Zoe Olszewska

The life of a Christmas tree can be a lonely one – after standing solo in the front room for a month, most then only have a brief stint laying outside by the bins to look forward to… but not in Lewisham! Here, we don’t only organise large support group gatherings for post-Christmas trees within our nicest parks, we also offer a door-to-gate service to get them there.

That’s right; Monday marked the annual GoodGym visit to (and efforts to expand on) the Hilly Fields Christmas tree collection points! This year we numbered 16 runners (including 4 first-timers: welcome Zoe, Karol, Joe and Alison!) and promptly split ourselves into 2 teams to allow more ground to be covered, plus to instigate some “friendly” competition.

As always, the name of the game was to search the many residential streets surrounding Hilly Fields for any discarded trees in need of a friendly lift to the park. It quickly became clear, however, that our previous record of 53(!) wouldn’t be under threat this year, with pickings looking slim. This meant the greater challenge became FINDING the trees rather than lugging them up the various hills to their resting place.

Thankfully our team have plenty of experience in spotting retired trees and it wasn’t long before the pine-counter started turning over, eventually reaching a total of 33, with respective team scores of 21 and 12. Which team was victorious? Naturally that’s not what’s important and it’s the taking part that counts (wrote the losing team leader!).

There remained just enough time for the group to “enjoy” some hill work, plus for a slightly lost member to be safely rounded up, before heading back to base camp at Glass Mills.