A beautiful Saturday morning saw a large contingent of runners descend on Fulham Palace to help rake away some cut up bramble and Ivy, ready for another tidy before spring kicks into high gear.

We welcomed several new faces to Goodgym and several tourists from out and around, it was lovely to see you all and hope to see you all again soon.

Pretty sure today was the first day I'd actually seen the sun and not just overcast clouds? Or was that just me?

12 Goodgymers appeared out of the fog to help Pete from Fulham Palace Trust to tackle some overgrown brambles this fine Saturday morning. About half of us completed Fulham Palace parkrun before the task (well done to everyone who ran!) A special shout out goes to Maena, who unfortunately didn't make parkrun due to train cancellations... but, not to be defeated, Maena ran the whole way from Richmond to the task, resisting all the tempting bakery smells along the way - mega effort!! We had FIVE new faces join us this morning - George, Adam, Laura, Peter and Liz - welcome to all of you 😊.

Pete kept us close to the entrance area today to take on the brambles surrounding a few trees, and cut back an overgrown holly bush. He explained that Fulham Palace is due a tree survey in the next couple of months, and so any ivy & brambles around the tree bases need to be cleared to allow the survey to be conducted. We quickly set to work chopping away, with some removing the brambles from the tree bases whilst others bagged them up and cut them down to a compostable size. As we worked, Cookie and Lucy cycled down to join us after their first good deeds of the day were complete - Cookie had been marshalling at Gunnersbury parkrun with Goodgym Ealing, and Lucy had done Mrs J's weekly shop in Wandsworth as usual.

We chatted as we chopped, with many conversations about our experiences of goodgym, amusing tales of our favourite missions and discussion of our tradition of puns for run reports titles (shout out to Katya for this one!)

The holly and brambles were slain in no time, so the 12 of us moved to another patch of brambles under the cover of the trees. After a good hour's work, we collected together the bags of waste and took them to the compost heap. We were greeted here by Pam the cat who was guarding the compost heap. We learned that "Pam" was not short for "Pamela" as many of us had assumed, but instead "Pamunkey"; a native American tribe with links to the garden at Fulham Palace 🐱 - you can read more here if you're interested.

We gathered in front of our handiwork for a quick group photo before some of us headed off and a few stayed to grab a coffee. After chatting about all things goodgym over warm beverages we too left Fulham Palace to continue our weekends. Not satisfied with two tasks, Cookie and Lucy sped off on their bikes to Turnham Green to bag their third deed of the morning - awesome work both of you!

Thank you to everyone who came along to help, especially to our new goodgymers - well done on your first good deed, we hope to see you again soon! Thanks also to Laura and Lucy for their photos. We will be back at Fulham Palace on 29th Jan (sign up here if you like) and there's plenty of other tasks going on too.

After 6 of us took on Fulham Palace parkrun this morning (well done all!), a group of 12 goodgymers from across London assembled and wandered over to Fulham Palace to meet senior gardener Pete. After a quick round of introductions and welcomes (especially to Katya who joined us for her first ever goodgym good deed today), we headed round to the back of the palace to a familiar tree where we had been tasked with weeding earlier in the year. This time, our job was to rake up the fallen leaves and then plant 1000 crocus bulbs. Tidying up the leaves took no time at all, and we had chance for a little break whilst Pete scattered the bulbs before we got stuck back in planting them. We chatted away as we worked, and debated whether we should plant a GG logo with the crocuses... we decided we'd behave ourselves and resist temptation - how unusual for goodgymers!! 😉😂

With 12 pairs of hands we had all the bulbs planted in less than an hour, so for the remaining 30 minutes we turned our attention to raking weeds up from beneath another tree nearby. In general we felt we had been much less successful at this task, but weed given it our best in the little time we had. No doubt Pete's apprentices or other volunteers will take care of finishing the job soon.

We grabbed a group photo before heading off for a well-earned coffee together. Thanks everyone for a great task this morning, we made light work of the planting! Hopefully see some of you back here next month - keep your eyes peeled for a listing!

All credit goes to Michelle for today's pun report title - excellent work 👏