There was some top running and good doing last night at GoodGym Lambeth with 36(!) runners turning out to visit Moorlands and Hillside Gardens for some woodchip spreading and weeding.

Big cheers to Lucy, Becca, Shauna, Freddie, Charlotte, Mac and Rachel for joining the gang!

After a quick intro including a quiet reminder that LAMBETH WON THE GOODGYM OLYMPICS🔥🎈🍾🤩🎉🎉🎉, we set off.

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Freya lead a smaller group to Moorlands park to create 2 paths out of woodchip:

After a little detour which was definitely, according to Freyja, all part of the plan, the group found Karen and were set to work creating not one but two paths from woodchip. There was a huge pile of woodchip to be moved, but with Team spade, Team Wheelbarrow , Team Bucket and Michael and John trimming the grass we had it done in no time! 💪😎👍

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And a bigger bunch of us ran 4k up Brixton Hill to Hillside Gardens to weed around the sports courts.

Lambeth Council have decided to limit their use of chemical weed killers 👏 so they deployed the next best thing: GOODGYM WEED KILLERS 😈

These were some big weeds and BIG WEEDS means BIG ROOTS so we raided the tool shed for implements capable of deep ground penetration. The GoodGym machine is a ruthless beast and in 30 minutes a serious chunk of weeds were uprooted and barrowed into a big white bag. Freddie even scaled a wall to get at some of them 😬(see pics).

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Next week we've got two tasks again! If you fancy a longer run, we're flyering for the Brixton People's Kitchen and we'll have a shorter one to Ruskin Park Community Garden. Sign up here!

Massive welcome to Celia, Tim and Marina for joining us for their first GoodGym run. Ace to have you guys along!

Tonight we had two run options to two of our regular tasks; The Portico Gallery and Ruskin Park Community Garden.

Half of us took a leisurely 2k jog to Ruskin Park, where Justin and Huseyin greeted us and armed us with equipment to help with a few jobs:

• De-weeding a bed of lettuce and onions 🌱

• Sawing/breaking branches into firewood 🌲

• Raking up a load of grass cuttings 🌾

LETTUCE BEGIN 🥬

We cracked on, switching up who was doing each task but Michael staying strong on the sawing throughout! And today’s task was an absolute treat with most of us taking home some onions and lettuce from the vegetable patch!

ON(ION)REAL

Once we were done, Freya treated us to one of her Drama games in the park - a game of jumping tag but where you can only jump when the person(s) who are ‘it’ jump. Obviously in full GoodGym-style we added a mean muscle testing twist - remaining in a squat position the whole time.

It was a fun one and definitely a serious thigh burner! 🔥

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Nicky led the other half of the group up the hill to the Portico Gallery where John had a few simple jobs of some table stacking, tarpaulin folding and rubbish removal which everyone got done in time for a fitness sesh in Brockwell Park! Thanks to our John for leading that 👌

Awesome work everyone!

Next week we’ve got another couple of tasks: creating a human conveyor belt for some bags of soil with Urban Growth or you can stick around and (hopefully!) paint the bench at PAPA’s Park. Sign up here.

Twenty Four wonderful runners joined me in Lambeth to run 7km, help Hillside Gardens and take part in the Great Get Together!

On what had looked like it was going to be a total wash-out the skies cleared (of rain at least) and we were set for a lovely evening. We all gathered outside Papa's for our intro, welcoming our new runners before, Tom, the task owner, who joined us for the run outlined the work we were Going to be doing. We then split into two groups, the relaxed and the not so relaxed and before we knew it we were pounding the Lambeth streets on our way up ALL the hills to Hillside Gardens!

With the 'not so relaxed' group leading the way and taking a slightly different route my relaxed group headed up brixton hill before winding through the streets to Tulse Hill and on to the gardens - it was hard work in muggy conditions but everyone kept at it and we arrived only 5 minutes after the other group. Once at the park Tom split us out into groups with various tasks:

• Cutting back brambles
• Weeding and clearing planters
• Digging up self seeded sycamores
• Pulling up weeds and unwanted plants

We worked hard for twenty minutes and then headed back to Papa's in our two groups again - so much nicer going downhill and with less muggy conditions. Once we were back at Papa's Alice kindly led everyone in a stretch, I explained that tonight had been part of the Great Get Together events and reminded everyone to sign up to the GoodGym Olympics and then we all said our goodbyes with a large number of us heading for drinks at the Duke of Ed.

It's been an absolute blast leading you the last two weeks GGL, what a wonderful bunch you are! Mark is back next week to steady the ship - hope to see you all soon and do visit GG Brent if you can!

Cheers,
Pritesh

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