What a smashing morning with the Friends of Danson Park, laying wood chippings along the Woodland Walk 🌳.

With eight of us (plus a husband and two brilliant young helpers) working alongside the regular volunteers we got so much done. Shoveling chippings into wheelbarrows, ferrying them to the path, raking them out, going back for more. It was genuinely impressive seeing our dynamic GoodGym team in action.

Beth coined things beautifully in saying, 'This is the best kind of GoodGym task, when you get a great workout, and can see a real difference at the end.'

Great work everyone!

With the path finished we headed to Danson Stables (cafe, not horses) for hot drinks kindly provided by the manager, and biscuits provided by the Friends ☕️🍪.

We'll be back next month, getting busy again to keep Danson Park looking wonderful.

• And the title for this report? When Ashton told us someone called him Alvin, and we were ferrying the chippings around... nice punning Beth!

Shovel, barrow, rake, repeat.

We had a fun morning and a great workout with the regular volunteers from Friends of Danson Park at their monthly Saturday morning session.

The grey, drizzly weather meant there were fewer people than sometimes, but we still managed to lay fresh woodchips along a fair length of the Woodland Trail.

Afterwards we chatted over hot drinks at The Stables then it was time to head home.

Our monthly session with the Friends of Danson Park is usually a good workout, and this morning was no exception.

We got active shoveling woodchips into barrows and wheeling them to the North Woodland Walk. There we raked them along the path to prevent a mudfest in the winter months. 💪💪💪

Our youngest GoodGymers helped us cover an impressive length of the walk. Then it was time to enjoy a hot drink kindly provided by The Stables.

The Friends are taking a break in December but we'll be back in January to tackle the rest of the path.

This morning we got busy with The Friends of Danson Park.

For starters there was barrowing and spreading mulch around some of the younger trees in the park.

Then for the main course we set to work cutting back overgrown hedges along one of the main paths where there's a local bylaw that dictates a view must be maintained across the the lake. With lots of loppers and secateurs in lots of hands we made cracking progress and the lake was visible once again.

Then we enjoyed coffee and tea courtesy of The Stables.

We'll be back for more of the same next month. Come and join us!

We were a blaze of red helping the Friends of Danson Park this morning.

Some of us got a good workout shovelling wood chippings into barrows, wheeling them to the Woodland Path and raking them out to spruce up the trail.

Others flexed their muscles to move logs into a defined edging along the path. 🪵

And we also got busy with secateurs cutting back saplings and brambles to help the trees thrive. 🌳 🌿

There was plenty of chatting between ourselves and with the regular volunteers.

After some final fun trying to set up a group photo using the camera timer, we rounded off the task with tea, coffee and shortbread. What a nice treat!

Well done Team GoodGym!

A rake’s progress is a series of paintings by William Hogarth (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rake%27s_Progress ) in which the protagonist descends into villainy and ultimately receives the worst possible comeuppance. Fortunately, the only things suffering death and dissection today had been the Christmas trees of the borough of Bexley and Good Gym was there to put the remains to use.

Having both completed the rather lovely Danson parkrun, two runners joined the friends of Danson Park for their monthly volunteer activity. Recent rains had left many of the paths through the park barely useable but four large piles of woodchips had been delivered to mitigate the problem. The volunteers split into two groups and both had the same aim: transfer the woodchip to wheelbarrows, take the wheelbarrows down the path to be emptied and rake the deposited woodchips along the path to create dry useable sections. As there were a lot of volunteers the piles were soon reduced from hills to minor bumps and before long a new wooden path was snaking through the woods for the local walkers and runners to take advantage of.