Tuesday night saw a cracking turnout as the GoodGym Lambeth crew rolled up (quite literally, in the case of several carpets) at Annick’s beloved waterworks allotments for an evening of heavy lifting, heavier furniture-breaking, and general green-fingered good deeds 🌱💪🏼

The task at hand: rug rolling, shelf smashing, and some good old-fashioned digging about — basically an extreme home makeover, allotment edition. Annick’s plot has never looked (or felt) so un-furnished 🛋️➡️🗑️

On the team sheet tonight:

• Ben Margerison — hauling carpets like they owed him money
• Michael Welsh — bringing the muscle and the smiles
• Katie Allan — no stranger to a task, this Lambeth legend just keeps racking them up 🏅
• Tilly Baker Hine — gardening gloves on, ready for anything
• Jo Bowen — allotment royalty for the evening
• Dan — 50 tasks deep and still showing up to demolish some furniture 🔨
• Fi — sleeves rolled up, spirits high
• Rich — new face, instant legend
• Libby Cannon — welcome to the chaos, Libby! 🎉

Between us we shifted more old stuff than a Sunday car boot sale, and left Annick’s allotment looking positively spring-cleaned 🧹✨

And because it was the last Tuesday of the month, work quickly turned to well-earned play — the gang swapped trowels for pints and toasted a job well done at the social afterwards 🍾😊 Nothing quite like bonding over a shared dislike of a particularly stubborn Billy bookcase.

Great work all round, Lambeth — you moved mountains (of carpet) tonight! 🥰

Big squad energy at GoodGym Lambeth this evening 💪🏼 — bumper turnout, loads of new faces, and our regular crew bringing the vibes as always: Katie, Ben, Jo, Marie-Noelle, Dan and AA Yianny holding it down. 🍾

And the warm welcomes don’t stop there! A massive GG hello to newbies Romi, Ark and Zain 🥳 — you survived your first session, you’re basically family now! And a special shoutout to Libby, who came back for another GG fix 😊 — once is a taste, twice is a habit, you’re one of us now!

Tonight’s mission: Windmill Gardens, helping the brilliant Jean and Annick tackle a jungle situation. The plastic fencing was holding back a weed invasion that had basically adopted the new whips as roommates 🏠🌿, so out came the fence, out came the weeds, and back up went the fence — teamwork makes the fence work! 🔧 There was litter picking, Ark got hands-on with watering duty 💦, and a serious amount of compost-worthy greenery got sent off to start its next life. ♻️

Bonus plot twist: Jean let slip there’s a spot of Shakespeare in the park next Friday 🎭 — not an official GG outing, but “to GG or not to GG” might just be the wrong question when there’s culture on offer. 😱🤩

Brilliant effort all round, Windmill Gardens — see you next time! 🏃‍♀️❤️

Thunder? Lightning? Merely a warm-up act for GoodGym Lambeth, who absolutely refused to let a bit of dramatic weather stand between them and a good deed. A magnificent seven assembled at Papa’s, ready to get their hands dirty — and we mean that quite literally.

A huge welcome to Rich, joining us for the very first time! 🍾 He turned up on a stormy Tuesday evening to do unpaid weeding with strangers, which either speaks to his tremendous community spirit or his very adventurous social calendar. Either way, we’re delighted to have him! 💪🏼

A special shoutout to Fi and Katie, who stepped up as makeshift superheroes when AA Yianny was running a little behind schedule 🦸‍♀️🦸‍♀️ — safely shepherding the group from Papa’s like the absolute legends they are. No cape required (though it might’ve helped with the rain).

The full heroic lineup: Fi, Dan, Michael, Ben, Tilly, Katie and the newly initiated Rich. What a crew. 🌟

Tonight we returned to help our beloved Roses of Brixton — the wonderful Annick and Jean — giving their gardens a thorough seeing-to. We’re talking weeding, sweeping, clearing, and cleaning… and then things got avant-garde. 🎨

Yes, we laid carpet. As a weed suppressant. 😱🤩

Look, when you think about it, it makes perfect sense — the weeds get a cosy living room, which you might say is to die for. Truly the most passive-aggressive gardening technique known to humanity, and we are HERE for it. The gardens are looking lush, Annick and Jean were thrilled, and the weeds are already regretting their life choices.

Another brilliant evening of running, doing good, and laying soft furnishings in unexpected locations. See you next time! 🌿❤️

GoodGym Lambeth — getting fit, giving back, occasionally redecorating.

Our friends at Brixton Windmill needed a hand setting up for their May Fest event. Quick to answer the call to arms was Lambeth local Katie, our friend from the North (London) Emily, and long-time-volunteer-first-time-GGer Joe. Welcome, Joe!

We joined the massive volunteer team from the windmill to set out chairs, tables and gazebos, and remove litter from the site.

We were rewarded with a pot of coffee and some interesting facts about windmills. Did you know that lots of common phrases including 'the daily grind' and 'run of the mill' both stem from windmill history?!

What do you get when you mix seven GoodGym legends, a historic windmill, and a mountain of woodchip? Pure, unadulterated mill-ificence, that’s what. 🤩

This week, Tilly, Adam, Michael, Marie-Noelle, Nicole, Katie, and the brilliant Emma descended on the Waterworks allotments to lend a hand to Annick and Jean from the iconic Brixton Windmill. ❤️ And lend a hand we did — both of them, repeatedly, with shovels.

Emma was joining us for her second ever session and her first group run — and she didn’t just show up, she showed out, bringing the extra scoop on our Million Acts of Hope crossover. Turns out we weren’t just doing good deeds — we were contributing to something genuinely huge. 💪🏼🍾 No pressure, but we may have helped save the world. Provisionally.

The task list was, shall we say, eclectic. We shovelled and shifted woodchip to lay a brand new path (the glow-up was real 😱), got stuck into some serious weeding and pruning, carefully sorted edible leaves from the compost (a surprisingly meditative experience), and rounded things off with a litter pick to leave the whole place gleaming. ✨🌿

In short: we came, we chipped, we conquered. Annick and Jean — it was an absolute pleasure. The allotment looks windmill-iant. 🌬️

See you next week, you beautiful lot! 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️

🌿😅 Our mission, should we choose to accept it (we did, obviously — we’re GoodGym): help the wonderful Annick at the Brixton Waterworks allotments tackle a carpet situation.

*Shoutout to Adam for weaving his magic and nailing this week's pun title!

Yes. Carpet. In the soil. Apparently the weed barrier of choice for a certain era of allotment gardening was “just bury some carpet and hope for the best.” 😂 Well, that carpet’s time was UP.

The team got stuck in — pulling, heaving, rolling, folding, and wheelbarrowing that ancient carpet to its temporary resting place like the absolute legends we are. ❤️ It was gritty, it was grimy, it was extremely satisfying. The carpets may be old and worn, but our team? Totally on the right thread. 🧵😏

We split into two crack squads: the running crew — AA, Katie (an ICONIC comeback after injury, we literally cannot 👏), and Michael (“just a casual 16km at the weekend, no biggie” 😤🔥) — and the walkers/cyclists Tilly, Ben, Nehal, Marie-Noelle and Adam, who were honestly bringing the vibes on wheels and heels. 🚴‍♀️🚶‍♂️

Annick was thrilled, the allotment is one step closer to full bloom, and we went home absolutely filthy and absolutely proud. 😱🤩

See you next week at The Landor — first round of brags about your weekend mileage is on you, Michael. 🏅🍻

Run, do good, repeat. 💚​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​