Waiting outside Old Spike Peckham was Maria and Alex, who had just come back from three weeks out in Australia, Japan and South Korea, so we caught up on his adventures as Lindy, James, Paulin and Josie, who came back for her two GoodGym session since her first back in January as she had other commitments on a Wednesday. However, we welcomed Sarah who came for her first GoodGym session ever! Welcome Sarah!

We knew Emma and Rosalind would meet Paulin and Rose at Denmark Hill Community Gardens and Richard and Jo, who was celebrating her 100th good deed tonight at Thorlands Gardens. However, before all that, Sam had to go through his customary speech and do the full version for newbie, Sarah. Just before leaving for a warm up, everyone introduced themselves and asked the ice breaker snap poll and question for tonight, since its Denim Day as well as Stop Food Waste Day, is it acceptable to wear double denim and what tips would you give for stopping food waste?

It started off mixed for the double denim, but ultimately people would wear double denim. Whether they can rock it is another thing... People gave tips like using scraps for soup, stocks and snacks (batter your vegetable peelings and make it into tempura chips), using Too Good To Go and Olio apps, eating once a day, portioning and freezing food.

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Connected with nature

Since the group had to be split in two for the two tasks we had tonight, Maria and James opted to go with Paulin to Denmark Hill Community Garden whereas the rest went to Thorlands Gardens to meet Simon. Yet, they had to ensure they were nice and warm to avoid injury. With Maria backmarking for Paulin's group and Lindy for Sam's, they went off in different directions.

The Denmark Hill Community Garden group continued with what they started last week by deepening and widening the trench, but they didn't get the chance to plant the hedge saplings. This will be done this weekend.

The Thorlands Garden group arrived to find Simon and Richard in the "Walled" garden getting the tools ready. Jo came shortly afterwards to wear her wings as she hit her 100th good deed tonight! Hooray! We split the team in three: Lindy and Sarah took the wheelbarrows to do the woodchip run as Richard and Josie used the mattock and dutch hoe to turn over the soil and take out the weeds as they pushed to connect the woodchip paths. Finally, Alex, Jo and Sam did some weeding as it had been raining a lot recently. As the wheelbarrows of woodchip came through, these were put on the cardboard that had been laid out after the soil had been turned over and raked to be flat.

We completed the task within the allocated 40 minutes as we were encouraged by the 90s tunes in honour of denim day taking us back through the years. Tune after tune!

After acknowledging our great work with a few group photos and putting the tools away back in the "Walled" garden, off we went back to Old Spike Peckham and made it back for 20:30 to meet the others for a good stretch.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! Rose and Simon were really pleased with what we got done as per usual. I hope you'd enjoyed your first and second sessions, Sarah and Josie, respectively. Thank you to Maria and Lindy for backmarking their respective runs.

After work, Alex, Daryl, Gemma, Maria, Paulin and Sam met up at St. Faith's Community centre to help Andrea pack her van for the rough sleeper project, but since she received loads of donations on Sunday she needed help to clear the porch and put these new donations in Shed 2. We spent the first 20 minutes organising Shed 2 before half the team concentrated on preparing the rough sleeper bags whilst Maria and Sam put away foldable tables in Shed 2 that they forgot to put away.

We were all done with 15 minutes to spare! Many hands make light work.

This wasn't our usual Wednesday night group run as we welcomed not just one, but three newbies: Alex, Damian and Louise came to claim their first good deed with GoodGym. Tonight was our special collaboration with Swifty Mondays running club.

Despite it raining all day, there was a dry window of opportunity, which happened to land on Wednesday evening. Our regular runners started to trickle into Old Spike in Peckham and as 18:45 arrived, Sam promptly went through his usual GG intro speech, but adding the 3 ways of getting involved with GoodGym for the newbies. Tonight, his ice-breaker snap-poll was to do with National Love Your Pet Day, which was on Tuesday. The options were: Cat, Dog, Other or Neither? There were a couple of votes for "Neither", one for "Other" (Goat) and "Dog" took the snap poll over "Cat" by a few votes. Sam even prepared an ice-breaker question that correlated with National Margarita Day (on Thursday) and he asked "Favourite cocktail or mocktail?"

