It was lovely to see so many GoodGymers join us for another trip to the Crystal Palace Water Tower 🗼 this week 😁

At the Bridge House we introduced ourselves and answered this week's question - "Where would you like to run a marathon?". A wonderfully diverse range of suggestions came up, from the self-indulgent ("Edinburgh, because it's a flat course and I'm lazy" - your report author) to the far away (Tokyo), the safe bets (London and Boston) to the classical (Vienna and Athens).

We then headed out to Crystal Palace Park for some warming up, before splitting off into long distance and shorter distance run groups 🏃. Cat, Clare and James headed round the perimeter of the park with their group, while Hannah and I took advantage of the light to cut through the middle with all its steepness leading our group to get to the Water Tower.

There we met John, impressed with our number, and got to work inside. Having removed much soil and foliage over the last couple of years, we're now into the detailed work of removing stones and small rocks 🪨, as well as carefully uncovering the remaining pipework that sits around the edge of the tower, alongside the last bit of soil removal.

Hannah found the old furnace 🔥 and confirmed she'd fit inside (thankfully it's been turned off for a very long time), while James did a sterling job of cutting out the shifting of soil into our makeshift soil sorter (a supermarket trolley) using a shovel by simply lifting the wheelbarrow the soil was in over the trolley. Fast work, if not light!

At 8pm we still had good light, but it was time to say goodbye to John and head back down the west side of the park and back to Bridge House for our cool down stretches.

Great contributions from all - see you next time! 👋

Getting hench, drenched and edging to the bench, GoodGym Bromley smashed it this evening in pretty grim conditions.

Thankfully our jog was perfectly pleasant as we set off from the Bridge House. Today we made up for a lack of Easter session by naming our favourite eggs from fried quails eggs to Cadbury's creme.

We swung by Cator Park's freshly planted Tiny Forest and a beautiful surprise display of tulips and daffodils we installed on our way to meet Millie.

We split into two groups to tackle a couple of tasks:

💦 Soaking the willow arch, with scooped up water from the river. Some new stems had been planted so water helps them bed in.

💪 Edging the paths to widen them.

The rain came soon after we started and it got muddy pretty quick but we managed to get the willow arch watered and edging all the way to the bench.

Ace stuff.

It was International Women's Day on Friday, so we kicked off by highlighting our favourite females. From Rosa Parks to queen Jacinda to amazing family members, we demonstrated that the best, most caring, and morally correct people are always women.

Next we ran up the hill to CP Triangle and our regular task at the St Christopher's Hospice charity shop. Teresa is always super grateful for our help and ability to give the place a quick spritz and blitz.

Adam was sorting odd shoes and found some serious labels with a price to match.

Cat was steaming through a rack of creased clothes.

Louise, Molly and Stephen and Kelly were making sure all the garments were ordered nicely and facing the right way.

James was hoovering the whole shop and Kelsey was dusting the shoe racks.

Hannah was on pricing duty, Clare was cleaning the counter and I was mostly trying to figure out the name of the teapot from Beauty and the Beast (see pic). Spoiler: it's Mrs Potts 🙄

After a solid half hour we bid our farewells and made our way back to base with an obligatory wallsit en route.

Nice one team 🏃💥

Thanks James for the pun-spiration!

Last night 11 wonderful people met for a jog and a good deed in the dark in the park.

We met at the Bridge House, shared our top tips for warming up on a cold day and hit the pavement - a lovely downhill jog to Cator Park.

Armed with shovels, a brush and just one wheelbarrow, we set about widening a path which was being encroached on by grass and soil. There was a lot of scraping, some slicing and some shoveling to fill up the wheelbarrow before it got dumped by the hedges.

In the end we managed to free up a good metre in places and a serious chunk of the path completed ✅

Top job/jog everyone! 🏃‍♂️💪✨