The sun was smiling on this new partnership between GoodGym and our friends at Two Circles as we met in South London to head out and help out Thames Reach (TR), a London-based charity working with those suffering from homelessness.

Thames Reach’s mission is to help people who are homeless or vulnerable to find decent homes, build supportive relationships and lead fulfilling lives. The Bermondsey Project provides temporary, supported accommodation. Staff work alongside mental health professionals to support vulnerable individuals.

The main part of the group met at Paterson Park and then the quicker runners and cyclists headed over with AA Mark (GoodGym Bromley) to Aberdour Court centre while the remaining group came with AA Yianny to Roseberry Street and Galleywall Street centres.

Our job was simple but satisfying, help weed, clear, litter pick, mow and lop until the outdoor spaces were like new! The two groups with Yianny got through an amazing amount of work (and a fair bit of banter) and both Elvis and Tommy from TR were absolutely delighted. (check out the pics to see just how much)

A big thank you to all the volunteers and hope you all enjoy the evening as you retreat to the pub for a well deserved drink and rest.

Another lovely Tuesday evening at GG Lambeth with a mix of new and long term members joining us for the task with Thames Reach hospice. We are certainly getting lucky with the crisp cold but dry conditions although most of the group insisted it wasn't that cold..... AA Yianny begs to differ!

First up a warm welcome to Liz and Elsa (?!) who were attending their first GG session as new members, it was lovely to have you both with us! Also welcome back to Charlotte - back with us after a long injury layoff, glad to have you with us again.

Tonight's run was a good one. We were heading down to the Thames Reach Hospice about four kilometres each way to help out with their communal garden. Communication had been sparse and it turns out on arrival that our point of contact with Thames Reach no longer works there. But thankfully the team there were happy to see us and were able to let us in and into the shed to find the tools and carry out the job.

We were met at the task by our resident walkers / cyclists Marie-Noel and Paul. And now that our group was complete, we were able to get our gloves on and get cracking with weeding the planting beds. 45 minutes later, we'd done a great job in clearing out the large planting bed so that the onions (or possibly daffodils?) could grow in peace. We also managed to disturb a large number of creepy crawlies from the planting bed, to the delight of Louise, who was doing a bit of good gym tourism this evening. In the last few minutes we were able to collect a bit of litter to spruce the garden up a bit, put everything in the bin and then we were ready to head back to base and those who were running separately or cycling could head home.

Huge thanks to everybody for this evening and a reminder that next week's session will be held in French, followed by sessions in German, Norwegian and any other language that people care to share with the rest of the group. Only joking, but great to have some really fun conversation about where people are from (Oslo such a beautiful city!), where they've been living, and what languages they prefer speaking.

See you all at the next one!

The cold snap continues in London but that wasn't going to put off our Lambeth GGers who were out tonight to start our new partnership with Thames Reach.

It looks as if the hall at Papa's now has a standing booking so we congregated outside as we waited to head off to the task and it was great to have Michael back with us for Group Run after his exertions in the Saharan marathon conditions back in August - well done on completing 42kms in that heat! If you're looking for podcast recommendations btw look no further than Frances's suggested How Things are Made on the invention of Strava, one close to our hearts for sure.

It's a solid 3kms to the task so we set off at a good pace and 18 mins later were at the address only to find the centre was nowhere to be found. We took every little alley and road we could find, circling round no. 1 (we were looking for 1a) but seemingly you had to pass through platform 9 & 3/4 to get to the place...

It turns out that number 1a is two roads away from number 1 - but of course it is!

Anyway, on arrival we were met by Marie-Noelle and Paul our resident walkers/cyclists and it was lovely to have Mikhail from Southwark Task Force with us as well, welcome Mikhail!

After a few salutary greetings from the clients at the centre we headed out to the lovely but very overgrown gardens with only a couple of pairs of secateurs and some recycling bags. No tools? No problem. We gloved up and started pulling weeds and chopping back bindweed for all we were worth and by the end of the hour had cleared 3 large bags worth of compostable material. We look forward to coming back next month to continue our progress!

Thanks everyone and in case you missed it we were delighted that Lambeth GG has now done its' 1000th Mission - way to go everyone - that's a lot of good, done and a lot of fit, got !!

See you next week.

We were tasked with giving a second coat of paint to an office room in a Thames Reach Hostel. We'd already helped to clean and prep the walls and paint them on a couple of previous occasions.

We had one big paint roller, one small paint roller with a long handle and a selection of paintbrushes available so we armed ourselves with one of these each, taped up the plug sockets, doors and notice boards then got straight to work.

Karen was on corner-duty with the paint brush, I was using the big roller to cover the middle areas of the walls, and Sally was targeting the tops of the walls which were out of reach without the long handle on the roller.

Just over an hour later and we'd given the room a good coat of white paint to cover the first layer we helped with a couple of weeks ago. It's gone from white with some patchy areas to super white and even all over!

An office room in the hostel needed painting to give it a brighter/lighter feel as the current paint was a mixture of some old cream in some parts and striking green and blue paint in others. Another group of GoodGym volunteers prepped the walls in the room a couple of days before, so when we got there we just needed to get painting. We had a load of paint, rollers and brushes to use and decided to start with the back wall and make our way towards the window side to finish. Over an hour later and just when we thought we were finished, we were asked to paint the ceiling too as there were some brown/discoloured parts which now looked quite obvious next to the new white walls. A quick 10 minute power rolling was enough to cover the ceiling in a lick of paint and get it looking closer in colour to the walls. The room could probably do with another coat of paint but we were pretty chuffed with the end result considering what it looked like before!

Lovely to meet fellow runners Sarah and Mark. With minimum equipment and maximum skill and effort we made a good start on the walls and skirting. Definitely needs a wallpaper steamer (see photo above) next time to help remove the wallpaper. And more polyfilla!