Last night we had a bumper group of GoodGymers (perhaps enticed out by the promise of baking?) and we were heading over to Jubilee Primary School to clear their planting garden.

First up let's welcome two new and new-ish GGers to the Lambeth group - Laura and Rose it was lovely to have you with us - and a warm welcome back to Paul who had been away for a while but brought Laura and Rose with him!

We also had Claire (?!)... sorry Charlotte back with us after a while out with injury and travels and to top off the returnees Task Force hero Nathan was back as well, welcome back guys.

Our team was rounded out by Ben fresh off his Community Mission heroics on Sunday, Michael and of course Fi who was down to bake this evening after her baker left Bake off - baking hell that's awesome!

It's a flat and fast run to JPS and we made great time so had plenty to get through all the weeding and leaf clearance in preparation for the planting garden to be used by the children to develop their green fingers.

By 8pm we had gathered 8 black bags full of garden waste and litter and deposited them into the bins (see before and after pic). Nice work team.

Then came the big moment, time to try Fi's brownies and I can report that they didn't disappoint, they were delicious!

Big thanks to everyone and see you all next time :0)

A warm Spring Tuesday evening in March and we have Windmills running through our minds! 💖 🏃

A solid sign-up for this Tuesday's task which was to help de-weed the borders of the soft play areas at Brixton Windmill Gardens (BWG).

We met as usual at Papa's and introduced ourselves, great to see so many friendly faces that have been busy recently coming back for a run out (George, Nathan!) as well as welcoming some relative newcomers (hey Inny!). We had a quick quiz with amazing prizes for the winners to continue Women's History Month of March then favourite holiday destinations and out for a warm up.

The run round to BWG was just over 2.5kms which is perfect for a warm evening and just right for the suprisingly stubborn weeds that had sprung up around the childrens' climbing frame and slides. Ok you might imagine any weeds strong enough to break free between the rubber soft play and the concrete may be quite hardy but they gave us plenty of arm work to do! 💪

Jean and Annick were there to meet us and hand out the tools while getting stuck in with the group - many thanks to you both!

30 mins or so later we were heading back with thoughts of the upcoming Beer and Bread festival which will take place at BWG on the May Bank Holiday (more info on how we will be involved to come GoodGymers!) 😎

Shout out to Gayle who is now one good deed shy of her half century and Paul a Lambeth veteran who came down to provide plenty of that arm power.

Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel As the images unwind, like the circles that you find In the windmills of your mind!

Tonight's community mission took both brains and brawl, which thankfully Saoirse, Paul and Adam could provide as I have very little of either. Andrea (the task owner from GROAD) came out to warn us about the scale of the task in advance of our start time, with a pep talk to not lose motivation when we saw how many books we were dealing with. And even though the task was every bit as big as she described, we made a solid dent in neatly re-stacking the books into another storage unit ready to be used. In the process we sorted out any loose papers to be recycled & some furniture to be dealt with by the donator, so it's saved the books from being dumped on the side of the road (as was their previous destiny). ♻️

The donator of all of these books had been telling Andrea about each book before we arrived, as apparently they'd read all of them. In the pile we found a few items of note...

• A box dating back to September 1993
• A lovely illustrated book of clocks
• A frankly huge collection of Soviet-era war books

...and found out that for both Saoirse and Paul this was their first Goodgym task in a couple of years. Welcome back, great to have you back on board! 🎉

An octet of wonderful GoodGymers got together on a windy Tuesday evening to dig deep and try to uproot the roots of a holly bush. Just one - but it turns out it's no mean feat.

Our beneficiary was St Leonard's Church in Streatham. We don't often trek that far south so it was a nice change. They're looking to turn a disused patch of the cemetery into a peaceful haven of wildflowers for bees, birds and even people. But stuck in the middle was a holly bush. Ali and her team had trimmed off all the leaves and sawn (sawed?) off most of the thinner branches, but our help was required to try and excavate the roots.

With an abundance of tools, we got to work, digging, sawing, mattock-ing, pick-axing, shoveling, rocking (see photo of Becca's interesting method) etc. etc. deep into the earth, trying to figure out the root system to remove the bulk of the trunk. Alas - it was not to be and after a solid 90 minutes we called it a day, conceding that we'd need to come back afresh to finish the job.

Despite not being able to remove the trunk, we did feel like archeologists, unearthing some vintage crisp packets and chocolate bar wrappers (see pics).

Seriously good work guys!! 👏👏👏

Here's the link to sign up to the return trip!