Xxxxxx

Rake Progress

After another Bank Holiday Monday, we moved our session to Wednesday again. We headed back to English Martyrs School where we are meet the head teacher, Helen.

Thank you to my team tonight - It was great to see Ryan and Sarah after their Worthing 10k at the weekend. It was lovely to welcome back Megan after some very busy weeks of work for her. Thank you also to John and El who had both marshalled at the RUN Fest on Sunday.

Completing this evening's team was Ricky and Roxy along with puppy Mali in a cat carrier 😻😅.

Helen asked us to continue with the clearing of the large beds that we had started last week. The school are planning to plant a butterfly garden and we are more than happy to assist with this :)

Although the progress didn't look so dramatic this week we worked equally as hard. Thank goodness we had John's electric saw that he was able to cut through the stubborn tree roots. We hope we haven't broken it !

As well as the sawing there was a lot of brute digging activity going by Ryan,Ricky and Megan, together with some very fine raking by Sarah and El. Roxy was got right down to the task pulling out roots and weeding the area she was working on too. . I was in charge of getting the debris to the compost heap. With the help of John's gauntlet gloves this definitely pushed my step count up for the day!

Another very worthwhile and impactful task ! Thank you all and see you all next week.

Have a lovely weekend in the warm weather.

Julia xx

The day dawned with sunshine for the annual RUN Fest event. What a relief after last year's awful weather!

The fabulous 5 of us worked our socks off all morning welcoming over 2500 runners back after either their half marathon, 10k or famly mile.

Many thanks to Belinda, Anne, El and John who, after setting up, were all on the tee shirt tables. Meanwhile, I was giving out boxes of Joint Ace vitamins to the runners as they came around the finishers funnel. El and Anne has displayed their GoodGym Tee shirts on the finish line whilst holding the winners ribbon which was a really nice honour for us all.

Congratulations to the GoodGym runners too - Daisy, Paul ( and John) and Sue W did the half marathon and Sue Acaster, Sarah, Ryan and Craig the 10k .

Great work all round team:)

Getting to the (almost) root of the problem

On a stunning April evening we had headed across Sunny Worthing to one of more recent, but also favourite tasks, at English Martyrs school. We were met by Helen, the head teacher who had a comprehensive list of task requests. Many of us had arrived with loppers in readiness for hedge and bramble work so we got straight to work.

Special mention to Roxy who completed The London Marathon yesterday in a fantastic time. Massive congratulations also must go to Anne who completed the 50 mile South Downs Challenge a few weeks ago and returned to her GoodGym buddies tonight.

Most of the team including Belinda, Barbara,El,John,Ricky,Paul Gillybean, and Anne got stuck into lopping down large brambly hedges lining the bordering fence. They certainly worked with great gusto with lots to get done in a limited time. The progress was excellent with piles of debris soon appearing ready to be transferred to the compost heap.

Roxy and puppy Mala decided to continue painting the fence that we had started last year. With only 1 paint brush it was a 1 person job but we do hope that we will push through and finish the whole thing this summer before it will all need doing again next year! Luckily for Roxy, when Mala got a little too hot and restless Helen's daughter stepped in and was only too pleased to take her inside to play with her.

Stéphane arrived just in time to help me empty compost into the new raised beds before concentrating on helping with all the debris clearing. John had usefully brought along a brand new electric strimmer which was sliced through the brambles beautifully. Gill very usefully found a trolley to help with transportation to the compost heap ( great photo)

Superstar of the day

Talking of the strimmer ..... John unfortunately misplaced a wing nut on it so we were all trying to keep a look out for it which was a little like looking for a needle in a haystack ! However thanks to our eagle eyed ( and determined) El this was the first of two problems that we didn't need to worry about! Within the space of 10 minutes she had not only found the missing part for the strimmer but also Paul's glasses which had dropped off his head into the abysis of foliage ! El is definitely one we are keeping !

What a lovely evening this was :) We will be back again next week to continue with more jobs. As its a bank holiday Monday we will be meeting next Wednesday 7th May at 6pm instead.

Have a great BH long weekend and see you next week.

Julia x

It was a bonus Wednesday session this week saw four of us back at Heene Community Rooms where we are starting to demonstrate that Worthing GoodGym is as determined as those pesky weeds.

One El of a GoodGymer

El arrived at the task with a tin of freshly baked biscuits. Really delicious biscuits they were too!

Don’t change, Barbara

Barbara regaled us with tales of wearing the same clothes day after day and not going as far as the toilet to pee. She then told us about her recent adventure. She seemed particularly proud of having avoided being eaten by a puma.

Puppy love

Roxy got a round of a paws when she arrived with her new charge Mali who spent the task peeping out from the bag over Roxy’s shoulder.

Weed had a good idea. It worked!

Where we had managed to lay and cover the pieces of cardboard on previous visits you could see that the weeds were gradually admitting defeat. They clearly still have some fight in them, but their resistance is becoming rather, well, weedy for want of a better phrase. We focused our attention on the path side of the garden clearing remaining weeds and planting a range of plants provided by Val. It’s good to see some wanted planting going in to replace the seeming mountains of green we’ve removed over a number of tasks.