We had a busy night in store at the Albany, as while the lovely gardener there was away, they'd sent a wonderful video showing all the things that they'd like us to in preparation for a summer jamboree!

We needed to make sure their party went to plan! First timer Michael quickly got to work with several other moving a large pile of paving slabs to the side of the building. There was plenty of choice with the tasks with moving woodchip to a path, moving a large compost bin, along with the regular task there - litter picking. Everything was done plus a bit of pruning along the newly chipped path.

We had a lovely evening and hope to see Michael again soon! We were able to pose by the sunflowers, we had cleared and prepared the ground for them earlier in the year.

Something we discovered after the session was that the visit to the Albany completed an incredible 100 month streak of group sessions for the amazing Vic (pictured second left on the group photo).

First up we celebrated Vic's 250th good deed, she's always running and cycling from group runs to community missions to parkrun volunteering. Give her a cheer!

The end of the pile

Everyone at tonight's group run had visited the embankment before so we had the shorter safety briefing and more time shoveling the last of the soil! We had a couple of areas of exposed cardboard to cover, we split into teams to get the job done:

• one group shoveling soil
• one group raking the soil (in a very specific fashion)
• one group carrying the containers of soil

As an extra task we began moving leaves from around the edge to cover as much of the area as possible with wildflower seed.

The 20 tonnes of soil reduced to a thin layer and it was job done for us, we gathered in a group whilst the soil had one last rake. It's been a lot of hard work, a lot of soil to move and it couldn't have been achieved without you all - well done!! We will revisit in summer to see the results of our hard work.

It was a last min change of plan this week instead of heading over to Hither Green station embankment, we were heading over to the other side of the station and to Springbank Road Community Garden. We all gathered outside Glass Mill and the temperature was dropping by the minute (or so it felt like). We did a quick warm up with star jumps to really get our heart rate up and warm us up.

We arrived at Springbank Road Community Garden to be met by the wonderful Anne-Marie who explained what tasks for the evening, these included:

• Painting the fence
• Planting 300+ bulbs
• Painting the obelisk
• Digging up the allium
• Wrapping the peach trees in fleece
• Cutting back the Flax

Everyone got stuck straight in and using our extensive GoodGym knowledge of plants and weeds managed to plant all the bulbs safely around the plants. With 5 min to go we brought our tools back to the entrance of the garden (double checked we hadn't left any behind) and gathered for the group photo which looked slightly like a GoodGym version of a school photo.

First off, congrats to Julian for reaching 100 good deeds at last weeks group run - he's already on 102!

This week we were back to Hither Green station embankment to continue laying the cardboard (very kindly delivered by Lewisham market) and then to continue laying the soil on top. Hopefully this will stop the weeds growing through and give the wildflower meadow the best chance of success!

We made a human chain and had the cardboard laid out in no time and then it was onto the hard work for the evening, shifting the soil into position which is now right at the other end of the area we were working in! Not only were our arms getting a work out but also we were definitely getting out steps in.

The mountain of soil is gradually getting smaller in size and even though we didn't manage to cover the entire area that we'd hoped to, we did cover a bigger area than last time. Fantastic work everyone, it wasn't an easy task!

Next week we are flying for the Age UK Christmas Fair in Blackheath. Sign up here!

And on Saturday morning, we are volunteering at Hilly Fields Parkrun so if anyone fancies a change from running then here's all the details.