What a fun filled, mud filled, pun filled Wednesday evening we had this week! *Stay tuned for as many oarsome boat/ sailor puns as we could come up with in this report.

For those of us who met for the run from Charlton House, this week's icebreaker was deceptively thought provoking:

"If you could relive one moment in your life, what would it be?"

What I failed to anticipate was the immediate descent into philosophy:

What actually counts as a 'moment'? Are you reliving it, or changing it? Which self gets to choose? Your current self or your younger self? 🙄

After several minutes adrift in a sea of existential pondering, I found myself pleading, "No more questions!"

To be fair, that's something I say at least five times a day to my son, Arthur. Poor boy. But hey, someone has to stamp the curiosity out of children, right?

Responses ranged from the birth of children, to choosing that dream career that our pesky parents forbade, to extra cheesy points for Sarah for picking the moment she came along to a GoodGym session! 🧀🥳

Anyway, before we drift too far off course...

A huge welcome to Rhena and Candida on your first Good Deeds with us! And an extra shout-out to Rhena for completing her first run. We hope you're both hooked and don't immediately jump ship!

Our task for the evening was at the lovely community garden at the Prince Philip Maritime Collections Centre, where our much-loved rowing boat had finally reached the end of its voyage. And so, with a heavy heart it was time to break up the old and make way for a younger model.

The steps were as follows:

1) Remove all the soil from the old boat

2) Smash it up with shovels (One member of the group might have enjoyed smashing the boat up a little bit too much...he certainly made his Mark.)

3) Break up the wood to wheelbarrow to the bins

4) Debate exactly how on earth we were going to get the new, bigger boat into position (this took a while)

5) Shovel out more soil and grass

6) Tow Tow Tow the boat into position and attempt to secure it with blocks of wood

At times our plans felt a little rudderless, but somehow we kept things afloat and while we may need to come back to fully anchor the boat in place, that was a job well done in the pelting rain - hardened sailors that we are!

After that, it was time to run, walk, or otherwise navigate our way home.

Thanks everyone for another oar-some evening!

Coming up This weekend we have:

Parkrun volunteering

Helping at the Family Fun Day in Hornfair Park

Clean up Charlton

Leafleting for Prince Philip's Community Day

GoodGym Picnic!

Until next time, lovely people!

Rachel

After a busy morning, this was the third task of the day for some of the group with several runners heading straight over from our session at Maryon Wilson Community Garden to lend a hand at Halstow Primary School.

Amongst the hive of activity with staff, parents and children busy painting, sanding and creating play equipment, our mission was to help transform the playground by building some little cabins for the children. AND we managed to create 2.5 little cabins. They may not have all passed a building inspector's scrutiny, but thanks to the collective ingenuity of the group they were successfully cobbled together and beginning to take shape. Thankfully there were no crate expectations of the quality of the craftsmanship.

A welcome BBQ provided some much-needed fuel and made this a particularly palatable task. The weather tried its best to spoil proceedings, and the rain arrived in force, but it didn't dampen our spirits although we did get a little cold and some may have developed cabin fever.

Well done everyone. We'll likely be back at Halstow Primary School before long to help with further fun construction projects based on what the children want build in their playground!

Today we put the Gym in GoodGym at Maryon Park Community Garden in Charlton, where 9 of us met for today's community mission. Group one cleared various piles of broken wood & debris, including everything from doors & trellis to broken plant pots & grubby toys...What a load of rubbish...? Maybe not. Whilst a lot of the debris is due for collection & disposal on Monday, some of the toys were cleanable, hopefully for future use or donation to the local Toy Library.

Group two proved they were hard as snails, tackling some troublesome weed growth in various areas of the garden & helped cleaning the toys that had been found.

Good-gym rains supreme, as did the sky today, although gratefully waiting until our tasks were finished this morning ☔️

Thanks all, until next time!

Last night, 10 of us met at Charlton House for the run, with a few heading straight to Thomas Tallis School ready to get stuck into the task.

Our icebreaker was: What's one thing you can cook or bake really well? Judging by the answers, next week's picnic is shaping up to be a feast 😋

When we arrived, Kim welcomed us and led us to a collection of second-hand school uniforms that needed sorting. Our mission was to size everything up, organise the good-quality items into the correct categories, and separate out anything that wasn't quite cut from the right cloth.

We got straight to work and, in just half an hour, had made short work of the mountain of shirts, jumpers and PE kit. It was a refreshingly low-sweat task, but we were kept busy, dotting the i's, folding the tees, and making sure everything was neatly stacked and ready for its next owner.

With the crates sorted and tucked back into storage, it was time for a quick run back, a stretch, and then we buttoned up another successful Wednesday evening.

After all, when you've got 10 GoodGymers working together, it's easy to make shirt work of sizing 'em up.

Congratulations to Mark on earning your nice shiny red Tshirt! You're already part of the furniture 🤗

**All credit to Aman and Ivar for the puns (well, the best ones anyway!)

Coming up

This weekend in addition to the Parkruns we've got:

• Helping at Maryon Wilson

• Building playground equipment with Halstow Primary (and BBQ!)

Next Wednesday we're back at the Prince Philip Collections Centre

Until next time!

Rachel 👋😁

After a scorching hot few days in London, 12 GoodGym-ers were grateful for a minty fresh breeze at the Community Garden at St Alfege's School in Greenwich. An ice (coffee) breaker & game of shark attack and we were ready for a short run from the Naval College to this oasis of calm in Greenwich's busy town centre.

Our tasks were as expected at this time of year: basil-ically tackling some stubborn weeds while preserving the other plants/herbs 🌱 Plenty of volunteers meant the task was shared out nicely, but everyone worked dill-igently with no chiving allowed, digging, sweeping, watering & currying heaps of vegetation to the stack.

O-Kale...so the thyme parsley-ed quickly enough, and soon we had to be tarragone...for a quick post-task social which made for a lovely end to the day.

Thanks all & hope to cress paths again soon 🙂