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! 🙌

Anyone remember the 90’s TV ad?

I get a chick out of you

First up, we named ourselves and our favourite chicken-y thing from creme eggs to spatchcock to the rooster who’s been waking Catherine up all day!

We also welcomed Mohammed to the crew 👏👏👏👏👏 So great to have you with us.

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Our task was a brand new one for the folks at Dorset Road Allotment. They’ve got an old and overgrown chicken run which they want removed so that they can use the space for community activities.

We met Jaime and Ann from the committee who equipped us with tools from screwdrivers to bolt cutters to shears and we headed round to the chicken run.

It was huge. Harry was convinced something other than the nettles and brambles lived in there. 👹

We cracked on with various tasks:

✂️ Trimming back the nettles and brambles

🛠 Cutting the netting down and rolling it up

💪 Yanking off some big corrugated panels

📢 Moral support

It was kinda dangerous work but everyone got safely stuck in.

I think Mohammed won the prize for energy input! 🏆

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A half-dozen kilometres, some beautiful golden hour snaps from Cat, and a good deed in the bag.

Nice one team 💪

Tonight's session was a Tiny Forest sandwich with two lovely jogs either side.

We kicked off at The Bridge House. Everyone took a guess at the number of people who signed up for the London Marathon this year. 840,000. Molly won. That's more than 1% of the UK population which is a crazy statistic.

Anyway, next up we split in two. Cat led a longer run and we all congregated at the Tiny Forest in Cator Park.

It was looking pretty well mulched but Millie assured us it needed more.

The mulch pile was a fair distance away, so we took turns wheeling and filling up with the good stuff.

I'll be bark.

After a good 45 mins we'd covered half the Tiny Forest and left a decent pile for the other half of the trees. We might even be back to spread a little more next week. We'll see.

Nice job, team! And shout-out to Sarah for joining the Bromley crew for the first time 🙌

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 👌