Southwark News

• This Saturday is the long September GoodGym long run. It's about 17km following the Wandle trail and ending with the pub (hooray!). Find out more and sign up here.

• Headtorches! The season is coming - here's an example of a good'un

• We had a cancellation for next week so keep an eye on the website for updates and sign up here!.

• Hello and welcome to Arran who did his first ever good deed with us last night!

• Hopefully we'll be back in Old Spike next week and not meeting in Batch, I'll keep you updated!

That's enough of the business

No I haven't written a cryptogram specially for this report....

Last night it was a brand new and spooky trip to see the Friends of Nunhead Cemetery. who work hard to promote the conservation and appreciation of the cemetery as a place of remembrance, of historic importance and of natural beauty. They're getting ready for visitors this weekend as part of Open House London - check out the Open House website there's some amazing opportunities! We ran the 1.5km there, stopping (of course) to do a spot of wall-sitting, this time Helena was in control of how long for. She's a hard task master!

Our jobs were:

• Weeding the old chapel floor (lots of scraping involved!)

• Cleaning chairs

• Taking the chairs down into the Crpyt for storage

As the light dwindled on us, headtorches were out and we did an amazing job clearing the floor. Jeff was absolutely thrilled. We even got a little tour of the Crypt which is still full of coffins! Nunhead Cemetery was the most expensive and desireable place to be buried in London when it was consecrated in the 1840s. I'm looking forward to a daylight look-around! We headed back at 20.00 and as it's a 1.5km run each way we had some time to spare which meant time for mini circuits hooray! These involved pressups, star jumps, burpies and squat jumps. We did one round of each exercises followed by a lovely yogic cool down.

Great work team!

We headed back to Batch - sadly Old Spike had a break in last week so they've changed the locks and I haven't got a key yet - where Phil had water ready for us.

Plonk!

It's the third Wednesday of the month so it's social time! We headed to Peckham Levels to eat some food and play some crazy golf. We split into two teams, there were some cracking holes in one and some rather more prolonged battles with difficult courses. Team 2 had the overall lowest score with the top golfer of the whole group being Tristan.

It was great, we must definitely Plonk again soon!

See you next week, Lucy

We had loads of lovely new people this week and also some old people who we hadn't seen in a while so it felt a bit like they were new. It was great!

Party poppers were popped for Rebecca, who was on her 100 wings run. Top work Rebecca! Meanwhile, Carol was the awardee for August's Shit Prize of the Month (SPOTM) for achieving her goal of running 15km in one go. She did this on a mountain run in Ireland, so massive well done Carol!

After splitting into 2 groups, Beth led a group of 7 to a new location. Here's her write up:

Seven of us ran halfway up Brixton Hill, just short of the Tile Giant, to the wonderful Katakata. This amazing crêperie not only has a gallery and co-working space but also a large, overgrown garden out the back which is going to be used by the Lambeth GP food co-op to grow lots of healthy fruit and veg.

On arrival we were very warmly greeted by Francklin who insisted on making us a fresh juice before we’d even got started on the task. Delicious apple juice consumed we headed out to find a large amount of rubbish that needed to be taken out the front so that it can be put in a skip. In our clearing we did find a few gems that were saved but the old bureau had seen better days so was given a good kicking by David and Mark. After half an hour we were all done and said our goodbyes to a very grateful Francklin.

The rest of us ran down to Vauxhall Foodbank to help with their stocktake. We split into two teams and Alex went out with half the group to do fitness. The other half set to work taking crates off the shelves and getting them weighed. They had to go back on the shelves in order so there was quite a lot of tetris-style organising but everyone did a great job. There were 180 boxes to weigh and we reached 120 before we had to head off. This was a pretty solid effort and lots of heavy lifting on the part of GoodGym.

Well done everyone!

This evening started with a merry celebration of Katie's 300th good deed and two year anniversary of being Lambeth trainer. Woo! Victoria and Tom dressed all in black and hid in the basketball court expertly decorating gingerbread people into GG runners with sparkly trainers. What more could I want? Thanks gang!

We had three lovely run options:

Group 1 went with Katie down Brixton Road to Kennington Park. The park is being judged on it's Green Flag status on Friday so we helped to tidy it up. One group got busy removing bind weed, another gave the hedges a close shave, some people went on a litter pick and more still did some excellent cleaning of signs all over the park. We did a top job and fingers crossed the park keeps its status as a nice place to be.

Groups 2 and 3 went to GP surgeries to support the GP Food Coop. This great group puts plants and veg in surgeries and hospitals in Lambeth for a nicer environment and also for patients and staff to get involved with.

Group 2 went with Issy up to Streatham. They covered 7.5km and transferred a big bag of soil out pf the surgery, past the security guard and into the garden! They were rewarded with delicious strawberries from task leader Elizabeth's allotment. Yum!

Group 3 went with Tom Hunter to West Norwood...maybe even just Norwood. It was far! 7 runners ran 10km to Crown Dale Surgery in Upper Norwood. Where we were met by Brenda (and Brenda’s excellent doggo Riley). She explained to us all the benefits of the GP Food Co-Op Scheme, in providing community spaces for people to learn about growing some tasty fresh fruit and veg.

We quickly shovelled some soil into the last empty plantar. Then made room for an intriguing sounding vine growing space along the side of the building.

After finally convincing Riley the dog to sit still long enough to be featured in our group photo, we were on our way home. Lovely Summer’s evening for it.

She was so happy! Said Tom Hunter

And with that it was back to base with everyone, some walking lunges, single leg deadlifts and stretches. Then home! Thanks for being great as always - here's to the next 300 runs!