A brisk November evening saw 4 GoodGym-ers on a bracing run up the hill to Dee's Childcare in Woolwich, a lovely children's daycare centre with a huge outdoor space perfect for adventures.

Those adventures include small people learning how to cycle, hence things can get a bit congested...! So the plan is to create a traffic-controlling roundabout, which is where we come in. Our ongoing mission is to level the area for this to happen, separating the stones from the soil, both to be used in other areas. With the help of a pickaxe and some shovels we loaded up several wheelbarrels-worth of material, re-purposing plastic veg boxes as sieves to separate the soil for the vegetable patch and stones for the pathway. A busy evening warmed us up brilliantly, and we made great progress before running out of time - then it was all downhill from here (well, back to Woolwich town centre anyway!)

Thanks & have a great week all 🙂

Rain, sieving soil and rolling stones summarises this week's task! We were back at Dee's childcare to collect loads of stones for stage 2 of laying a roundabout for Pieter's son to bike around.

It's always wonderful to come to this nursery and its incredible garden, even in the dark and the rain. After a soggy run from Woolwich, Dee showed us to the piles of soil. The task? Sieve the soil to get as many stones out and into a pile as possible! Have you ever sieved soil? Well, if not, it's pretty hard work. Or so I hear having avoided that part. My technique was picking the stones out and eventually coining the avalanche technique to loosen as many as possible while Kerry perched at the bottom collecting them all!

After 45 minutes we'd collected 4 big crates- enough to lay out around the roundabout and back we'll come for another stage in a few weeks time! After managing to straighten our backs out, we ran back to Woolwich and onto the rest of our weeks. Sore arms reported the next day 🤪

Well done team. Next week we're at St Richard's Centre in Charlton. Tomorrow we're helping out at Danson park https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/working-on-the-woodland-walk-b7aa6989-3b3f-4ac5-a866-0de30a9a1086.

Until next time 👋🏼

Wednesday saw two Good Gym runners make their way up a very steep hill to Dee’s Childcare, a friendly nursery in Plumstead that is a favourite of GoodGym Greenwich. The task was simple, or so it seemed: dig a couple of trenches in their garden to support some sleepers that will be used to build flowerbeds. Things started well and after careful measurement digging began, but soon we rediscovered the fun part of urban digging, namely that you don’t know what’s under the surface. A couple of centimetres down on the second trench we hit pavement and this required plan B, so instead of digging down your ingenious GoodGym types decided to build up and having dug shallow trenches for the sleepers we then proceeded to bank soil up around them to provide the necessary support. Our task done, all that remained was to have a chat with the nursery workers who had been themselves braving the cold to have a tough looking exercise session.

Thanks to Julian for leading the session and writing the report!

Wednesday 27th September saw 9 GoodGymers (welcome newcomers Maria & Lukas!) meet outside the Crossrail Station in Woolwich for a hop, skip and a jog up the hill to our task at Dee’s Childcare.

Once welcomed by the team there, we were presented with our challenge for the evening: Levelling Up the Playing Field (or rather, levelling up a small hill made up of re-purposed car tyres and soil). This needed to be de-constructed and then re-built to form a supporting structure around the existing slide.

Challenge accepted, lots of digging, ground flattening and re-arranging ensued and within the hour a cheerleading-style pyramid of tyres had been concocted around said slide – a rainbow of painted tyres featuring on the front section.

What seemed like a daunting task at first, turned out to be one where the time flew by, and proved team work really does give us a pitch perfect result. Thanks to all involved!

This task made a few of us wish we'd thought ahead and brought some marshmallows for some tales and tunes by the fire....sharing the spice of life, and generally getting our groove on. I mean, it doesn't get much better than this absolute banger does it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrle0x_DHBM

We didn't have marshmallows, but we did start the evening with cling film and Moon Monster and then a leisurely run up to Dee's childcare to help out with their humongous and wonderful garden. No wonder they had to give up their allotment, the land here is enough to keep anyone busy. JC and his dad tended to the fire, being by far the most hardy of our group, and the most inclined to get their groove on. The rest of us weeded, trying to decipher the vegetables from the weeds and spent a happy half hour chatting.

Time for a band photo on and around the children's slide and then a welcome downhill run and short fitness exercise whilst discussing who had endeavoured to nose run and who had completely forgotten to try.

There ends our lovely evening - we'll be back here again to actually help put the planters up!

Next social end of August we will be enjoying the non alcoholic beer courtesy of Athletic Brewing: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/picnic-at-st-george-s-garrison-church-3b1c92be-2428-40e2-9108-c838216b595a

See you next week at More 2 for some more nursery fun!

Six Goodgymers met outside a relatively quiet Woolwich Cross Rail just before Christmas for the last group run in December. Amy from Waltham Forest and James were the first timers for Greenwich GoodGym- welcome to you both! Matt, Sarah, Pieter and I were the regulars and we kicked off by sharing our favourite Christmas desserts that we would like for the ideal Christmas. After a gentle warm up, led by Matt, we gingerly embarking a hill to the nursery. A short 2 km run brought us to the nursery where Pieter’s children go. Our task was to decorate the back garden / play area with Christmas lights. Pieter and I went straight to wrap round the wooden boat with a long strip of lights. The rest of us were gathered around the covered area and hung the lights around the area.

It sounded quite straightforward putting Christmas lights on; the most time consuming part was to untangle the lights! We were able to switch on the lights to see how we did, which was lovely. We hope that the children will have fun and enjoy the Christmas lights. On our way back it was a downhill run, Pieter tried to show us a house with the most decorated Christmas lights but unfortunately the lights were not switched on. A fun evening had drawn to a close.

See you all for our January runs!