What a ride!

On Wednesday evening, fourteen humans and one pup headed down to the UK's oldest adventure playground with strict and clear instructions to "have at it"...

We had Chris stoically sweeping basically the whole site, a dedicated squad clearing out the "pit of doom", and our expert gardeners removing a rogue buddleia that was impeding play (after double checking it was the right plant to remove - an occasional risk in the exciting landscape of the adventure playground!). And of course particular props to watering team for embracing their iconic tools of choice - winning the week's style awards in the rubber-ducky-chic category.

Great to have Stephen, Amy, Ashfaq and, with thanks, co-backmarkers Eloise and Anna for their first sessions! And of course our first E&C canine joiner, Max.

We did note with some pride as they ran off that Amy chose to join us at E&C after Chris had been talking up GoodGym for years! Let's go!

Series one, episode two has dropped!

And it was some GoodGymming for the ages. A dozen of us met at the Castle Centre and jogged a lovely route down the quiet roads and across Burgess Park to meet a few more GoodGymmers at the Trinity College Centre, an amazing long-standing community space in the heart of Camberwell. We split up into teams and set to, one taking on clearing up the garden, the largest group deep cleaning the kitchen walls - the kitchen gets a lot of use as they offer free meals in partnership with local charities - and a third sorting through a magical mystery room that needed a bit of a refresh.

With an honourable shout out to Hilary for getting up the ladder to deep clean the extractor fan; the session highlight has to be the team of Lorna Jorge James Sevan Theo and others turning their talents to surgically deep cleaning the insides of two huge ovens - getting in a solid bicep workout and transforming them to look almost new.

Site manager Kevin was delighted and was already asking when we can come back. With a seamless return jog where we stayed perfectly as a group and definitely didn't split into three smaller groups, we capped the evening with a gentle cool down.

A small gang headed to the Four Quarters for some OJ & lemonades (king of drinks!) and to plot our next running events.

See you all for episode 3!

We've launched! It's happened!

On Wednesday 22 Elephant & Castle GoodGymmers headed down to Nursery Row Park to help the Friends of the Park with upkeep of the community space.

We raked leaves galore, giving the grass underneath a much needed chance to grow; a team of the most green-fingered (i.e. the people who had brought gloves) turned over the local primary school's gardening patch, leaving it ready for planting, and an intrepid crew ventured into the orchard to do some advanced litter picking...

We jogged back to our meeting point at the Castle Centre, and after a gentle cool down stretch, a few of us headed to Four Quarters to toast a succesful inaugural GoodGym Elephant & Castle.

8 of Southwark's finest headed to Galleywall nature reserve for the first session there of the year. With some helpful handles and a lot of 'to me, to you's' the team relocate the shed to the back of the garden, to allow for a more aesthetic entrance to be planted. The team work continued in task 2, forming a daisy chain to pass rocks from the back of the garden to the pond to form the rocky bank pictured. Good job team !