What a wild night of painting the town GoodGym red!

This week's task involved putting up posters for Age UK's Food2You initiative. They recruit volunteer drivers to pick up an older person's weekly shop, and then take it round to them, staying for a chat while they're at it. Such a cool idea!

We started off welcoming new GG-ers Sean, Anna, Holly, Eduardo and Verity to the crew! And we then had an impromptu visit from Lambeth councillor for volunteering and previous Lambeth mayor(!) Donatus who came to say thanks for what we've done across the borough!

Then we split into 5 teams with taskforce taking the lead. Samantha took a team to West Norwood via Herne Hill. Nicky lead a group to Oval and Stockwell. George's team headed to Clapham. Team Victoria ran to Streatham and my team went through Brixton to Loughborough Junction.

We covered so much ground between us and were pleasantly surprised by how happy most places were to let us put up the posters!

On our return, we were treated to some deliciously moist beer cake (that'll be the Guinness) from Frances and some fabulously flavoursome cinnamon buns from Rebecca. 😋

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Join us next week as we head to Brixton Road Youth Centre for some classic leaf clearing and helping to sort through their lock-ups! Sign up here!

What a turnout! And on a soggy day too!

Welcome to Clare, Rachel, Chris, Tash and Laura on your first GoodGym good deed! It was brilliant to have you join us and extra kudos for coming despite the rain - you're clearly all made for GoodGym!

I'd texted the lovely Sufiyo from the Friends of Ham Lands to warn her that lots of people were signed up, which meant that she found a task that required many pairs of hands, lots of strength and lots of squats!

With so many new to the project, Sufiyo gave a very useful talk to tell us all about the butterflies project, what it's all about, why we do it, and how we do it. Very helpful for us old-timers too! Sufiyo also explained that we have a new strategy of focusing on one area for lots of weeks and then seeing if there is any impact on the biodiversity - so hopefully we will be able to see the results of our toil.

After a good briefing, we got cracking - you almost had to rain in our enthusiasm!

As the saying goes, where there's a Jane, there will be roots to yank - and boy were there lots and lots of roots! We know that Jane will always get to the root of it, and she didn't disappoint - and neither did anyone else, there were roots being yanked all around the clearing. Jenna even seemed to be following a root to Ham Parade such was her commitment to the cause!

Jo and I decided it was almost the festive season with some good old hoe hoe hoeing, although Jo may need some more convincing about the magic of a good hoe-down... We managed to fit in a couple of document checks for DBS applications (yay to more runners getting coach and mission verified!), and chatted about how GoodGym is such a great way of finding your feet in a new place - oh, and the question of "does it ever get rained off?"

After a good hour of rooting for the butterfly cause, it was time to pack away and bid Hamlands farewell for this month - but look out for next month's return visit, on the second Saturday of November. Same time, same place: see you there!

Finally, thanks "Kingston Kate" for the pun!! And go on, give Laura, Chris, Rachel, Clare and Tasha a cheer! Woop!