Brightly coloured play equipment A pond to dip into Spring flowers A handmade pizza oven Teeming raised allotment beds

These sights faced the intrepid few after a breathless stride/ride up a freshly asphalted hill to Carlton Hill Primary school.

After some brief checks for frogspawn and newtspotting, hands were gloved and the team divided like a shamrock to tackle three tasks in one. The strong hands of Alpha team cleared the pizza oven surrounds in preparation for upcoming proud cooks at the summer fete. The green fingers of Bravo team weeded the allotment beds - soon to be planted out as an educational project with the littlun’s. And with secateurs, graspers, bold feet and the thoughtful (if damp) hands of Charlie team, brown stems and green mats of pond overgrowth were plucked, snipped, and lifted so the 4-11 year olds could get excited about the prettier parts of nature and have a chance at spotting the fortunate few tadpoles still on their way to frogdom.

Of course - once the lucky trefoil had reunited we all wound down in GoodGym style using every inch of the kids’ playpark for dips, push-ups, balances and mushroom-hopping japes. Smiles on dials all round, with an iridescent cloud formation to keep us marvelling at the beauty of nature on the way home too.

“Night-strimming (deserves a quiet night)” (for all the REM fans out there ☺ - thanks to Jason for the inspiration)

13 GoodGym-ers headed to St. Andrew’s Church in Hove to clear overgrown areas of the churchyard, helping to maintain this important urban green space for community use and reduce anti-social behaviour.

Jogging, skipping and grapevining our way along the chilly seafront on a wonderfully welcome warm-up led by Helena, we arrived at St. Andrew’s - beautifully illuminated in the settling twilight - primed and ready for action!

Welcome toTallula who joined us for her first Goodgym session and wasn't put off by the nippy air or energetic warm up!

After a quick briefing from Rev Dan and Ian who quickly got stuck into the task alongside us, we donned gardening gloves and selected our weapons of choice from an array of shears, mowers and strimmers.

Head torches and high-vis casting dancing shapes around the churchyard, the group got to work trimming down bushes and overgrown areas. The big task of the evening was removing ivy from the back fence, handful by satisfying handful, before transporting the vines to the waste pile.

Persevering through ivy dust and giant month attacks, we got everything clear and celebrated a job well done before jogging off into the night.