On a bright Saturday morning, 6 GoodGymer's joined the Friends of Waterloo Park for a bit of shoveling.

Waterloo Park is an awarded Green Flag Park. This means it must maintain high quality standards, including excellent environmental management, biodiversity, and community involvement.

Every week, the work in the park collects large amounts of green waste that is left to dry out and compost. And today we were asked to shovel the branches and soil from the compost boxes into piles, which will be collected by the council for further recycling.

Together the 'Friends' and GoodGymer's completed the task within an hour, while observing snails, moths and other bugs.

We finished with a well earned brew and biscuits!

Today 4 GoodGymer's bravely turned up on a wet and rainy Saturday morning during Storm Claudia. The Friends of Waterloo park volunteers wanted to take advantage of the extreme weather to allow the mulch to be most affective, and they needed Goodgym’s help to achieve this.

Goodgymer’s Katy, Jonathan, Elizabeth and Sarah got to work and distributed mulch across the many flower beds. Elizabeth and Sarah were also helping transport the many mulch bags via wheelbarrow from across the park to where the beds were located.

Despite the wet weather the task was completed in good time. A few underestimated the weather and regretted not bringing gloves and raincoats but it was worth it in the end!

It was a very windy morning, 7 GoodGymers ran or cycled 5km to Waterloo Park.

We joined the Friends of Waterloo Park volunteer group who meet every Saturday.

Todays task was clearing out weeds from the overgrown flower beds. After an hour it was a great to see the difference we made - check out the before and after photos!

We will be returning next month to help spread lots of wood chip. See you at the next one.

We returned to Waterloo park, probably for the last time this year as the nights close in to help prepare the ornamental flower beds for the winter. Our task was to shift mulch from the bottom of the hill to the top where it was being raked over the flower beds. The Grand Old Duke of York would have been proud as we marched (barrowed?) our way to the top of the hill and down again. Paul was first off the blocks followed by a chain of barrows piloted by Elizabeth, Mark, Cheska, Sophie, Sam and Penny (completing her 10th mission!!), whilst Jonathan did the spadework at the bottom. The friends of the park were pleased with the results and have promised GoodGym a high tea in the summer as a thanks for all the work we’ve done for them this year! It’s always a lovely task at Waterloo park and roll on being able to help them again!

Having arrived 5 minutes late, I ran into the Waterloo car park to find a large group of socially distanced Goodgym members in bright red t-shirts eager to get on with the task on what was a lovely sunny evening, however there was no task co-ordinator in sight! Bill and Helen investigated and within minutes returned followed by people with wheelbarrows.

A brief discussion of the tasks was delivered with the first task being to paint the pavilion black with five people needed, so Ian, Darren, Helen, Mark and Elizabeth eagerly volunteered and went off to do that task. Whilst Andy, Cheska and Penny searched for places to secure their bikes and Robert helped remove two wheelbarrows off of a car, the rest of the Goodgymers cracked on with the second task which involved shovelling mulch into wheel barrows to be transported to near the pavilion. This task definitely put the GYM in GoodGYM.

With Katy, Jess and Stephen on shovelling duties, it was down to Bill, Cheska, Penny, Andy, a task co-ordinator (whose name I didn’t catch) and Robert to transport the mulch, pushing wheelbarrows up a surprisingly exhausting incline towards the pavilion. Jonathan cracked on with spreading the mulch, whilst Andy later joined in with the mulch spreading fun!

Thanks to the task-coordinators who provided gloves, water and much encouragement!

With the sun setting, it was time for everyone to meet up with their wheelbarrows near the mulched beds for a group photo (featuring Bill and Kate sitting in wheelbarrows) and then onwards towards the car park to meet the pavilion painters.

With Darren’s Goodgym top covered in black paint it was clear that the painters had been very busy too! We were joined by a fellow Goodgym member called Ali who popped by to say hello whist Bill and Kate kindly provided grapes and raspberries. Andy had a little surprise for us as he shared his and Rute’s wedding album for everyone to read and share memories about Rute.

After last Monday’s visit to Waterloo Park, the weather today had seen torrential rain, fortunately come 6pm the sky’s were clear and the evening was balmy. We welcomed Sam to her first Goodgym tonight. Our task tonight at both sides of the pavilion old flower beds to be dug up. We Divided into 2 groups, and set to the tasks. beds had to be stripped of the bushes, not an easy task, at one stage it took 4 Goodgymers to finally take out 1 Bush. The other group were doing similar task, and they had a visit from Goodgymer Beks and her new puppy Emry who defiantly stole the show. He’s now our GG mascot ❤️ After an hour of hard work on both sides we had cleared all the beds needed. We gathered up tools and rubbish sacks and assembled for a group photo. I had been given some Run With Pride medals to give out which we were all excited about, especially Andy who was going to wear his as a medallion. The Friends of Waterloo Park, as always were VERY pleased with our work tonight and will be arranging another task or two for us very soon. Thanks to Mel and Johnathan for photos