Not money, sadly, but leaves and good vibes!

We met at the Bridge House, introducing ourselves and discussing our ideal scarf. A couple of people raised the concept of scarf-blankets, which sounds like a great way to keep warm!

Thankfully it wasn't cold out - just a bit damp, so we headed out to our task at St John the Evangelist Church in Upper Norwood. We've helped the church to lay mulch, cut back weeds and more in the past, but tonight they wanted some help with the leaf fall 🍂 from the lovely trees in their meadow 🌳

We also moved some bags of last year's composted leaves over to a planter 🪴 ready to fertilise some new plants, and then replaced the compost in the two bags with this year's leaves, filling them to the brim!

Sterling raking, team 🪴

Seven superheroes hit the pavements last night to help out the Friends of Cator and Alexandra with a spot of watering. They’ve got some a freshly planted hedge that needs all the help it can get. It’s going to form a long wildlife corridor along the side of the park to enable birds, bugs and hedgehogs etc. to safely reach new areas.

We took the long route to Alexandra Rec before getting stuck into carrying and barrowing buckets and watering cans across the park from 2 not-ideally-placed water sources. It suited us just fine though, getting in a nice arm and shoulder workout!

Lou found a particularly interesting bit of litter in the park... See pics... Not sure a run pun based on it would be entirely appropriate.

Afterwards we did a time trial around the park. So the next time we’re at Alex Rec, everyone’s got a target to beat. Look through the photos for the times 👀

Top work as usual gang! See you next week!

This evening we were back in those flower beds at Alexandra Rec, helping out their delightful friends group keep on top of those pesky weeds.

First up we met in The Bridge House and shared our names (novel) and favourite fruits (bananas, mango, raspberries, tinned peaches, watermelon, kiwi and strawberries FYI). We were joined for the first time by Zoe 🎉🎈✨🥳 for her very first GoodGym sesh - Lovely to have you with us!

Then we set off. We were in a bit of a rush because the Crystal Palace Fun Runners were about and we wanted to show them who's boss - we even managed a speedy warm up. It's a short one to Alex Rec where we met Lou who showed us our task.

Armed with trowels and forks and a wheelbarrow for mulching, we got to work. Zoe was tackling the prickly rose bed, Rosie and Cat were barrowing mulch, and everyone else was in another bed wrestling with dandelions and bindweed.

After a solid half hour we threw in the trowel, took a few snaps, played a quick game of 'squat, squat, goose' and headed back to base.

Well done everyone!

Another good deed done. ✅