Another great evening with GoodGym at Grow Baby, supporting families in need.

Led by Rachel, our team — Jana, Manasa, Jonathan, Luke and Saber — got straight to work forming a human chain, quickly moving bags upstairs and building an impressive pile by the door (with Luke keeping spirits high with marathon stories along the way!).

With that done in record time, we moved downstairs where tasks were expertly assigned:

• Shoes sorted by Manasa

• Coats and dresses organised by Jonathan

• Toys checked by Luke

• Essentials stocked by Jana

• Saber helping wherever needed

We then tackled sorting winter clothes, blankets and grow bags into storage, making great progress in just an hour. With time for one final push, the teddy bear box turned into a fun finale — with Luke and Jonathan in goal as Jana launched toys over a wall of bags!

We finished with a group selfie among the piles — tired, happy, and having achieved loads in a short time. A brilliant effort all round 👏

Over at Refugee action having run, cycled and walked over we split in to teams to sort donations.

Men’s and women’s clothing as well as new donations required sorting and categorising whilst shoes needed pairing up. As always there were a few rouge items in the wrong section that needed rehoming and a few rainbow and sparkly numbers discovered for photos.

An hour after starting John and Tom had created an incredibly neat menswear department, Emma, Anna and Ellie had got women’s wear in order, Marcus had ensured that every shoe had a partner and Adam and Claire had filtered and put away all the donations.

After few snacks (we couldn’t resist) and a group photo we said our goodbyes with the runners heading off for a lovely run along the river.

It was time to get in the festival spirit with a record number of GoodGymers running, walking and cycling to the British Heart Foundation.

With 18 GoodGymers we split into two teams; one on a festival themed window display and another on dining room tables.

The festival team were all about colour and fun. Shelving units were shifted and filled with tents and sleeping bags, a guitar wall was created, a pink BBQ was assembled and a swinging chair was given a good swing test. A few animals even found their way to the party to complete the display.

The second squad was the ultimate dream team of practical pros! Featuring the powerhouse lineup of Laura, Marcos, Manasa, Jonathan, Anna, JP and Sam. This group turned 'flat-pack frustration' into a total breeze.

The team channeled their inner engineers to fix and assemble table legs with surgical precision. Using pure Goodgym muscle, they hauled a fleet of tables and chairs out of storage and onto the shop floor. In record time, the empty floor space went from 'blank canvas' to 'ready for business' thanks to their hustle.

And as every festival needs a crowd we all squeezed into our mini festival for a group pic.

Kingston GoodGym has a long history with the communal garden at Vine Close, which we helped clear ahead of its redesign from the very beginning. It's so satisfying to see how far it has come to the relacing setting and the beautiful pond teeming with wildlife it is today.

Georgina, the biodiversity officer from Kingston, was on hand to get us started and help with nature advice.

Jonathan, Laurel and Marcos got stuck into removing invasive plants around the banks and even made a tiny new frog friend.

Claire, Emma and Adam helped tidy up the surrounding garden and plant pots while Tom and Laura somehow managed to avoid wet feet clearing duckweed from the pond.

Everything looked great afterwards, and we could even see a few newts in the - temporarily - clear pond. A lovely task on a perfect spring evening.

GoodGym turned up in force to Elm Road Park having run, walked and cycled their way there.

Upon arrival we were provided with safety glasses, masks, scrapers, chisels and sandpaper and were spread out along a concrete fence.

The task was to remove any last pieces of a mosaic, scrape off the loose paint and sand back the surface so that it was ready for painting. The paint was stubborn in some areas and we were moved around as each section progressed until each panel was quite smooth.

We will return next week when the rain will have hopefully stopped to finish any more preparation work and do some painting so everything is ready for a new mural.