After a glorious sunny bank holiday weekend, it felt a bit windy-er our yesterday’s enjoyable outing and GoodGym group session at Wilding Waterhall. This is a project of The Living Coast Partnership restoring chalk grassland, improving biodiversity and supporting public engagement on a former golf course up in the middle of a scenic wildland just on the doorstep of the South Downs National Park.

It was our first GoodGym Brighton outing with double sport action, with Philippa leading a group of our enthusiastic runners, including Jane, Nicola, Ben and Angela who found her way without getting lost in the wild 😊

And, with Stefania riding by bike together with Juliet, Sarah and new member Maddalena. WELCOME! Joining Doug, and Richard coming from the further West and Frances, who is always the first one up and ready for the community action of the day!

We saved 1.2 kg of CO2 riding or walking to Wilding Waterhall rather than travelling by car. This is what the Brighton & Hove BetterPoint App tells me to encourage sustainable travel across our city!

We were hosted by Laura from Brighton & Hove Food Partnership for tacking a spring deep clean in what was a former golf clubhouse. The list of cleaning tasks was neat, clear and long but, as usual, we managed to sort all out with our GoodGym superpower, despite the missing hot water, the lost buckets and the hidden additional hoover with dodgy electric supply 😊

Brighton & Hove Food Partnership has just taken over the management of Wilding Waterhall venue that is now available for hiring to host projects like “Land Use Plus” and “Meat Share” to encourage nature friendly farming and improve food production practices that impact less on climate change. Read more here about Wilding Waterhall: https://thelivingcoast.org.uk/project/changing-chalk-wilding-waterhall-2 And, on BHFP website about their projects https://bhfood.org.uk/land-use-plus-project and https://bhfood.org.uk/meatshare-project/

Summer is here, it's official! 13 Good Gym runners met to run and walk up the steep hill to Brighton Unemployed Familes Project. We celebrated Pippa's 50 good deeds in her absence and welcomed new member Michael . Oranganised by Sarah, this seemed a simple task at first but proved deceptive. Joy from Brighton Unemployed Families Project told us the project had been running for 42 years and provided practical support, education and much much more to local families. Recently one group of families had 13 different languages between them! It was a lovely large space that backed on to Tarner park. Our task was to sort the many donations of baby and children's clothes. First it was suggested we sort by type of clothing, then by gender but then mother-to-be Catherine suggested by age. This proved the winning formula and our team made good progress. We were amazed by the end of the session that we had sorted at least half of the clothes. And there were some very cute clothes including baby sleeping bags and an elf's costume! The other team had to take many boxes up to the top floor where there was more room and also were very successful in sorting the clothes, although I think by the end of it some of us were going a bit ga ga !