Well, weren't we lucky with the weather?! It had rained cats and dogs today so it was an absolute re-leaf that the rain had stopped by the time we met for our Group Run. After a quick warm up in the Quaker car park, we ran through the streets of Kingston to get to St Luke's School.

Surrounded by beautiful trees, the only downside is the piles of leaves that they create in Autumn. The bike racks were difficult to access as they were covered with large oak leaves. Easy to sweep and pile up though and we had a great time with the leaf-grabber - made the job so much easier.

The other area we tackled was by the classrooms. A tree with smaller, golden leaves had shed by the classrooms making it impossible to keep the indoor carpets clean once they had covered the kid's shoes. We did our best to sweep them up with the pine needles but as they were small and wet, they were very resistant to the brooms. We persisted and soon had bags and bags of leaves to show for our persistence.

The last section we did was in the netball court and we went back to the oak leaves - phew! An hour and a half of bagging leaves made the playground look much tidier and less of a slip hazard. Difficult to show in the photos in the dark but we were pleased with our achievements.

New year new HQ for Kingston this week - out with the old meet up point in the Guildhall and in with the new meet up point at the fantastic Quaker Centre. Led by a fresh faced new Area Activator in Rachel, who gave her first group briefing and led her first (of many I'm sure) run around fairfield and back to school for the evenings mission.

It was there our teacher for the evening, Kate, took over the lesson. Maths was the topic of choice in a slightly practical format.Taking away all the muddy build up and school resources that had beenadded since our last visit, and to tidy up the gardens round the front of the school of themultiple weeds that had. Like all good students wedivided into smaller groups and sub groups, to set about the various tasks and indouble quick time we completed the tasks and were rewarded with chocolate cake in the staff room for being so well behaved.

After school, a few of us snuck of to the pub to let our hair down a bit, before we called it a night.

Thanks to Rachel for organising the Quaker centre as our new meet up point - it really is a fantastic all singing and all dancing venue, for the future of Kingston GoodGym. I look forward to more group runs setting off from here to come. Also thanks to Kate for organising the school mission for us, I'm sure we'll be needed back in the spring again.

The team of seven Goodgym volunteers did a brilliant job of sweeping up the piles of pesky leaves that littered the playground at St Luke’s Primary School of Tuesday evening. All gutters were cleared of their gunk, leaves, slugs and worms. There were many bags full to be hauled away and the clear gutters now mean there’s no risk of flooding in the school as the winter weather approaches. Great work team! The head teacher and premises committee were very appreciative and pass on many thanks for improving the school grounds.

It was a school night for the Goodgym Kingston crew of 6 eager volunteers! We were keen to return to the school grounds of St Luke’s CE Primary to do another quick clear out of the gutters and a sort out of some weeds as the first item on the lesson plan! Weed started by pulling up the grates and relocating a few worms to a new microhabitat of the compost heap. Those first to arrive got to clearing the key stage 2 gutters and others started sweeping up behind them until there was no more broom in the bags! Once the gutters were done and weeds mostly pulled, it was break time! We rewarded our efforts with a quick stop at the water cooler and then it was time to tackle the front garden and outdoor classroom area! Laura and Hannah carried on with a bit more gutter clearing on the key stage 1 side, playground weeding and sweeping. Since the hairdressers have now opened, we figured it was time to give the grass its post-lockdown cut and trim around the sides of the planter boxes with quite a bit off the top too! Dave took to the mowing while Claire, Rob and I tackled the cutting back of some lovely aromatic herbs that had grown quite out of control. The smells of the rosemary and thyme were making us quite hungry but we pulled on and had to give some families of snails a relocation in the process too! During the clear out we even resurfaced a trowel and little hand fork tucked away in the beds. We were pleased to finish in thyme for a quick lesson on plants in the outdoor classroom. Great work everyone! Class dismissed as school’s out for the summer!

What a great turn out of runners for a Tuesday night in Kingston! With 17 runners warming up outside the Guidhall our run leader for the evening, Samia, had us heel flicking, walking our hands out to a plank, lunging and going through the essential pre-run stretches to prevent injury. Before long we were all warmed-up and ready to do our quick run through the market square and off towards Canbury Gardens and on to our task for the evening!

It was to St Luke’s CE Primary School we ran this evening! With a link made by one of our own Kingston Goodgym runners, we were tasked with some clearing of leaves from the scooter and bike racks as well as the cleaning out of gutters and drains outside the classroom’s conservatories. While it seemed like they were big tasks to take on when we arrived, it didn’t take long before we’d divided to conquer our mission and got into the groove (between each rack over the gutters too). With great speed of scooping and sweeping, it wasn’t long before all gutters were cleared on the Key Stage 2 classroom side of the school and our task leader took us over to the Key Stage One side to continue while there was still time to clear as much as we could.

While the gutters were being cleared by half of the group, we couldn’t be’leaf’ how quickly a few bags were filled with the leaves from around the bike stands by the other half! Many hands made light work as the bags of mud and sludge from gutters got heavier! Once the last sweep left little ‘broom’ for improvement where the scooters stood, it was time to ‘leaf’ the bags by the shed and prepare for our run back.

With a final quick monkeying around on the trim trail of the playground, it was time for a group photo and school was out!

Well done to all on this Kingston group run for your support of a local school that has a big part in our local community. We were lucky to meet some new runners this evenings as well and send a big cheer to Scott and Moemen on their first group run with us and Owen and John returning for their second. Huge congratulations to Claire for her achievement of 50 good deeds and to Rob for 100 good deeds in Kingston! And thanks to Caroline for backmarking and Kate for being a wonderful taskowner and writing the run report! Our community is a better place because of your great contributions!

We’re back to school again next week so sign up to join us on a run and task to support St Paul’s CE Primary School next Tuesday!

Samia, Caroline, Kate and Rob (+ Arthur) arrived at the school playground to take directions from the head of the PFA to get things in place for the big event! The school's big fundraising party - The Summer Fête needed some extra hands so Goodgym ran to the school to help with the set up. The first item on the list was benches which needed to be carried from the school hall and out to the playground to mark the stage for the skipping team's show. Once that top priority job was done we were ready to move onto tables. Out came the tables for the previously owned toys, the teddy tombola and bottles tombola stalls. Next we needed to carry the toys and teddies over to their tables to take their place. There were some discussions had on recalling the names of characters at the teddy stall and excitement over the educational toys that had been donated! Then we moved onto books and bottles to be carried from the PFA shed and out to the bar stall. When we'd finished carrying all the bottles over to the bar a familiar rectangular bag caught our eye and we had to ask, "Is that a gazebo that needs assembling?" And to our delight, it was! Well spotted! The gazebo experts snapped into action and each took a corner to raise a leg and poke in pins until it was up and ready to be put in place. Another table was moved from the children's bar to be used for a table football area ( also known as foosball to some people!) only to be moved back and replaced by lower and larger classroom tables that were safer and less likely to cause an accident! At the end of our school day we had learned a lot about the number of teddies that could fit on one table, the best way to quickly move many bottles (barrow some wheels!) and how to safely set up the table football! Bench you didn't think we could get so much done in just over an hour! It was a great work out for us too! We got our weight training in too with all the lifting and moving of items in the set up!

The school were very grateful for all our help with the set up because our extra hands made lighter and faster work for everyone on such a hot summer's day!