After a sunny weekend, bank holiday Monday gave us rain, rain and more rain! By the time it came to 18:45 and meeting outside Glass Mill we had some sunshine and a wonderful group of GG-ers ready to do some good at St Mary's Church.

It was a shorter run this week and I'm sure I could hear the sighs of relief after the mammoth run last week. 1km later we arrived at the task.

There was a variety of tasks:

• dig a trench and fill with gravel to stop the damp getting into the church.
• dig around 2 tombs where the soil has washed down.
• clean the metal around the tombs with wire brushes so that it can be painted.
• sweep the paths.
• dig up alkinet and grass that was encroaching on a woodchip path.

Before we knew it, the tea wheelbarrow was arriving and we had just enough time for a cup of tea and homemade sausage roll and/or biscuits. Thanks Marion!

Next week we are heading to The Albany to free the garden of litter and tackle some of the weeds.

Last night, 14 Goodgymmers came out to help out at Galleywall Nature Reserve.

First to arrive at our meeting point, Old Spike, was Steve, who had been away recently. Whilst we caught up, newbie Chong arrived - and then nipped back out to check out a bike shop. Similarly, Isaac came dashing in, only to dash back out to do a quick lap of the Rye. Emma, Sarah, Nelly, Fi, Tim and Katy arrived and stayed 😅

Once everyone had arrived, I started welcome speech, and we gave a proper welcome to Chong. Our ice breaker question this week was related to the task... "Imagine we're going on a nature walk together, what do you see?". Tim started us off with a caterpillar, Chong gave some insight into his favourite sports team, and everyone else built a beautiful scene with a river, a waterfall, some salmon swimming in the river, some light filtering through the trees...🥹. It was a great team effort!

After a quick warm-up, we set off on our 4k run to Galleywall. I think it was the warmest day we've had this year, so it was a sweaty one!

When we arrived at Galleywall, James, Richard, Daryl and Andrada were already there. Eddie from Galleywall welcomed us and explained to us the task: we had to move some logs out of a ditch, and then put them back in a less haphazard manner, so that it would be safe for children.

Even though outcome was clear, we were not certain about how to achieve it initially. Steve came up with the idea of taking everything out the ditch, and then putting the big things back first, to give a stable base, so we rolled with that. We got into pairs and started to self-organise, and we completed the task surprisingly quickly.

Eddie came to inspect out work, and during this, he had the idea to dismantle some of the bug hotels so that people at the bus stop would be able to look through the "windows" to see into the nature reserve. After some discussion and experimentation, we opened up two windows.

At some point Daryl got separately picked to mow the grass.

Just as I started to worry that there may not be enough work for us, Eddie came round with laminated booklets which was a guided nature walk of the nature reserve. We split off into fours and off we went!

We finished at 8pm exactly to run/walk/cycle back to Peckham, perfect timing for our social at Skylarking. 🍻