In the evening sunshine, four of us met in Danson Park, having walked and run there. Marianna came with her daughter, and they brought Jay along too – perhaps our new canine mascot 🐾?

We kicked things off with a 10-in-10 fitness session; ten back-to-back exercises, one minute each. High knees, butt kicks, lunges, squats and more got us moving and chatting about how Jay came to live with Marianna, Martin's adventures in Thailand and Fraser's election to Deputy Mayor of Bexley.

For the main event, we headed into the surrounding streets, delivering leaflets to promote a sports festival taking place in the park later this month, organised by Danson Watersports and Bexley Mencap.

It was lovely when a local resident came out to say hello. He'd been been at the Big Paddle Clean Up last week and recognised our red T-shirts on his smart doorbell as we approached his front door!

As we walked up and down driveways, we kept a wary eye on the heavy grey clouds gathering overhead. We hoped to avoid the rain, but with only a handful of flyers left to deliver, a loud clap of thunder signalled the inevitable and the heavens opened. We were soaked through in seconds, but in true GoodGym style, we finished the job.

Here's hoping our efforts help attract plenty of people to the event.

And fingers crossed that the weather is a little kinder for our group task next week. We'll be finishing off the bug hotels that we started building at Holy Trinity Lamorbey School. Why not join us?

It was a brisk and blustery one in Danson Park on Saturday, but that didn’t stop the team from getting stuck in. Robert and I were especially pleased to welcome two new GoodGym Bexley members, Zara and Ian, to their very first task — and what a great one to start with!

As part of our ongoing collaboration with the brilliant Friends of Danson Park, we rolled up our sleeves to help make our beloved park even more beautiful (and biodiverse!), as we got involved in planting around 300 plugs of Yellow Rattle in the rock garden.

If you haven’t come across Yellow Rattle before, it’s a bit of a quiet hero. By drawing nutrients from dominant grasses, it helps create space for wildflowers to thrive, boosting biodiversity and providing a valuable nectar source for pollinators. A small plant with a big impact!

The ground, however, had other ideas… with no rain recently, the soil had turned impressively stubborn. So much so that Ian, in a heroic first-task effort, managed to break a trowel while trying to get those plugs in the ground 💪🌱. (Don’t worry — we’ve got photographic evidence.) Safe to say, he passed his GoodGym initiation with flying colours!

Despite the chilly wind, spirits were high, tools (mostly) survived, and it was fantastic to see new faces getting involved from the get-go.

Huge thanks to everyone who came along, and a big welcome again to Zara and Ian. Hope this is the first of many tasks with us!