Kingston GoodGym has a long history with the communal garden at Vine Close, which we helped clear ahead of its redesign from the very beginning. It's so satisfying to see how far it has come to the relacing setting and the beautiful pond teeming with wildlife it is today.

Georgina, the biodiversity officer from Kingston, was on hand to get us started and help with nature advice.

Jonathan, Laurel and Marcos got stuck into removing invasive plants around the banks and even made a tiny new frog friend.

Claire, Emma and Adam helped tidy up the surrounding garden and plant pots while Tom and Laura somehow managed to avoid wet feet clearing duckweed from the pond.

Everything looked great afterwards, and we could even see a few newts in the - temporarily - clear pond. A lovely task on a perfect spring evening.

This evening we were back at Elm Road playground for the second time, finishing off the work we started last week.

One of the walled edges of the park has around 10 panels that at one point in time were all covered in beautiful mosaics. Unfortunately most have now deteriorated so only 3 complete panels remain. The task was to scrape clean and sand down the panels (with no mosaics) to enable a local artist to paint it with a much more attractive mural.

Tonight's GoodGymers walked, cycled or ran to the task and soon got stuck in, most of us knowing what to do after last week. It was a messy job but great to make some more progress and we're all looking forward to seeing the final result after the artist has completed their work!m

We were very honoured that the Mayor came to pay us a visit and he got stuck in, once he had removed his chains, and helped to scrape and sand like the rest of us.

We also welcomed Nikita on her first task - thank you for joining us! Hope to see you at another task soon.

We had a whopping number of 13 Goodgymers cleaning out the KVA’s Surplus to Supper Hub so we split up into three groups.

Group 1 had John, Tom, Saber and Dave who washed the van and cleaned out the industrial fridge. Firstly, John, Tom and Dave sponged it down with warm soapy water and then Saber put his shooting skills to the test with the pressure washer. Then, they attempted to clean the fridge by taking all the crates out so the floor was clear and ready to be washed. However, they realised the hose was too short and couldn't reach inside! Oh no, better luck next time guys! This still made a great workout with all the washing and lifting! 💪

Next, we had group 2 with Emily, Amy W and Marcos cleaning the kitchen. Making sure the sink area and cooking equipment were all sanitised down, wiped and moped the floor until sparkling clean and mud-free!

Lastly, we had group 3 with the slightly hardest job of the night… Louise, Claire, Luke, Anna, Jonathan and Rachel were entrusted to reducing, sorting and moving crates of non-edible items (e.g beauty products, mother and baby small items, clothes and event decorations) to a small pantry cupboard. It was very much like playing a few rounds of Tetris!

Aside from that, we all finished the tasks that we set up to do. Great job everyone, see you all next time!

It was lovely to visit a new venue in Kingston for Tuesday's week's task, for all that we've all walked past Hestia's office without knowing it was there. Hestia has an enormous site up a few flights of stairs on Eden Street where it runs the Good Energy Club, a community project created to help people with mental illness or issues with low levels of mental wellbeing through physical and social activities.

There were acres of surfaces to wipe, around table tennis tables, music rooms, conference rooms and offices, dealt with by cloth from Anna, Tom, Rachel, Jana, Emily, Laurel, Sabir, Sekar and Jonathan.

Meanwhile Luke and Marcos performed heroics with a hoover across never-ending carpets as Dave, Louise and Levita refused to allow the thorough cleaning of the kitchen to beat them.

Perhaps the highlight of the whole evening was our host John, who supplied us not only with good humour but Pepsi Max, sweets and biscuits, and might even become our newest GoodGym recruit. While some of the gang headed off for a well-deserved drink for our monthly social at The Albion, we'll all look forward to coming back to a great spot very soon.