Firstly huge congratulations to Michael for not only completing a marathon on Sunday but turning up to do Goodgym on Tuesday! I know the marathon didn’t go quite to plan but it is a phenomenal achievement to have completed and we loved hearing all about it last night. Feel proud!

Also last night a big Goodgym welcome goes to Matthew joining us for his first experience.

Our task tonight was a visit to the ever fantastic community garden that is Ingram Crescent. Every time we visit this place just gets better and better and they have now added a large seating area including a carved wooden fox. Michael & Juliet worked with resident Vic to scrub all the bird droppings of the benches ready to be used for the upcoming Easter weekend.

With a wet afternoon ruining the possibility of painting the shed as planned gardener Kim came up with a couple of alternative tasks. Firstly we created a 'fence' out of old bits of wood to house bags of rotting leaf mould and then we raked over some beds to remove sticky weed.

A quick pic with the fantastic Mx Fox before we headed back and then off to the Wick for our monthly social.

On a Thursday evening, GoodGym took to one of our usual sites to take on a not so usual task. While we'd normally be knee deep in garden soil, this time, task leader Kim sent us on a tour of the residential blocks across the Ingram Crescent community to refresh their notice boards. With fresh information up, Ingram residents will be kept in the know about what's happening in their community. We also took a tour through the lovely garden, and surveyed the wildflower meadow which we helped to prep last winter. There were no board GoodGymers on this task! Jacob, Tara and Tabitha also had the pleasure of welcoming back Angela who has recently completed a graduate degree. Congratulations Angela, and welcome back to GoodGym!

Another glorious summer's evening with vermilion skies and warmth in our bones. Of course I jest....this task actually entered a time capsule and travelled back in time three months to February when skies are leaden and the cold fingers of doom creep upon us. Anyway....to happier affairs. Kim gave us a usual fabulously varied array of jobs which despite the inclement weather we set about with our usual gusto. Your writer having spent the afternoon clearing moss from a friend's driveway continued the theme and cleared more moss from the roof of the summer house and then prepped the edgings ready for painting....meanwhile Roy, Juliet and Tabitha weeded the adjoining beds using both fancy new weed clearers and good old fashioned trowels and forks. Then......we went to the pub!! Happy Birthday Roy for Friday. Fin.

On a unseasonable evening we gathered at Ingram Crescent all sweaty and cold, We welcomed Sam from Colchester who was incredibly bold, Kim delivered our jobs that included shovelling mulch into a barrow, Paul and Abi did that and distributed it.. probably near a marrow, Sam and I also dug dirt and loaded it into sacks, This meant potatoes could be planted.. thems the facts, Tabi joined us after her meeting, She helped Kim with some work and still there was no heating, As some snow flurries fell it was time to go, We all ran home and the wind it did blow. The community garden is a marvellous local addition, It was lovely to see our work on the meadow had come to fruition.

As America went to the polls and England prepared for lockdown, Brighton Goodgym headed to Ingram Crescent Community Garden.

Our task tonight, the last one before L2, was to turn a grassy, weedy bank into a meadow. Using forks, rakes, edgers, trowels and mattocks we dug, scraped, pulled and weeded and there was plenty to chat about as we did it. Topics included food waste vs food packaging, Trump vs Biden, and positives vs negatives of another lockdown.

We also exchanged ideas about how to stay connected and keep each other motivated during the next few weeks. We decided we will use our Tuesday evenings to share our personal goals for lockdown (fitness or otherwise) and check in weekly to ensure we are staying on track! We will also be setting collective goals that we can work on together, such as collecting as many street names of cities on our runs. All ideas on this are welcome!

So Covid might be forcing us apart for the next few weeks, but we will stay connected, support each other and come out the other side ready to continue our efforts to make the world a little bit better whilst making ourselves a little bit fitter.

Stay safe, stay sane, stay connected x

One of the good things about the new way we are operating under Covid is that we can get to the projects that were a bit too far away for us when we ran as a group from the town centre. Ingram Crscent is such a place with (in my opinion!) the best community garden in Brighton & Hove.

Having spent the last 3 years taming the wilderness inside the garden, resident gardener Kim and her team, have decided to create a wild meadow just outside the garden on the estate. What is now a grassy, mostly weedy, bank edged by some dense out of control shrubs will, with our help, become a wildflower meadow.

Our jobs included forking the weeds out of the grass (Roy & Katharine), snipping away at the suckers surrounding the shrubs (Tabitha & Rosemary), raking and pulling the ivy out (Nancy &Jason), trimming hedges with electric hedge strimmers (Susan & Juliet) and David worked up quite a sweat by swinging his large mattock to dislodge the roots!

Check out the Ingram Crescent Garden Facebook Page to see more about what they've achieved here. And if you missed out tonight we'll be joining them for one of their Sunday sessions ont he 11th and hopefully visiting again on a Tuesday evening in a few weeks.

Kim says "Tons of clearing overgrown shrubs & removing the worst weeds was achieved. Fantastic job everyone, thanks a billion! 💚✅💚"