Southwark News

• Tonight more people are needed! A special community mission to help Crisis move lots of donations at their warehouse one New Kent Road. We're in need of more people to help out. You don't need a DBS check for this one and we won't be running as a group, just turn up and do some shifting. Find out more and sign up here.

• Next week we're going back to Bell House for gardening. It's a gorgeous house and gardens 3km away in Dulwich. Find out more and sign up here.

• GoodGym volunteers are eligible for Charity Worker Discounts! Have a look at the website to save some money on all kinds of things.

That's enough of the business

Last night 7 runners gathered at Old Spike Roastery to head off to Nunhead Cemetery to help out with cleaning up the cemetery in advance of their Open Day on 18th May. I'll be posting up a Community Mission to help them set up and take down so keep an eye on the website! There will be all kinds of stalls and of course lots of information on the beautiful cemetery available on the day.

We arrived and Jeff from Friends of Nunhead Cemetery ushered us in and set the group to work whilst I waited at the gate for Pauline who heroically ran from the bus with several bags in tow and a coat! That's dedication!

We split into three groups - two heading opposite ways along the boundary wall to pick up litter and one to clear up bits of tree on the main avenue. Friends of Nunhead Cemetery are so grateful for our help and we're looking forward to helping them set up on Open Day.

Oddest pieces of rubbish: an entire suitcase, several empty packs of butter, assorted underwear

Finishing up at 7.55pm we said our thank yous to the team and headed off to Nunhead Green for a game of Cups and Cones and Find The Cream Egg. It's amazing how much lighter the evenings are even from last week. Hooray! Bring on summer!

Great work team.

See you next week! Lucy J

A trio of tasks awaited our runners this evening, as did an opening of the heavens!

We started the evening with a quick chat about the pressing issues of the day, namely the GoodGym social this Thursday and the Spartan race weekend which Chi is organising.

We were joined by a GG tourist, Matt, who was down from Liverpool, and 3 new runners; Lauren, Billy and Abigail - give them a cheer!!

We had a quick warm up on the courts, with the skies giving us a dose of some seriously chunky hail and then we split into our 3 groups:

Beth took a group to Loughborough Farm and had this to say:

A group of nine of us took a relaxed run over to Loughborough farm to do our usual task of moving soil from A to B. There’s quite a bit of construction work going on at the farm. The addition of a community workshop will be a great way for the farm to achieve even more but it does mean that the space is changing shape and various bags of soil occasionally have to be moved out of the way. With two and a half bags that needed shifting we got shovelling and wheelbarrowing and filled up a couple of empty bags on pallets ready to be moved by a forklift. After 40 minutes we’d moved two bags worth and all felt like we’d had a good workout so set off back to base, some of us with pockets full of fresh oregano.

Here’s a few words from Tom who took a group over to a garage at King’s College Hospital to help with the GP Food Co op’s storage space:

A merry band of 10 goodgymers took on the mission to sort out Ed’s garage. After running down pretty much the full length of Coldharbour Lane we met Ed where he showed us the job. He was doing a spring clean and needed some things moving out of the garage. Highlights included a rowing machine and Ruth did a sterling job sweeping out the garage with half a brush. A band of three members decided that the garage could only hold 6 folks and got to sprucing up the front garden by collecting the rubbish in the front.

At the end of the session, fitness guru Chi took us through our paces by doing some core exercises in Ruskin Park. We planked, we squatted, we planked and we did all manner of abs related things, top man, nice one. After 10 mins we were ready to head back, so peg it back along Coldharbour Lane back to a nice warm down.

Nice one team and cheers again Chi for the abs workout.

And my group headed to one of the St Michael’s Fellowship Family Residential centres to give them a hand with clearing up their gardens.

We took the scenic route with a little run up the hill in Brockwell Park with Nicky and Emily back marking. When we arrived, we were given a list of jobs and we got stuck in pretty pronto. We took on a serious amount of weeding, removing some old trellis, getting rid of some old toys which had been thrown over the fence from the nursery next door and cleaning the patio!

We could tell it was a pleasant and vital space for the service users and great to be able to make a difference. Nicky is even running the Marathon for the St Michael’s Fellowship!

Next week is a double task, helping out Crisis at Elephant & Castle or going to Brixton Windmill. Get signed up here.

Yes Lambeth! 👍

There was a bumper turnout at GoodGym Westminster this Wednesday, as a group of runners from the Mandarin Oriental Hotel joined us – hope to see you again next week guys! There was also a bumper crop of Frances’, as I filled in for Joel alongside the regular Frances, who led one of two groups to Victoria.

After a jog through central London and past Buckingham Palace, we reached our regular task at One Big Family, where we again split into two groups. One group made sandwiches and packed pastries which the volunteers hand out to homeless people around Victoria, while the other went with Graham and took turns at choosing exercises, ranging from some gentle stretching to burpees. The groups swapped halfway through so that everyone got a chance at doing some good.

With the task completed swiftly, we set off back to base – this time taking in the sights of Green Park, with some of us taking the opportunity to push the pace a little. All in all, a productive evening with the cooler weather making for an enjoyable run!