On an incredibly wet Saturday in Catford, 10 of GoodGym's most dedicated helpers showed some roots who's boss.

Ah, what a treat to be back at the helm and what a treat to welcome some new visitors to Lewisham! A big welcome and Lewisham Love to Sarah, who was tackling her very first good deed - what a day to debut! A shout-out must also go to Lewis, who cycled all the way from Dartford and Alex who pedalled over from Tower Hamlets. Blimey!

No time was wasted in getting stuck in, with Oli kindly giving me some top tips on which tools work best (he's done this a few times now!). We had little teams working across the space, some digging up brambles, some raking, Louie weed-bashing and some very determined root-digging from Hector, Edward and Linda - one tree stump wasn't enough, so they kept moving on to bigger and bigger challenges!

You can see from the photos that the weather changed quite quickly, with rain coming down in buckets and the ground under our feet resembling the trenches. This didn't dampen everyone's spirit though, with a real focus towards the finish line, with whole areas cleared and very satisfied volunteers ready to grab hot drinks and get dry.

Well done everyone, this hard work will take the space that little bit closer to being an outdoor classroom. We look forward to welcoming our visitors back any time, keep an eye out for upcoming tasks!

3 GoodGymers ran 6k and delivered 300 leaflets for both DAWS (Drug and Alcohol Wellbeing Service) and Prospect Burma.

With temperatures similar to those found in the Arctic only the very bravest GoodGymers made it out this evening!!

Heading south down to Pimlico to meet Helena at the Prospect Burma offices we collected a stack of leaflets promoting the fundraising Christmas Carol Service at St James the Less Church on the 12th of December.

Combining with DAWS’s leaflets to promote where people who need to can access help for Drug and Alcohol dependency issues in Westminster.

We navigated around the estates in the Pimlico and Victoria areas delivering at a top rate especially in the cold conditions. With 40 minutes of delivering under our belts and 300 leaflets down we headed back up the Central London slope to the New Balance store to warm and and refuel and a night of hardy Volunteering!!

Hope to see a few more of Westminsters finest next week!!

Have a great week!

Smooth Running

Joel

13 festive GoodGymers ran 6.5k to Pimlico to decorate for the Open Age Christmas Fair!

Definitely a speedy crew tonight!! Flying South towards the river lead by Anil it was great to be joined by some GoodGym first timers and a few new faces to Westminster!!

We were so fast in fact that we beat Angela from Open Age charity to the community centre. A few nervous minutes pasted by she arrived to let us loose on the Christmas decorations!!

Three big bags of decorations along with plentiful supplies of sticky tape to hand we left our creative energy flow as we brought a lot of sparkle to the community centre!!

The decorations are for Open Age’s Christmas Craft fair which helps to raise funds to keep some of the craft activities going through the year.

Sticking high and low, detangling the maze of Christmas lights, bells were ringing, tinsel was expertly hung at ultra precise angles and Christmas confetti was going everywhere!!

30 minutes of Christmas artistic brilliance later and the community hall has been transformed!!

With Angela super impressed with our efforts we bounced off into the night!! With a spring in our step we dominated a slightly longer route back to base and powered our way through Green Park with 600 metres of scorching pace!! Before we got back, stretched out and headed home! In my case with Callum’s phone 🙈🙈🙈🙈!!

Thanks for coming along and hopefully my criminal ways will Not put you off next week to St Andrews Youth Club.

Smooth Running

Joel