An abundance of Goodgymers (14 of us!) met at Plumstead as the dark clouds rolled in.... but our luck was in and we had a fine, fluffy-clouded day. Our walking route took us along the Ridgeway which follows the Southern Outflow Sewer, part of an 82-mile London sewage system opened in 1865. It was a big deal at the time and the Prince of Wales attended the opening of one of four new pumping stations ('Cathedrals of Sewage') at Crossness. Although there was rather an abundance of litter and fly tipping on the first part of the route, it's a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation (SNIC) and we saw some butterflies and dragon flies but no hedgehogs or rare carder bees. An abundance of conversation and laughs along the way too!

The next abundance was blackberries - a handy snack along the secret path to Crossness. There was an open day on at the pumping station and the lovely man at the gate let us into the grounds to see the courtyard and get a sense of what goes on although you need 2-3 hours for a proper visit on one of Crossness' Pumping Days.

On the return leg, we stopped for abundant plates of food at friendly Thamesmead Social - a lovely cafe on Southmere Lake. This was where the 'abundance portal' (which maybe had been transmitting its vibes across SE London already) is to be found... who knew? We dispersed in various directions at this point with some of us walking back to Abbey Wood station to get the Elizabeth Line home - with thankfully abundant trains on a Sunday!

Another warm morning dawned but 6 Goodgymers and a local volunteer joined 'Clean Up Charlton' for the monthly litter pick in the streets of SE7. Fresh from the World Cup quarter final victory of England over Norway (commiserations to the lovely and fun Norwegians - we have our own tame Viking at Goodgym Greenwich!), and as one of today's work team was Mexican, we talked football and had an impromtu game of 'get the beer can into the litter hoop'. Zero goals! Let's stick to running, walking and doing good deeds maybe guys?

Of course what you really want to hear when litter picking is one of the team saying "I have found a bag with something dead in it and don't know what to do"... !!! Pretending to be brave we investigated and found slowly fermenting chicken drumsticks - now safely bagged with our other 6 general waste bags and 3 bags of dry recycling ready for Greenwich Council to collect. We left the waste collection team a little thank you message - can't be fun collecting rubbish all day in this heat! Thanks to everyone who turned out to clean the not-so-mean streets of SE7 - iced lattes all round at M&S to cool off afterwards...

On a blisteringly hot Saturday in July, three GoodGymers joined the Charlton Central Residents Association for their annual Community Day.

When we arrived at St Richard's Hall, we were greeted by Jasbir Dhesi and Annie Galloway, who swiftly allocated us a road to clean, along with a high-vis vest, litter picker and gloves.

Despite the sweltering heat, we set off on our task and made great progress. Together, we filled more than 20 large bags with litter and recycling, while green bins were packed with weeds and cut-back shrubbery.

Well done, everyone—what an incredible achievement! Here's to doing it all again next year!

In a welcome respite from the intense heat of the last week Good Gym arrived at Woolwich Common for the monthly litter pick. I'm never quite sure if a good litter picks means lots of bags full of rubbish or the slim pickings that renew your faith in humanity a bit more. Today was more of the latter with most of us returning with relatively empty bags after an hour. The returns included the usual array of trash but todays highlights were some monopoly money and the longest tape measure your author has ever seen.