Wednesday saw 5 Good Gymers arrive at a surprisingly sunny Charlton House for our weekly group run. Tonight, we were off to Brooklands Primary School, a lovely little school with a big pile of soil to move. It was a long run so after some short formalities off we set, through Charlton and Kidbrooke and over the edge of the heath to the school. On arriving we made sure we all showed our best sides as Nadirah and her team were patiently waiting for us to continue creating their Good Gym documentary opus.

And so to the task, having moved a huge quantity of woodchip the last time, tonight it was time to move a large quantity of soil to the raised beds. Wheelbarrows and tools, both adult and child size, were assigned and most of the group started on the soil, with one person taking a bit of time to remove the weeds from the bed. The production line was hyper-efficient and, before you could say “I’m ready for my close-up”, the pile was soon shrinking. And despite the hard work some of us still had time to answer questions from the film team relating to our Good Gym experiences. After half an hour we were all done, we said our goodbyes to the file crew and ran off into the sunset.

Wednesday was no ordinary session. Firstly we had two newbies join us, big welcome to Ibrahim and Bobby - it was great to have you along!

Nadirah brought her team of students to film their documentary on an interesting run club- thanks for picking us!

After a quick interview, we introduced ourselves and shared our best binge worthy shows (books for those who don't watch much telly) and then did a little warm up and headed off for our run. We did feel rather important, with Nadirah sprinting ahead to get some action shots of us all. Now we know what it's like to be chased by paparazzi.

At the garden, Annie got us to task, with Robert and Ibrahim watering the trees. Shout out to Sarah for managing to open the padlock, we wouldn't have got far without the hose! The rest of us got to work weeding and cutting back the grass while chatting away and the crew filmed the lot. A lovely evening in nature and a good reminder of the positive impact of exercise, community and doing good- it does us so much good too!

After a group pic, Bobby headed back with Annie to take the wheely bin back and the rest of us headed back to Charlton House for a little stretch and a few shots of us walking away at the end of the session.

Well done team. It makes such a difference for 10 of us to do a load of work at the garden and Annie's always so grateful.

Next weds we're back at Charlton house for a run to Brooklands to do more soil shifting!

Until next time,

Rachel

Last night we had a special treat being joined by two people new to GoodGym Greenwich! Robert and Nadirah, it was great to have you with us and hope to see you again soon!

It being mental health awareness this week and the theme being 'community', we discussed the communities were part of that bring us joy. These ranged from GoodGym to reading clubs to running clubs and of course, Parkrun! We headed out for a run along the River which was lovely in the evening sun and found our way to Khai who was waiting patiently on our agreed what-three-words spot. We then made our way down tunnel avenue to find a good spot for some litter picking and quickly found one. And this wasn't an ordinary litter pick, this was an extraordinarily grim one and extra kudos to all of us for getting our hands properly dirty in this godforsaken part of Greenwich! But that's the beauty of our team- we make the best of it and we made a difference after just half an hour and over 10 bags and many trips to the dump.

We parted ways at this point and some of us run back to the naval college for a quick stretch.

On sunday we're helping out at the charlton house plant sale and next Wednesday we're back at Hervey Road for some gardening.

Until next time!

Rachel 😁