A lively crew of GoodGymers made their way today to a community mission at the Purple Elephant project playground!

The Purple Elephant project does incredible work supporting children and families in the local area, so we were delighted to pitch in and assist with work that was needed with their outdoor play space.

What We Tackled: After a welcoming brief from Maggie on the tasks ahead, we split up, grabbed paintbrushes and tins, and got straight down to business.

Varnishing the Playground Wonders: The outdoor playground features a lovely wooden tunnel, raised flowerbeds, and a garden bench, all of which were in need of some TLC and weather protection. We got to work coating the wood evenly, ensuring the playground apparatus and seating are thoroughly protected and looking vibrant.

Fresh Canvas for Creativity: Over on the boards, Manuela took on the task of painting over both a well-used chalkboard and an acrylic board. With a smooth, clean coat applied, both are now blank canvases ready for brand new art, games, and outdoor learning!

Mission Accomplished: In just under two hours, we managed to protect the wooden play structures, revive the seating, and the activity boards. A huge thank you to the Purple Elephant project team for having us! It was a brilliant, productive mission for a fantastic cause.

It's that time of year when we head to Richmond riverside for one of our favourite tasks! We have been helping with this for the past six years and it's a fast, rewarding mission. We do it in two sessions with the first taking the longest as we sand and clean the doors before brushing on the teak oil and watching the doors come back to life.

This evening we headed to the boathouse via some exercises on Richmond Green: squatting, lunging, bear crawling and side-stepping our way down towards the river.

Upon arrival at the boathouse we discovered they have recently had significant damage on the doors when a van has seemingly reversed into it and left a tear through the wood and pulled off the locks. It was a sorry sight but it made us more determined to complete the makeover!

With so many hands in action, we completed the task quickly which even left time to head to the pub for refreshment, to see Messi score at the world cup and chat before the warm rain came!

On a warm Saturday morning 4 GoodGymers arrived at the GoodGym flowerbed in Canbury gardens to give it a little tidy and then plant lots of plants Claire had grown. It was good to see the plants form the previous planting session still surviving the hot weather and lots of colour already.

After clearing weeds and leaves Claire laid out the plants with taller ones towards the back and every one dug holes and planted them nice and deeply. Emily and Adam then headed to the river for water to water them in. After lots of watering by Jeanna and a few trips to the river everything had received a good drink.

Lets hope the plants survive the heat wave and bring lots of colour to the flowerbed.

Six GGers turned out for our quarterly Richmond Furniture Scheme visit.

This included Jenna , attending Richmond Furniture Scheme for the first time, three keen cyclists, one walker and a runner.

Once we recovered from our various exertions the challenge set by Volunteer Co-Coordinator Lucy to clear the assembly point of furniture including a puzzling draws set and shelving.

The fan was started and we edged closer by moving the shelving piece by piece and by the end of the challenge, the assembly point was all clear.

We made it!

On a gorgeous sunny Bank Holiday Saturday five GGer's attended our monthly visit to the Three Ps .
We welcomed first timer Manuela for her first ever Good Gym task, while Rory came back for his second having impressively completed his first ever Richmond park run. After Jp had welcomed everyone, we set up about weeding and general tidy up of the Three Ps plot, Jenna successfully helped with weeding it easy. Overall a job well done and we certainly weed better together!