It was lovely to see so many GoodGymers join us for another trip to the Crystal Palace Water Tower 🗼 this week 😁

At the Bridge House we introduced ourselves and answered this week's question - "Where would you like to run a marathon?". A wonderfully diverse range of suggestions came up, from the self-indulgent ("Edinburgh, because it's a flat course and I'm lazy" - your report author) to the far away (Tokyo), the safe bets (London and Boston) to the classical (Vienna and Athens).

We then headed out to Crystal Palace Park for some warming up, before splitting off into long distance and shorter distance run groups 🏃. Cat, Clare and James headed round the perimeter of the park with their group, while Hannah and I took advantage of the light to cut through the middle with all its steepness leading our group to get to the Water Tower.

There we met John, impressed with our number, and got to work inside. Having removed much soil and foliage over the last couple of years, we're now into the detailed work of removing stones and small rocks 🪨, as well as carefully uncovering the remaining pipework that sits around the edge of the tower, alongside the last bit of soil removal.

Hannah found the old furnace 🔥 and confirmed she'd fit inside (thankfully it's been turned off for a very long time), while James did a sterling job of cutting out the shifting of soil into our makeshift soil sorter (a supermarket trolley) using a shovel by simply lifting the wheelbarrow the soil was in over the trolley. Fast work, if not light!

At 8pm we still had good light, but it was time to say goodbye to John and head back down the west side of the park and back to Bridge House for our cool down stretches.

Great contributions from all - see you next time! 👋

Myself & Tatiana joined Viv, Lumen and the gang for the regular third Saturday of the month gardening session at the Silverdale Planters!

The flower beds are looking super vibrant with the arrival of spring, lots of colourful flowers are beginning to peak through.

Todays main task was weeding and rooting out the pesky sycamore tree saplings that just keep appearing!

With Lumen's expert guidance, we dove into a weeding mission armed with gloves and determination. Despite the saplings' best efforts to take over, we showed them who's boss!

We will be back next month ready to tackle more weeds, plant new seeds, and trim back overgrown plants!

Leaonie, Julia and I joined Ian and the Friends of Beckenham Green to help lay the foundation for a new nature trail 🍂 near the churchyard.

We cleared dense herbaceous planting (I learned something new today! These are plants without woody stems 🪵) from the paths that will form the trail, and will someday soon be covered with bark chippings. To help adult walkers, secateurs helped us cut back any trees whose branches hindered passage through the trail.

We found many old bits of branches that had fallen into the growth, too, and took those over to the compost bin to be worked down and made useful again 🙂

A real difference was made by all - thanks so much for joining! 🚀

We'll be back at the Green on Saturday 18th May - sign up here!

I met up with the Friends of Kelsey Park to help with their monthly maintenance. With just a handful of us, we decided to attack some brambles by the Tudor Road entrance to the park that were nested within some of the other shrubs. There was also holly that was overwhelming neighbouring plants, so we needed to get rid of some of that too.

This was the last Kelsey Park session of the season to give the birds peace and quiet for nesting in the rest of the Spring. We'll be back in September - come and help out when we post up new sessions!

For this week's issue of GoodGym... Brambles.

We assembled at the Bridge House, welcomed Henrietta to the crew and named ourselves and our favourite tube or train lines.

Then we set off to Albion Millenium Green, where we met Jorella from the friends group who had a prickly task for us.

Ramble in the bramble.

Lots of the lovely bluebells were getting shrouded by overgrown bramble bushes, so our job was to cut them back in a few different areas. Armed with secateurs, shears, saws and even a scythe(!) we got to work trimming and swiping until the areas looked much tidier.

Nice job & jog everyone 👌

A very satisfying and motivational task down at Cator Park!

Marco, Amy, Angela, Linda and Ria spent time on a variety of tasks to help the park ready for its Green Flag assessment in May!

The willow arch was watered, bollards sanded and re-painted, a generator even got used and time was spent trying to remove the remnants of an arson attack from one of the benches.

Good gym once again showing many hands make light work and I think we’d all love to see the park get the flag it so deserves!