Please, indulge me: Ballast Quay Garden is GoodGym Greenwich’s finest task offering.

Placed on high riverbank overlooking the Thames and Canary Wharf, the garden was created out of the industrial Union Wharf in the mid 1960s for the personal use of the neighbours of Ballast Quay. Throughout this period, Union Wharf was busy dockland, and the Thames teemed with coasters carrying cargo, and boomed with dockers’ sirens and whirring cranes. As you must imagine, Ballast Quay Garden gifted its residents some vital green tranquillity.

Over the years, the garden has inspired other green delights such as one at St Katherine’s Dock, and another GoodGym favourite, Surrey Docks Farm. And Ballast Quay Garden even had a stint as a tea garden in the mid 1980s which was a firm hit with Thames Path walkers.

These days, the garden is leased and managed by the wonderful Diane, whom GoodGym Greenwich regulars will remember from numerous tasks, and who met Cath, Julian, Sara, and me this evening at Ballast Quay Garden. We were given brooms and brushes and a bin bag each and were tasked (for an important reason, detailed below***) with sweeping and tidying the multitudinous paths that weave in and through the garden. The sun beat down with full summer-pelt and the air was full of laughter and chatter from walkers by. It felt magnificent to be gardening at Ballast Quay on a Wednesday evening in the summer – just like old times, eh?

When the hour was up, Diane arrived at the garden with new instructions: put down your brooms and come up to the terrace; I have wine! And we all duly did as we were told, and spent the next hour swapping conversation and telling stories and jokes – it was gorgeous. A perfect end to this evening’s task.

***Please don’t stop reading, I have IMPORTANT NEWS:

This evening’s gardening was not general upkeep. It was in preparation for this weekend’s festivities when Ballast Quay Garden will be open to the public from 10am to 6pm on both Saturday and Sunday (26th – 27th June). Tea and fresh cakes will be on sale with the proceeds going to charity. Why not come along if you’ve got a spare moment? You’ll find a green gem with some of Greenwich’s best-kept-secret views. Hopefully, see you there.

14 runners ran 4km to hammer stakes into the ground and plant trees at St Lukes Primary School!

Well done to all of you troopers for sticking with us through January. We started off a big group and gradually dwindled down until only the bravest and hardiest remained. So kudos to you for making it this far. It is probably going to get colder before it gets warmer but the nights are getting lighter and the promise of spring is right around the corner, well maybe 2 or 3 corners away.

Big welcome to GoodGym tourist Louise coming all the way over from York! We feel very privileged that you chose Greenwich for your Wednesday tourism Louise, it was great to have you with us and thanks for being the most splendid back marker!

THE BIG HUNDY!

Huge conratulations to Jenny who is now in the 11th person to crash through the 100 good deed barrier! Excellent work JP! It's been amazing to see your running go from strength to strength over these past two years including countless parkruns and a marathon to boot! Looking forward to doing many more good deeds with you and seeing what your running has in store for you this year!

After a quick warm up, we headed over to St Lukes which has recently been a popular task for us. The main job last night was to build a leaf container. We only had half of the equipment required however as the wire hadn't been delivered yet but be could still make a decent start by hammering the stakes into the ground.

The rest of the group took to the other side of the garden in attempt to plant the remaining small trees that were donated a few weeks ago. Meanwhile Andy had a task that was made just for him and that was to help Myra's daughter, Bella, train her dog! Nice one Andy, I think that was an invaluable half hour for her and she learned heaps!

After about 20 minutes, all the stakes had been placed in the ground ready for the chicken wire to be placed around it at a later date. The trees were also coming along nicely too! Team tree planted as many as they could fit into the soil before it was time to head back to the uni for some strength and a tad more running!

4x 25 squats plus one lap and then Jenny's biscuits were calling. Nice work everyone, 100 squats banked, hope your bums aren't too sore today!

January Challenge Update

The month is pretty much over and I'm pleased to say we have gone through 8000 good deeds across all of GoodGym which is absolutely incredible. There have been some particularly stand out performances from Greenwich runners though.... Another well done goes to Jenny for doing the most good deeds this month clocking up 14! The next best person did 7 so that just goes to show how awesome this girl is and why she got to 100 so quick! And also a big up to Bliss for conquering the distance leaderboard running 276k for us! Nice!!! But of course just a huge well done to EVERYONE who ran and good deeded this month! You can see the final results here. The mathematicians amongst you though will notice that Greenwich runners have actually run the most kilometers per person which is wonderful and I couldn't be prouder!

Next week's run and SOCIAL!

Next week the task is still TBC but the one thing that IS certain is we are having some post run social time! GoodGym Greenwich had it's 4th birthday this month so I think some belated celebrations are in order! See you then!

Great work everyone, well done for getting so much done! It is always much appreciated so thank you! Remember we are heading to Beckton Parkrun on the 8th Feb so come along for some 5k fun!

25 excellent GoodGymmers met in Greenwich to help the council collect Christmas trees.

We welcomed four people to their debut GoodGym task - big shout out to Elle, Iyad, Cath and Adam.

We also talked about The January Challenge and how to help GoodGym Greenwich rack up plenty of good deeds and miles. The perfect time to get involved.

After a quick warm-up, we ran together to Deptford Park tree recycling point. Handily for those of us who haven't got the best sense of direction, one road took us all the way there - win. Having debated whether or not we were still in Deptford (the consensus seemed to be that we'd gone beyond the Deptford borders, despite what the park's name would have us believe!), we split into 5 groups. Each group was assigned a few streets from which to search/scavenge Christmas trees to bring back to the depot.

We discovered that Greenwich Council have done a very good job at collecting a lot of the trees but were still able to find a few that they'd missed, including some pretty hefty ones! Having lobbed them into the recycling area, there was time for a quick fitness game before heading back along the road to do some final stretches at base.

Good work team.