboards. And true to the evening’s punny title (No Whisk, No Reward) we kicked things off by seeing what on earth we could use to stir the paint... it actually wasn't a whisk but we couldn't resist Khai's excellent pun anyway. With slightly fewer rollers and brushes than ideal (and absolutely no spare whisks), we embraced classic GoodGym ingenuity and made do with what we had. Before long, the first coat was on the walls and the cupboards were sparkling.

We didn’t quite manage to get around the whole room this time, but fear not, we’ll be back in January to finish the job!

Looking ahead, there’s plenty more GoodGym goodness on the horizon: 👉 This Saturday: Talk and Tidy and Westcombe Woodlands 👉 Next Wednesday: get ready to flex those painting muscles again for an indoor task at Arthur’s school!

Brilliant work everyone🛠️🎨💪🏽❤️

Until next time,

Rachel

It felt like no time since we were last at The Albany! It had only been a couple of weeks but on this visit we had a bigger task to tackle...shifting lots of woodchip that had been kindly donated to The Albany.

We split into groups and rotated through the roles of shoveling, wheelbarrowing and path creating. It was very satisfying to see the pile of woodchip slowly but surely reducing in size but what was even more satisfying was joining up the paths!!

It wasn't long before we'd shovelled as much woodchip as we could and made lots of new paths.

The last time we created a path at The Albany was many moons ago when we all looked quite a bit younger and before some people had even discovered GoodGym! We featured on BBC Breakfast for that path creation! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=G3fKxb6Mcz0&pp=ygUVR29vZGd5bSBiYmMgYnJlYWtmYXN0

Next week we're off to Lewisham Unity with a stop off at the Catford Christmas Tree