Some found cocktails too sweet and opting for Gin & Tonic, there were a few saying "that cocktail with the mint..." Mojito, Manhattan and Long Island Ice Tea, but no one said Margarita until Rosalind said it at the pub.

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Thank you very mulch, Swifties

After a quick warm-up in the alleyway, Sam led the group through the backstreets of Peckham and up Chadwick Road (the hill) and down towards Denmark Hill. We made a couple of stops along the way to re-group with Maria backmarking (both ways). Arriving at Thorlands on time, we met Simon, Rosalind, Jo and Vic who opted to walk / cycle to the task.

After gathering our tools needed for the various tasks from the "Walled Garden", we proceed to the "Forest Garden" to put down the tools and split the group, but not before Sam could explain the vision of this brownfield site.

There were three tasks available:

• Lindy led a group to the mulch / woodchip depo to bring wheelbarrows of mulch for the beds where we will grow exotic trees. Alex, Damian, Louise and Rosalind joined Lindy.
• A team consisting of the "True Swifties" - Jo, Maria, Nelly and Vic concentrated on weeding the beds as they needed to prepare this in time before the mulch movers came with wheelbarrows of mulch.
• Alex, Daryl and Isaac continued with the woodchip path. They dug, flattened (by raking) and put a layer of cardboard and woodchip.
• Louise was our resident photographer for the night, but also helped with the weeding.

In 40 minutes, we managed to take out all the weeds, bring eight wheelbarrow's worth of mulch and continue with the woodchip path by over 2 - 3 metres! Well done team! Maybe the extra motivation came from those Taylor Swift songs...

With the clocks hitting 20:00, we quickly put back the tools before running off back to Old Spike for a quick stretch as most of us were up for a pint (or two) at The White Horse.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! A great collab night with the Swifties! It was lovely to meet you Alex, Damian and Louise. Hope we can do another session in the Spring/Summer. Finally, a massive thank you to Maria for backmarking on both runs. We're off to Salvation Army Camberwell Corps. next Wednesday to put on a second coat of paint in their entrance room, so why don't you join us?

We came into this last group run of January knowing that we needed 12 more good deeds to reach our our January Challenge! Sam was keeping his fingers crossed for at least 12 Southwark members. With 21 sign ups, it was looking hopeful. Slowly, but surely, people started to stream into Old Spike. By 18:45, he looked up at everyone and gave a silent count. 14 faces, but 11 Southwark members... but just as he was about to start his speech, David entered the door. We did it, 200 good deeds in January! Hit both targets having already hit our distance target of 2,000km.

There was a lot to get through tonight, but we started by welcoming Chalomi and Jack from Central Team as well as David and Roberta who came for their second GoodGym session. Yet, tonight was special as not only we were celebrating hitting our targets and GG Southwark's 8th birthday, but Maria after four months and a half from her first good deed hit her 100th! Claiming her wings (and a cake) in the process. Kudos and well done Maria!

Sam went through his usual GG intro speech and his ice-breaker snap-poll and question tonight was about National Croissant Day and National Hot Chocolate Day, which fell on Tuesday and Wednesday, respectively. He asked which one is more preferable: croissant or hot chocolate? He also asked, if anyone wanted to share about their January highlights.

For the snap poll and winning by one vote....croissant! People's January highlights included going on holiday, birthdays, raves and learning new skills.

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"Is Stormzy from Southwark?"

After a quick warm-up in the alleyway, Sam led the group out of Old Spike with Maria backmarked (both ways). The idea was to do a loop around Peckham Rye Park but speedy Sam realised parts of the group were behind, so he decided to change it up last minute and do an "out and back" course. It was a busy night in the park with other runners and Peckham Pacers. Yet, after our just under 4k run, we made it back to Old Spike to take a breather and a sip of Athletic Brewing IPAs.

With litter pickers and black bin bags at the ready, we had to split the group into four teams to cover 4 different areas:

• Team Laura who had Alex, Isaac, Louise and Steve covered East Dulwich.
• Team Katy who had just Daryl covered Nunhead.
• Team Paulin who had Andrada, Folarin, Maria, Nathan covered Peckham.
• Team Emma who had Chalomi, David, Lucy, Jack and Roberta covered Queen's Road Peckham.

