GG Lambeth had all guns blazing last night, smashing out a solid few k and blitzing a couple of tasks for Brixton Road Youth Centre.

Totally fresh to GoodGym we had Lucy, Raina, Anna and Nadia - WELCOME!

After a quick headcount we split into 2 groups - Nicky leading the long route and the rest of us heading direct.

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When we arrived, Sharon gave us the low down and showed us where the gear was kept.

We had two tasks:

🍂 Collecting leaves into bags

🛋 Shifting chairs from one lock-up to another

But the brains of GoodGym Lambeth decided on some extra bonus tasks to make the place look even better:

🥦Scraping up moss

🌱Pulling up weeds

And in fact everyone did such a good job that Sharon had to go and buy even more bags.

When all was bagged up, we took a quick snap and headed back for some truly scrumptious bakes from Katie and her killer brownies, Tim and his beautiful cinnamon swirls, Tom with a bakewell tart & some seriously excellent pastry and Freyja with some deeeeelicious cookies.

Nice one Lambeth! 🤙

I'm away for a few weeks but Nicky will be leading next week, with a run to help out at the lovely Agnes Riley Gardens - Sign up here!!

30 runners with some serious weather predicting skills just knew that the clouds would clear for a lovely evening's running and do-gooding.

First up we welcomed newcomer Will (turns out he's a dab-hand with a saw - see below👇) and we then dished out our SPOTM to none other than Tom Benson - As well as having done a load of good deeds, he organised our trip to Wales to Race the Horse, the GoodGym Olympics and last weekend's #GGSUPERSATURDAY. He's an absolute legend and we're so proud that he's still a regular Lambeth runner. And he even lead the run to one of our tasks this week!

A brand new (but deflated football), electrolytes, a handy card protector and the return of the FED SHREDZ had a worthy winner.

👏👏👏

And then we split.

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18 of us ran to Moorlands Gardens which is an awesome community allotment, buried in a little housing estate near to Brixton station. We met Grant who set us a bunch of tasks:

• Turning and forking over a few vegetable patches
• Lopping and sawing down the buddleia
  
• Pulling up the weeds around the bottom of the fruit trees so they can be mulched
• and a bonus task of moving some massive railway sleepers to be used for allotment boundaries

Of course GoodGym Lambeth blitzed the tasks with ease and got an extra arm/back workout from the sleeper lifting and some entertainment from plenty of frogs who seemed intent on joining the gang.

We ran back with some wallsits, tricep dips and squats en route.

ABSOLUTELY RIBBITING

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Tom led the remaining on a longer run and had this to say:

So me and a merry gang of 12 of us, took a steady jog to St Michael's Fellowship, a residential home in Herne Hill. Although I studied the map before I left I managed to give the team a bit of a detour but all good we made it where we were welcomed with biscuits and water. So after being handed our tools it was head torches on and it was operation tidy the front and back gardens. Jobs included raking up loads of leaves, pulling up leaves and getting everything ship shape. So we got down to it, and results were very impressive, within 20 minutes we had three full sacs and all felt very pleased. I even managed to get my anecdotes about why we see snails after its been raining and Issy gave us a debrief on plastics. It was very good all round. All that was left was to peg it back to papas.

Well done team!

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We were then treated to some delicious cookies and biscuits from Carol and Victoria! 😋

40 runners hit the road last night for all manner of gardening jobs and some litter picking at the delightful Kennington Park.

First off we welcomed new runners into the fold - cheers for coming along Lucy, Anna, Hannah and Louisa!!

And then we had some congratulations to give:
Steven has now smashed his 50th good deed and Michael is on a massive 100 good deeds!! They had the honour(???) of wearing the cape of goodwill and the wings of glory for their incredible contribution to the community.

Nice one guys!

And then we had to say goodbye 😢 Long-time Lambeth runner and ultra reliable taskforce member Lucy is back off to bonnie Scotland. She’d done 123 good deeds before last night, and has a group run streak of 39 months (3 years, 3 months and 3 days actually) which is just nuts. She will be so missed but we know when GG Edinburgh kicks off, she’ll be there!

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Then we ran. Steve lead a 4k route and the rest of us had a direct 2.5k run. We were met by Rita and Mariette who instructed us with some pretty specific jobs.

Just a little bit off the top, please.

