Alice, Rebecca and Sam met up Simon at Thorlands for another weekly session and a continuation of the overall vision and project. It was Rebecca's first ever GoodGym, so we welcomed her with the background of Thorlands, where it is now and where we want it to go. Welcome again, Rebecca! Glad to have you come along to your first GoodGym session.

Sam has been collecting cardboard, but he forgot to bring the masses of boxes he has accumulated. However, he arrived early and searched around the "Walled" Garden and found a few older pieces that Simon had collected as Sam wanted to use this session to put down more cardboard and leaf mulch to keep on renewing the soil in the "Forest" garden ensuring that we stay on top of the weeds. Firstly, we had to use the dutch hoe and mattock to dig up the soil and ensure we got all the roots out and afterwards raked the area to make it flat before the cardboard could be put down and leaf mulch on top of that.

By the end of the session, we had put down a couple cardboards and leaf mulch near the Hazel trees. Yet, there's more area to be covered. Simon had provided Alice and Sam with a goodie bag of harvested salad leafs to take home as Rebecca was heading off to Spain.

Next time, we should be getting woodchip to start putting down a woodchip path in the "Kitchen" garden.

Alice, Olivia and Sam met Andrea from GROAD at St. Faith's after work on Monday to help pack rough sleeper bags for the community mission tomorrow night on the Strand.

It's been several months since we did this as there has been a pause due to bad behaviour from the homeless, but we were back at it and we created 28 bags within the hour and sorted out rhe Shed.

On Saturday, four GoodGymers including first-timer to Thorlands, Alice were treated to a double task and some Elderflower fritters. More on that later.

Simon had arrived slightly late due to his culinary surprise, but we were in a rush as we were still waiting for Lucie and Rebecca when Simon let Alice and Sam in. He gave the whole vision and project speech to Alice whilst Sam gathered the tools for the first task.

The first task was to collect dry leaves (at least, four wheelbarrows full) from the compost heap by the clubhouse and bring it over to the compost in the Walled Garden. This took the team about fifteen minutes to do as they were taking their time and talking.

They had about an hour to finish the second task, which required two parts. First, the team had to organise the backwall of the Walled Garden to create space to move the donated and upcycled wood from an Adventure Playground near Brixton, which was temporarily living by two beds, which Simon needed access to. The team started to work in twos to move the wood, but figured out a human chain was a more efficient solution to the problem AND this ensured they finished the task in time, with five minutes to spare.

The session was polished off nicely with a couple of homemade Elderflower fritters, which were delicious as I lived to write this run report!