The rules were simple. Tick off as many items on the litter bingo card in 30 minutes and cover as much distance as the winning team would be determined by items x by distance (in kilometres) = points.

After 30 minutes, each team came back with two bags worth of litter and ticked off their items (out of 25). The results were as following:

• 4th place: Team Peckham = 22 items x 1.75km (38.5 points)
• 3rd place: Team Nunhead = 21 items x 2.75km (57.75 points)
• 2nd place: Team East Dulwich = 23 items x 2.95k (67.85 points)
• 1st place: Team Queen's Road Peckham = 23 items x 3km (69 points)

The winning team took home small body gels from Body Shop. There were awards for those in Southwark that did more than 5 good deeds and covered more than 25 kilometres plus we had cake to celebrate GG Southwark's 8th birthday and Maria's 100th good deed milestone before most of us headed to The Old Nun's Head for a few drinks and pizza!

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! I did go off on a faster pace than usual as I was conscious of time. It was a long run, but we managed to squeeze in the 4k run and a litter pick after my longer than usual speech and ice-breaker. Thank you to Maria for backmarking, Paulin, Emma, Katy and Laura for being sub-team leaders for the litter pick bingo. Finally, thank you to all for coming to these group runs in January, we managed to reach our targets!

With two group runs left until the end of our January Challenge, Sam was keeping his fingers crossed for a high attendance as this group run would not only contribute to the amount of good deeds, but since this was the longest group run distance, it would add a lot of kilometres to the distance target.

13 out of the 14 GoodGymers that came out tonight met at Old Spike Roastery for the start of the group run. We waited slightly longer as Alex was running late. Yet, knowing it was a longer run, Sam skipped the warm up, but delivered his typical GG speech including his ice-breaker question which was two snap polls to determine whether people liked Haggis and crunchy or smooth peanut butter as it was going to be Burns Night and National Peanut Butter Day.

It was pretty much a straight victory for "yay" to Haggis and "crunchy" peanut butter.

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Every day I'm shovellin'

Sam led the group out of Old Spike with Katy backmarked (both ways). We ran down the busy Rye Lane through the dark cycle/walking paths of Surrey Canal Walk before reaching Old Kent Road crossing over to the quiet backstreets of South Bermondsey. After running 3.7k, we arrived at Galleywall Nature Reserve to meet Emma, who lives close by.

Straight to it, Eddie talking through the two main tasks and one smaller task on offer. Sam split the group calling out on who wanted to shovel gravel into wheelbarrows: Isaac and Nathan were keen whilst operating the wheelbarrows: Daryl and Laura put their hands up. On the other end, when Daryl and Laura would tip the gravel onto the pre-determined areas, Alex and Elena would be there to rake it out to a smooth surface. The second major task was to secure three wooden beams into the growing bed, so that visitors and gardeners can walk on these beams rather than on the soil. More shovels were needed to dig out the soil, so Andrada, Emma, Katy, Sander and Steve took on this task. Finally, Tim took on the smaller task of finding bags of leaves and bringing them back to a pile that had already been stacked up for the leaf mulch they want to make. Maria was our resident photographer and videographer as she wants to start a TikTok account for us!

After 30 minutes, we had finished the three tonne bags of gravel (they weren't all full), secured the wooden beams and brought over the bags of leaves. Finishing the tasks with 10 minutes to spare!

Eddie was very pleased that he took videos and photos to share with the Galleywall Nature Reserve committee. We will be back at the tailend of February to get the reserve ready for Spring! We all ran back apart from Elena and Emma as they live closeby and Andrada peeled off towards the end to go home. The rest that stayed on made it back to Old Spike and were treated to Lindy's belated 200th good deed cake. We ate it for her as unfortunately, she dropped out from tonight's task last minute.

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out last night! It was a long run than our usual distances, but we managed to blitz through the task in 30 minutes in our alloted 40 minutes. Thank you to Katy for backmarking and thank you to all for consistently coming to these group runs - it means a lot for me. Next week: it's the last one for our January Challenge and we're cleaning the local streets up with a "litter pick bingo".