✂️ Snipping lavender

🌳 Trimming the big (yew) bushes

🚮 Litter pick off on the fringes

🌱 Up-ROOT-ing some ‘tree of hair-ven’ saplings

🌺 Getting the Wisteria out of one’s eyes

CHIP CHOP

We split into small groups to tackle each task and got to work.

There was some super even snipping from Lucy, Phoebe & Hannah and Freddie was hot on their tail, sweeping up the split ends.

Team litter pick was on fire: Tim found some old Country music CDs, Phil was picking up every cigarette butt he could possibly find and Magda, Frances & Marina collected 2 massive bags of rubbish between them.

After half an hour and a very important headcount, we left.

Shears m’dears!

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And what a treat we had to look forward to from our Bake Off Sweet-stakes!

A perfectly moist orange and almond cake from Phoebe, a spectacularly colourful angel cake from Steve and an expertly executed antigravity cake from Samantha. 🍊👼🍎

YUM 👅

See you next week for a brand new task - painting and gardening at Loughborough Community Centre - and BISCUITS! Sign up here.

Nice one Ellie, Josh, Madeline and Ashley for coming on your first GG run - ace to have you along!

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It was all about the gardens today - Ruskin, Styles and Moorlands, all going wild in the Summer heat, so we were on hand to do a bit of taming.

So we had a quick warm up, split into three groups and headed off:

Beth had this to say about her group:

A small but perfectly formed team of six headed to meet Karen at Styles Gardens where she needed a hand tending to the gardens of some residents, as they are currently being overrun with ivy and brambles. We had a selection of tools available, some better than others, and after about half an hour Rebecca and Ashley had been so efficient they moved on to a third garden, with Jim’s words of wisdom about dealing with bracken ringing in their ears. Once we were done we gave Karen a hand taking tools back to Loughborough junction farm and found out about all the exciting projects happening on the site and in the local area.

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Nicky took a group to Moorlands Gardens:

We got to Moorlands to be greeted by Sarah and her team and were quickly set to work doing combinations of digging, chopping and our favourite, bindweed-pulling. After half an hour or so, we'd made two huge piles of bindweed and non-bindweed waste. The team were very pleased and can't wait for us to come back soon.

Good job everyone!

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The rest of us were headed to Ruskin Park Community Garden where we've gradually been ploughing through a long list of jobs there; cutting back a load of brambles, weeding in the fruit cages and moving compost onto the beds.

We then went for a quick brain and body game in the park: Get the fox, chicken and grain up the hill without anything being eaten. Sprints, mixed with some press ups, planks and squats and a warm evening made for a serious (and slightly silly) workout.

We then ran back and went for a drink at the Duke!

Top work GoodGym Lambeth!

See you next week for a little more gardening at Agnes Riley - sign up here.

Massive welcome to Celia, Tim and Marina for joining us for their first GoodGym run. Ace to have you guys along!

Tonight we had two run options to two of our regular tasks; The Portico Gallery and Ruskin Park Community Garden.

Half of us took a leisurely 2k jog to Ruskin Park, where Justin and Huseyin greeted us and armed us with equipment to help with a few jobs:

• De-weeding a bed of lettuce and onions 🌱

• Sawing/breaking branches into firewood 🌲

• Raking up a load of grass cuttings 🌾

LETTUCE BEGIN 🥬

We cracked on, switching up who was doing each task but Michael staying strong on the sawing throughout! And today’s task was an absolute treat with most of us taking home some onions and lettuce from the vegetable patch!

ON(ION)REAL

Once we were done, Freya treated us to one of her Drama games in the park - a game of jumping tag but where you can only jump when the person(s) who are ‘it’ jump. Obviously in full GoodGym-style we added a mean muscle testing twist - remaining in a squat position the whole time.

It was a fun one and definitely a serious thigh burner! 🔥

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Nicky led the other half of the group up the hill to the Portico Gallery where John had a few simple jobs of some table stacking, tarpaulin folding and rubbish removal which everyone got done in time for a fitness sesh in Brockwell Park! Thanks to our John for leading that 👌

Awesome work everyone!

Next week we’ve got another couple of tasks: creating a human conveyor belt for some bags of soil with Urban Growth or you can stick around and (hopefully!) paint the bench at PAPA’s Park. Sign up here.