On a gently sunny evening, a veritable bevy of Brighton GoodGymers (including a warm welcome to new recruit Mauricio) turned their attention to a regular venue on the GoodGym roster, The Bevy, a community pub/hub, familiar to some as the go-to breakfast venue after the formidably hilly Bevendean Down parkrun. The journey for many involved a 3.5km trot up Lewes Road (allegedly the longest named road in Brighton & Hove), to complete gardening and clearance tasks.

One cohort of the GoodGym team were assigned to the Bevy's allotment, tending to a variety of fruit trees and vegetable patches, weeding and planting the likes of kale, beans and rhubarb. Meanwhile the other contingent tackled a backyard area, hacking away unruly bushes and brambles, and ridding the area of fallen leaves, mounds of soil, buckets of stagnant water and abandoned paraphernalia. As well as finding a rusty electrical device reminiscent of a ghost trap from Ghostbusters, there was under an old beer keg the discovery of a slow worm, the UK's only legless lizard, and apparently a relatively frequent visitor to the Bevy's undergrowth.

Following the transformation of the allotment and backyard, Dave, Shirley and Warren from the Bevy committee were impressed, with one commenting that the outcome of the group's work was "like Christmas", a nod perhaps to GoodGym's predominantly red and white wardrobe. The group was rewarded with an array of tasty snacks from the Bevy kitchen, including cheese scones and Eccles cakes.

The Bevy, for now over a decade, is proudly the only community owned pub on an estate in the UK, keen to support its local neighbourhood amidst cost-of-living challenges. A busy calendar of events for June includes a music and memory cafe for those with dementia, a disability disco, seniors lunch clubs, family days with creative activities for children, and a summer beach party to close the month.

The GoodGym team is happy to support such a cherished community venue, and as the sun set on another completed mission a small Taskforce group duly took the opportunity to visit the Bevy bar, order a glass of the usual, and sketch out its own summer party plans.

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Last night’s GoodGym mission was all about elbow grease and elevation as we set off for One Church on Florence Road to give their kitchen a seriously deep clean.

We kicked things off with a short but steep run up Ditchling Hill and arrived with hearts pumping and ready to scrub.

Our task for the evening: turn a hardworking community kitchen from grubby to gleaming. This kitchen supports amazing projects like Chomp, which runs free school holiday lunch clubs for families on low incomes.

Armed with an arsenal of sprays, cloths, scrubbing brushes, and determination, we tackled every surface from top to bottom.

Fridges? Sparkling. Worktops? Shining. That one mystery corner no one wanted to look at? Conquered.

By the end, the kitchen was gleaming, our arms were tired, and we had used enough cleaning product to register it as a new GoodGym member.

Massive kudos to the team for their hard work and good vibes. A top-notch effort all round.

What a great session to welcome Omolade, aka Molly, in our community!

On an evening of glorious (and, some might say, blinding) sunshine, this week's mission was at Wilding Waterhall, a former golf clubhouse turned in a multi-purpose community oasis perched on chalk grassland with knockout views of the South Downs, aka miles away from Brighton city centre up a not insignificant hill on the other side of the A27. Undeterred, the GoodGym team racked up the mileage by wheel or shoe to impress their Strava followers before tackling a menu of painting, window cleaning and weeding tasks with the usual combo of fired-up energy and miscellaneous chit-chat.

Rob, Events & Venues Officer from Brighton & Hove Food Partnership (BHFP), welcomed the group, served up glasses of orange squash (prompting a Proustian moment for some) and was duly impressed by the transformed walls, windows and paths at the end of the session. BFHP, who manage the venue, also run the Brighton & Hove Community Kitchen, another GoodGym regular destination due for another visit later in May.

As a poster fixed to a wall in the venue attested, Wilding Waterhall is part of the National Trust-led Changing Chalk partnership, which through rewilding aims to "restore lost landscapes and habitats, bring history and local cultures to life and provide new experiences in the outdoors".

This mission coincided with Mental Health Awareness Week, a cause very much allied to the ethos of GoodGym and the dual wellbeing boost that comes from volunteering and physical exercise, and to the work at Wilding Waterhall, promoting the restorative power of a spectacular natural environment 🐎🦗🌳

What a great GoodGym group session demonstrating once again the power of a community that cares!

WHAT's ON NEXT at GoodGym Brighton?
Plenty to amuse you to join us. EVERYBODY is welcome!

Following a brief but comprehensive deluge hitting the coast, this week's task - a slice of green community action as part of WWF x GoodGym’s Workout for Nature - saw an impressive fifteen GoodGymers descend on Round Hill Conservation Area to paint over graffiti tags gathered on the local Cat's Creep stairway and hoe stubborn weeds on the nearby Wakefield Road.

After GoodGym's visit, Cat's Creep, famous for its wavering apostrophe (depending on whether you think one or more cats are involved), 116 steep steps and resident toads and newts, was lined once again with freshly painted magnolia walls. Meanwhile, finely honed hoeing skills from the recent GoodGym Palmeira Square challenge meant that the flint wall on Wakefield Road was similarly smartened up.

Through its collective endeavours in the Round Hill, the GoodGym Brighton team are hopeful of another appearance in the local Round Hill Reporter (published since 2000) following previous articles in recent editions. The Reporter is the printed newsletter of the Round Hill Society and is evidence of a lively local community with regular events including an annual water fight.

The mission drew to an energised end with the packing up of tools, swiftly darkening skies and GoodGym area activator/ Round Hill resident Stefania handing out ciabatta and luminous doughnuts sourced via the Olio app, which helps prevent good food from going to waste.

With thanks to volunteers from the Round Hill Society, including Dominic and local councillor Raphael.

Executive summary haiku

Fifteen GoodGymers

paint and hoe. Local acclaim.

Toads enjoy the rain.

The garbage they gather is grand, I'm sure.

5 of us ran from Victoria Gardens to Hove Lawns, where we met Sarah, in order to pick-up litter on Brighton Beach on an exceedingly beautiful spring evening.

The clean-up was done as part of the Tidy Up Team initiative which works across the city to clean-up public spaces in order to create a sense of civic pride.

Some technical difficulties with the Tidy Team locker led to Stefania improvising a last-minute task with her backpack full of gloves and bin bags. Given that its the first week of the Easter Holidays we decided to focus our attentions on picking-up litter from the beach. We started in Hove and methodically made our way towards the Palace Pier.

Hove was on-brand as ever and pickings were slim, but as we got nearer the pier we unfortunately started finding much more litter and we ended-up with a full bag of rubbish to ceremoniously deposit in a wheelie-bin.

As the sun set behind the West Pier we eventually managed to take a selfie that Rosie was satisfied with and jogged-off home, leaving the beach a little cleaner!