It was a chilly and frosty December morning in Charlton park. Several GoodGym-ers had been running or volunteering at the parkrun beforehand, and two stayed behind to help the team at Charlton Community Gardens. They are a great organisation who maintain a community garden at Charlton station and also two community orchards inside Charlton park.

They had received donations of around 400 bulbs to improve the community orchards, and needed some help with planting them all. After a quick coffee at the Old Cottage café to warm up, we met Ruth at 10.30 and received our instructions. We got started by planting 50 tulip bulbs in the orchard by the café, then moved on to planting 50 crocus bulbs in the orchard by the play park.

The frozen ground meant it was hard going, but after 45 minutes we had everything planted up. Unfortunately were also starting to lose the feeling in our fingers and toes... so we said our goodbyes and headed off our separate ways. We will look forward to seeing all of the colourful blooms appearing in the spring time next year!

After making a good start to our Saturday by joining at our new favourite local parkrun these brave GoodGym'ers did not yet feel tired enough and helped out the Charlton Community Gardens project by planting and maintaining some apple trees. We're looking forward to enjoying the fruits of our labour!

The friends of the garden have down an amazing job and it's such a beautiful thing to have a garden full of fruit and veg and herbs for you to take if needed. My heart was filled knowing that it's there and meeting the wonderful ladies and gentlemen who have put their hearts into this spot.

Delays aren't good. They make you wait and sometimes you don't want to wait. And I have made this merry group of good-deeding peeps wait far too long for a report on their Herculean painting efforts.

Please forgive me, friends, life has gotten in the way. And please don't ask for my good deeds to be docked.

For I have wonderful things to report about Francis, Jenny, Julian, Laura, Michelle, and Steve (the brother), who turned a wall from tired grey to sparkling white.

Two weeks back, we scrubbed and rubbed away the wall's dirt and grime, and this task was about turning our clean canvas into something bright and hardy.

It's incredible to see what a group of GoodGymers can achieve in less than an hour. In 45 minutes, we'd gloved up, put out our ladders, painted, and tidied. And all under the watchful admiration of Charlton's steady stream of impressed commuters.

We're back at the end of the month to give this wall a second coat to protect it for the winter and years to come.

Thanks for coming, team, and for sharing your smiles and energy.

Nice one.

Concrete is a wonderful thing. Just ask a brutalist (of the architecture variety), or a builder, or one of those people of who drive them big spinny lorry thingys.

Concrete and London know each other very well. A little like Bill and Ben, just a little more grey.

Which can sometimes be the problem.

Take Charlton Station. Situated in lovely South East London, its your perfect spot to quickly jump into or out of London. It is, in other words, wonderfully useful. But it can be a little grey. With all that concrete, it can't help but be a little grey.

But as soon as you step off of the platforms, you get to a little garden maintained with loving care. Think beautiful planters, wall climbers, and even one of them wholesome rainwater collectors. It's a bit of bliss cared for by some very lovely members of the Charlton community.

And we were there to make things a little... well a little less grey. The concrete walls on the far side are due a lick of new paint, and it's a lick that we'll be helping with next week. They've borne the brunt of a few decades of London weather and pollution and are looking forward to being a bit brighter again.

Our task for the evening was to scrub. To scrub away the accumulated dirt and the grime so that next week's paint clings to the walls smoothly and nicely.

Intrepid GoodGym Greenwich good-deeders Francis, Jenny, Julian, Sarah, and Steve got to the job with buckets of sugar soap and much elbow grease. Some went up ladders, whilst others covered the bottom half. And in 60 minutes, we were seeing dirt and moss washed into the gutters. We could even, with a squint and a wink, see (or at least imagine...) what the wall's original colour really was.

After just over an hour, we packed up and bid our farewell to the lovely group who maintain this communal garden week in week out.

We'll be back next Wednesday to start turning our blank canvas into something a little brighter again.

Nice one.

18 wonderful runners ran 6km to help at Charlton Community Garden!

We welcomed two new runners to the GoodGym Greenwich crew last night. Big up to Aidan who has done more good deeds than all of us combined (nearly) and Jennifer who a few of us met at Greenwich Parkrun on Saturday! Welcome both! Hope you had a nice first run in Greenwich :)

A quick little warm up on the grass as we always do and then we set off down to Charlton on a slightly longer run than usual. Sadly the quickest route is rarely the nicest but when you're running and chatting with friends you forget about the busy roads and poor air quality!

We arrived 15 minutes later at Charlton Station.. where we haven't visited for over two years. CRAZY!! We were greeted by lovely trio Pat, Caroline and Jane who explained the many tasks at hand. The main one being to shovel out soil from one of the raised beds which will on Friday have installed a new irrigation system. At the moment the nearby tree is taking all the water and nutrients and the small plants don't stand a chance! So they are getting their own special system to help them thrive. The tree as you can imagine is doing great and has quadrupled in size since our last visit!!

Other tasks involved clipping back a shrub which apparently has been used as a dumping ground/hiding place for weapons by local gangs.... I've never seen you lot so excited, eager to see what you might find! Sadly (or should I say fortunately) no machetes or sawn off shotguns, just a few crisp packets and beer cans instead!

Everyone was getting stuck in, we had people on watering duty, others pulling out weeds from the paving stones and trimming the berry bush at the back!

After about half an hour, all the soil had been removed from the bed and piled onto the neighbouring tarp. All bushes were delightfully trimmed, plants had been watered and it was time to head back! But not before a spot of CAKE!

Jane had baked 3 delightful treats for us all and even had a flask of tea ready to go as well with some paper cups.. so lovely!!! The most hospitable task owners we've been to for sure!

We took a group photo with cheeks stuffed full of yummy cake and then headed back to the uni for a stretch. No time for a fitness session this week sadly but the option of putting in some quicker bursts on the run back instead, which I saw a grand total of zero people participating in, myself included haha. Nice to get a longer run in anyway!

Pun cred goes to Claire!

Great work everyone! The lovely ladies were SO pleased with what you got done! Thank you for working so quickly and efficiently as always. See you next week for some fun at St Lukes!

Other ways to get involved with Charlton Community Garden

The volunteers at CCG have a watering rota, so if you live near the area and want to help out then feel free to drop Pat an email directly on p.r.taylor@hotmail.co.uk and be added to the watering rota!

Also if anyone happens to be free this Friday morning, they are finishing the work on the raised bed so if you're around you can drop from 10am-midday to give them a hand.

Community Missions - help required!

There are two community missions currently up. One is this Sunday over near Woolwich, helping a medical charity dig out some hard ground to build a compost area... sounds like a lovely one, all the details are here if you want to get involved.

The other is in a few weeks at Mycenae House at lunchtime on Thursday 1st August to help prepare and serve food for a pop-up kitchen. All the details are here