Pun credited to: Michael

This wasn't your usual GoodGym Lambeth group run. For starters, we had it lucky tonight with a two for Tuesday's in terms of tasks. Both Slade Adventure Playground and The Remakery needed our help tonight, but more on that later. Yet, the other unusual observation was the Group Run leader tonight looked different. Firstly, Yianny had a cast on his lower right leg, but that wasn't it. Related to that fact, Sam, the Area Activator from GoodGym Southwark was here to lead! (Wait for applause and cheering). It seems like the borough border control lets anyone through on a Tuesday night.... 🙄

Yianny was there for the start of the Group Run to deliver the introductions as 12 GoodGymers (which was a great split in terms of numbers) came out in full force. After a bitterly cold week last week, it was a pleasant change to have mild winds in our favour. However, most of us didn't get the memo and wrapped up to be warmer than a Polar Bear in the Caribbean. After a quick warm up and the ice-breaker question of - Tomorrow is the 1st of December, if you were to have any type of advent calendar, what would yours consist of?

Amongst the 12 answers, we had chilli sauces, sweets (Moams), biscuits, cheeses, coffee, tea bags and save the best for last, a different song every day....songs can last more than a day,!

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Short Run or Long Run

Since we had two tasks that were fairly close to each other and both within less than 2k away, Sam decided to ensure the run to Slade Adventure Playground would have a massive detour and end up being 2.4k each way against a straight route Aislin was going to take to The Remakery, which was 1.6k away. Everyone had to make their choice and in the end, in turned out that all of the women - Aislin, Rebecca, Shauna, Gayle and Katy (and Michael) wanted to take the shorter run to The Remarkery whilst the guys - Sam, George, Michael, Chris, Nathan and Joao took the loopy route via Clapham North station (an out and back detour) to Slade Adventure Playground at a fast pace! 🏃

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Such a sh*tty job

Actually, the task was quite lovely! The guys arrived at Slade Adventure Playground just after 19:25 to meet Jamie and we went straight into the task. He kindly turned on the floodlights so that we could see what we were doing, yet the portable floodlights we had came in handy for the final destination. But what were we transporting to the final destination?

It comes from Lansdowne Way, which is nearby - Jamie

Jamie said that to Sam when he asked about what we were dealing with tonight and thought there's no City Farm near here....where did this truck load of 💩 come from?

There's a local horse stables on Lansdowne Way - Jamie

Great to know that it wasn't the 💩 of the residents of Lansdowne Way....yet, we had the task of moving under a tonne worth of manure from the middle of the playground nearer to the community garden and the beds. Armed with four wheelbarrows and four shovels, we all got into a rhyme and a system of filling the wheelbarrows, walking/jogging over to the destination to pour the steamy 💩.

Wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow, we saw the pile of 💩 get smaller and smaller. It was a full body workout - core and definitely, the upper body (shoulders and back).

We're running out of steam - Chris

Yes, Chris, as the steam came out of the warm 💩, we were feeling the strain on our bodies. Before we knew it, the time was approaching 20:00. Yet, after scooping the last bit of powdery 💩, Sam transported the last wheelbarrow to be dumped on the new pile we had created. There was no time for the top soil to be moved, however, Jamie said it would be a task for his volunteers (60+ age group) on Saturday. We wish them well!

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Wood I?

I certainly would 😉 Don't know what I am talking about here, but most things in life, I would. Anyway, Aislin, Rebecca, Shauna, Gayle and Katy (and Michael) arrived at The Remakery to be given the task of moving woodchip. Another strength and conditioning task that required them to shovel woodchip into wheelbarrows and transport/spreading them onto the beds that were in The Remakery's garden. They did remind the group that on Thursday night, they need our assitance with setting up their Art Studio. You can find and sign up to the task here.

Thank You Slade Adventure Playground and The Remakery

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owners and I would like to take this opportunity to thank Slade Adventure Playground and The Remakery for agreeing to stay later than usual and for hosting us. They will have GoodGym Lambeth back to help them!

What a lovely evening for a run! We had lots of lovely new people along to join in with our three task bonanza. They were IN LUCK as the most important thing in the GG Lambeth calender has come around once again: The Great British Bake Off Sweetstake!

Beth had all the names and descriptions ready to go and fearless Lambeth runners drew the names of their star bakers. As if you needed an excuse to join us on a run - now you can with added cake right up until Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Onto the tasks!

From Beth: A group of 5 of us took a short jog to Loughborough junction farm to meet Walter who had an orchard of trees that needed watering. Once supplied with watering cans, a couple of wheelbarrows and rather nifty H2Go bags we were given directions of where we were to fill up said watering vessels and headed through Wyck gardens. Where we had been directed to appeared to just be a regular street so we were a bit confused, it turned out our water source was just a very kind man called Andy who had a hose running through his flat and out of the front door. Once the hose was appropriately positioned so that any leaks ended up watering his flowerbed we were laughing and chatted away while we watched the bags fill up. We covered various topics including the best baths to visit when in Budapest (there’s the popular one in the park that everyone goes to but there’s also a new rooftop one) and thanks to Andy having to call his dog Marley back every so often were reminded of this gem. Once all the trees had had a much needed drink we took our equipment back to the farm, got a grateful hug from Walter and made our way back to Papa’s.

From Jim and Tom: The largest group headed down to old fave Kennington Park, where the very organised Marietta and Rita set us about the usual jobs. There was litter picking, removing the pesky bindweed and trimming the hedges in the lovely rose garden. Kudos must go to the 'advanced level' rose trimmers who certainly know their petal from their lead and also to Andrew G who dug up a tree by following instructions very well!

From Katie: 15 of us headed to a new task, helping out at an adventure playground. They want to develop an area of the playground that's a bit overgrown and the first thing was turning some compost that had been there for a while. It turns out that some bees had set up home in one particular part of the compost and so we turned them over by accident. Luckily they were friendly bees who were happy to see us and didn't sting us at all. The compost was quite stinky but everyone did a great job! Freyja and Elise got to measuring up specific bits of the park that will be renovated. We did some nice planks and then ran home.

TOP EVENING LAMBETH