This Tuesday, GoodGym Brighton had a double bill.

Frances, Sarah, Ruth run 13 km from Worthing to Portslade holding the baton at stage 245 of the Relay Your Way - Celebra's nationwide relay travelling 2500km from Glasgow to Windsor and celebrating inclusive sport, movement and play. This epic journey across the UK kicked off at the beginning of June to champion the 1.5 million UK children with disabilities by running, cycling, or wheeling for inclusive sport and play. GoodGym was invited to participate, and so our tree wonder women responded to the contest, facing a challenging hot weather.

Meanwhile, other five GoodGymers gathered at Wellsbourne Health Care Centre to help Lucy to maintain the community and therapeutic garden, located between the Wellsbourne Hub and the Library and growing flowers, plants, trees, vegetables, herbs and fruit, for everyone to pick and eat. Wellsbourne Health Care CIC (Community Interest Company), is a community-run, non-profit GP surgery in East Brighton where hands-on relationship-based care is delivered by people who know well the area, reflective and responsive to the local needs. Wellsbourne Health Care is currently facing a challenging time as at risk to be overtaken by a distant private provider. GoodGym Brighton wished Good Luck with their appeal.

Double Bill, and Double Good, with oranges, cakes and lots of water for our (and plants) refreshment.

Today, aspirant new GoodGymer Rachel took part to our session as part of the Brighton & Hove TAKE PART festival of active living. We wish to meet her again to get active together at our next sessions.

Change (the garden) Grow (some vegetables) Life (enjoy it)

That’s what eight GoodGymers did this week, at Change Grow Life in Richmond House. We removed bind weeds and brambles to shape the ground of what will become a green oasis for gardening activities and growing vegetables.

Change Grow Live (CGL) offers support services to help people make positive changes in their lives, including help with substance misuse, mental health, and social challenges. They also have a gardening project where they are creating a new garden space, potentially aimed at providing therapeutic or social support through gardening as a tool to help people make positive changes in their lives. This could involve creating new garden spaces, growing vegetables, offering gardening activities as part of their support programs, or collaborating with other organizations to promote gardening for wellbeing.

With this social mission GoodGym Brighton also helped CGL to get ready for the memorial service that they hold annually on National Remembrance Day, which is the last Friday in July, to honour those who have lost their lives to drug and alcohol addiction. In 2025, this falls on July 25th. The garden might not be fully ready by then, but it shows some flourishing plants that were hidden by the brambles until now.

This was a very satisfying social mission!