Wednesday saw two Good Gym runners make their way up a very steep hill to Dee’s Childcare, a friendly nursery in Plumstead that is a favourite of GoodGym Greenwich. The task was simple, or so it seemed: dig a couple of trenches in their garden to support some sleepers that will be used to build flowerbeds. Things started well and after careful measurement digging began, but soon we rediscovered the fun part of urban digging, namely that you don’t know what’s under the surface. A couple of centimetres down on the second trench we hit pavement and this required plan B, so instead of digging down your ingenious GoodGym types decided to build up and having dug shallow trenches for the sleepers we then proceeded to bank soil up around them to provide the necessary support. Our task done, all that remained was to have a chat with the nursery workers who had been themselves braving the cold to have a tough looking exercise session.

Thanks to Julian for leading the session and writing the report!

Wednesday 27th September saw 9 GoodGymers (welcome newcomers Maria & Lukas!) meet outside the Crossrail Station in Woolwich for a hop, skip and a jog up the hill to our task at Dee’s Childcare.

Once welcomed by the team there, we were presented with our challenge for the evening: Levelling Up the Playing Field (or rather, levelling up a small hill made up of re-purposed car tyres and soil). This needed to be de-constructed and then re-built to form a supporting structure around the existing slide.

Challenge accepted, lots of digging, ground flattening and re-arranging ensued and within the hour a cheerleading-style pyramid of tyres had been concocted around said slide – a rainbow of painted tyres featuring on the front section.

What seemed like a daunting task at first, turned out to be one where the time flew by, and proved team work really does give us a pitch perfect result. Thanks to all involved!

This task made a few of us wish we'd thought ahead and brought some marshmallows for some tales and tunes by the fire....sharing the spice of life, and generally getting our groove on. I mean, it doesn't get much better than this absolute banger does it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrle0x_DHBM

We didn't have marshmallows, but we did start the evening with cling film and Moon Monster and then a leisurely run up to Dee's childcare to help out with their humongous and wonderful garden. No wonder they had to give up their allotment, the land here is enough to keep anyone busy. JC and his dad tended to the fire, being by far the most hardy of our group, and the most inclined to get their groove on. The rest of us weeded, trying to decipher the vegetables from the weeds and spent a happy half hour chatting.

Time for a band photo on and around the children's slide and then a welcome downhill run and short fitness exercise whilst discussing who had endeavoured to nose run and who had completely forgotten to try.

There ends our lovely evening - we'll be back here again to actually help put the planters up!

Next social end of August we will be enjoying the non alcoholic beer courtesy of Athletic Brewing: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/picnic-at-st-george-s-garrison-church-3b1c92be-2428-40e2-9108-c838216b595a

See you next week at More 2 for some more nursery fun!

Six Goodgymers met outside a relatively quiet Woolwich Cross Rail just before Christmas for the last group run in December. Amy from Waltham Forest and James were the first timers for Greenwich GoodGym- welcome to you both! Matt, Sarah, Pieter and I were the regulars and we kicked off by sharing our favourite Christmas desserts that we would like for the ideal Christmas. After a gentle warm up, led by Matt, we gingerly embarking a hill to the nursery. A short 2 km run brought us to the nursery where Pieter’s children go. Our task was to decorate the back garden / play area with Christmas lights. Pieter and I went straight to wrap round the wooden boat with a long strip of lights. The rest of us were gathered around the covered area and hung the lights around the area.

It sounded quite straightforward putting Christmas lights on; the most time consuming part was to untangle the lights! We were able to switch on the lights to see how we did, which was lovely. We hope that the children will have fun and enjoy the Christmas lights. On our way back it was a downhill run, Pieter tried to show us a house with the most decorated Christmas lights but unfortunately the lights were not switched on. A fun evening had drawn to a close.

See you all for our January runs!

On a perfect summer's evening, 12 GoodGymers gathered for our group run starting in Woolwich. But this was no ordinary group run; this was an extra special run as this was the run to Julian's 200th good deed! Anyone who's done a little good deeding with Julian will know he puts his all into each and every task and we're lucky to have him part of our gang. Congratulations Julian, and well ahead of schedule too!

Big welcome to Tom for his first group run - great to have you with us and and special welcome back to Yasmin who was able to stroll over from her home at the Arsenal.

After a quick hopping warm up we jogged over to the lovely Cooks Farm Allotments where we spent a happy half hour busily weeding, strimming the grass and recovering a lost pond from the weeds where we found not one, not two, not three but four odd kiddie boots. All of them odd. How...well, odd.

What a beautiful space for the nursery children to learn how food grows and spend some time in nature! Pieter helped prop up the fence and Minh showed off his magnificent drilling skills mending the MiniBeast hotel.

Matt led us on his much trod scenic route through Bostall Woods, back over Plumstead Common via the Roman Burial mound and we ended up back at the pub

A satisfying task and run, topped off with a well earned pint or two at the pub to boot!

Well done everyone!