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! 👋

For this week's issue of GoodGym... Brambles.

We assembled at the Bridge House, welcomed Henrietta to the crew and named ourselves and our favourite tube or train lines.

Then we set off to Albion Millenium Green, where we met Jorella from the friends group who had a prickly task for us.

Ramble in the bramble.

Lots of the lovely bluebells were getting shrouded by overgrown bramble bushes, so our job was to cut them back in a few different areas. Armed with secateurs, shears, saws and even a scythe(!) we got to work trimming and swiping until the areas looked much tidier.

Nice job & jog everyone 👌

After naming ourselves and our current book we're reading (what a literary bunch!), we made our way down to Cator Park. We nabbed the keys from Millie and equipped ourselves with many shovels, a wheelbarrow and a brush to tidy up.

This has been our third in a series of sessions to widen the main path into the park. The mud and grass has been creeping over for years so we've been freeing almost a metre of path in some places 😮

Slicing and dicing gives you a proper good workout and thankfully we had Molly on barrowing duty picking up all our mud clods.

See pics for what a difference we had made - so much room!

Lovely stuff everyone 💥💥💥

At what point is a pun so bad that it's good? Not there yet?

Last night 9 top quality GoodGymers came out for a jog and some weeding at a NEW TASK for us! I love the mystery of a new task. However this new task was for the Salvation Army who are understandably a reliable bunch.

We named, told everyone our favourite sports and looped round the block to get the the Sally Army building in Penge, where we met Becky who had provided plenty of tools for us to use.

GoodGympanzies?

It was actually a bit of a jungle with moss growing along the ground and bushy weeds growing around the sides. Armed with hoes, secateurs, those scrapey-outey things and even a saw for the tree-like thing, we cracked on.

It was a big space to clear and within 25 minutes we'd smashed it.

To weed or not to weed?

Kelsey was going to arrange a GoodGym Bromley-wide poll as to where we should remove one plant that looked particularly "planty" and maybe not so "weedy".

Unfortunately David and his secateurs beat us to it. 😅

Squat, paper, scissors

It's been a little while since we've gamified our journey back to base, but with a sports court on route, I couldn't resist. We did a quick game of squat, paper, scissors: Lose - and you sprint to the other side and back. Win - you squat.

Well played, and nice running and good deeding everyone ✨

11 legends used their Monday night to get in a jog and a good weeding deed for TNG Youth Centre.

We kicked off the evening with names and the place we’d love to wake up in. Some spectacular choices ranging from Patagonia to Japan to Antarctica.

After a quick warm up we headed to Sydenham. This was a DIY session with nothing but us, our gloves and the weeds.

Some nasty brambles were no match for Molly, and Adam cleverly suggested a spot in the bushes across the road for our piles of vegetation 👌

Once we'd scraped, yanked and whispered (yup) all the weeds out, we headed round the corner to the (apparently) famous 'SNUFFLE' - a wine bar, cafe and dog groomers/spa, "probably for tax reasons", said Emma.

We headed back via a different route. We had a wallsit competition. Cat won! 🏆

And finally we did some stretches and a few of us had a beverage. NICE.