Well it was an hedgucation for me tonight as it was my first time leading a group run without Mark's supervision but luckily I had 12 awesome GoodGymmers to rely on for moral support. After a run down of our favourite ice creams (why do other countries always have cooler flavours than the UK?!) we made our way to Alexandra Recreation Ground to meet Linda and the other Friends of the Parks volunteers.

Big shout out to Hannah for leading the walking group, Stephen for backmarking the runners and Jing who was attending her first session and bravely accepted the challenge of running the long way round up the hill to the task!

Once we got to the park, Gill and Linda had us pulling out weeds that were diverting nutrients from the hedge saplings planted earlier in the year. Many hands made light work of this task and we had cleared most of the bed within 40 minutes before taking the shorter route back to the Bridge House for some post-run stretches.

Nice work team!

For tonight's task we headed to the delightful Betts Park, home of the last remaining section of the Croydon canal and a lovely new obelisk "dedicated to all the people who never get memorialised".

A few weeks back the council did some work chopping down some dying trees but they just left a couple of piles of logs and ivy. Our job was to sort the logs from the ivy, building up the "compost heap" and leaving the logs - maybe they will be a path edge one day?!

It turned out ivy was stubborn as hell but we did manage to free it all from the big logs eventually 💪

Whilst all this was happening, Molly was on a solo mission to de-weed the entrance to the shed - I hope those splinters have come out?!

Lovely stuff everyone, and I can't wait for our knowledge exchange event! 🙌

It was a hot one today as we set off in the sweltering sun for some flyering action for South Norwood Community Festival.

We met Jean and the team at Norwood Junction station to grab many a stack of flyers before jogging off to target two roads.

Team Tennison managed to get through all the houses in no time, whilst the Davidson Road Runners clocked up a solid 300 or so addresses.

We had plenty of flyers left over in the end which may mean another blitz next week (tbc) ahead of the event on Sunday 7th July (see flyer).

Nice jog and job everyone 🙌

Check out the before and after photo on this one...

We had a lovely team of 7 tonight for a second session at Dorset Road Allotments. They've got a super sturdy old chicken run that they've asked us to dismantle in order to create an additional community space.

Last time we managed to clear some of the outer netting and this time we were continuing that as well as trimming down a lot of the crazy vegetation inside.

We finished up with plenty of war wounds from the brambles which was hopefully worth it!

GoodGym run - 2. Chicken run - 0.

Ace job everyone 🐓👍