Sam received a voice message from Javier Andres (Old Spike Manager) to say that he had a maniac day and preferred not to have any GoodGymers come before 18:45, so Sam quickly sent out messages to all the runners to come for 18:45.

We all met outside Old Spike and at 18:45, with Javier still cleaning, we quickly dumped our stuff and headed to the Green to warm up and do the GG speech and ice-breaker question.

Since Sam was in Brighton for the day, he asked two questions: Where did you have the best fish and chips? and Which seaside town would you retire to?

The majority said the best fish and chips comes from the North East of England with places like Robin Hood Bay, Whitby, Scarborough and Tynemouth, but there were some mentions in Scotland namely in and around Edinburgh. The second question featured places outside the UK, but many answered in and around Cornwall (St. Ives without the price tag and tourists).

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Apple trees older than us

Our run up to Dawson's Heights was a short, but hard run as the hill from Dunstan's Road up to Overhill Road took it out of us, especially in the heat. Yet, little by little, we made it to the top and then ran down a slope to reach our destination. As we met Ellie, Magda arrived on her bike and Emma ran from home. We were also joined by a couple of residents, who have the idea of transforming the space.

Ellie had three tasks for us - watering, weeding and mulching (sound familiar - it's exactly what we did last week, but in a different location). Sam divided up the team with Daryl, Paulin and Steve taking care of the mulch run. They had to fill the bags for life that they had with mulch before running up a flight of stairs to dump the mulch on the garden mulch and eventually on the soil near the saplings to retain moisture. Whilst they were doing the heavy lifting, Emma, James and Magda weeded around the saplings to ensure they had every chance to grow rather than the weeds taking all the nutrients. Katy did the water run with a mop bucket and watering can, but switched with Emma later as Katy helped chop back and hedge and move all the weeds and trimmings to a compost area of the community garden.

The team worked seamlessly as the minutes ticked by, we pretty much completed all three tasks that needed to be done. There's still a lot of mulch in the pile, but we made a huge dent in it.

We will be back as Ellie has a project in mind to build a community allotment in Dawson's Heights, so we will get involved with that. Before we left Ellie and the residents, we had to get in those jammy dodgers, shortbread and chocolate chip cookies to replenish our energy as it was fading at that point.

We took the scenic route back to Old Spike stopping at Dawson's Hill to take in the views!

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Thank You to all the GG-ers

A personal thanks from me to all those who came out tonight! Although, it was a shorter 2.5k run, that hill killed us. Yet, we took it in our strides. Ellie was super happy about what we achieved in 40-45 minutes as the before and after optics showed the massive impact we had.

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Thank You Ellie

GoodGym is all about getting fit and doing good! We praise the runners/cyclists/walkers who come to get fit and help out, but we often forget about our task owner. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Ellie who I got in touch with after almost a year without any contact and she's always happy to have GoodGym's help. There's a bigger allotment project on the horizon, which we'll surely get involved with.