YMCA Stanley Court offers a safe environment and supported housing to people in need, helping them to get ready to moving for greater independence to achieve their true potential and overcome difficulties they might have experienced. Everyone living at Stanley Court can benefit from a range of opportunities to learn new skills, including volunteering and active participation in the gardening group.

Today GoodGym call was to help YMCA to revive the gardening group by preparing a green area to get suitable for future seeding, planting of flowers and growing of vegetables.

We were expected – as advertised on a poster to the residents!

Within 45 minutes we had peeled off the bindweed, chopped back the shrubs, weeded the overgrown patio entirely. We filled 15+ green bags with weeds and left the area looking much tidier, ready for future revamping!

The YMCA gardening group is open to all. You can come in for a taster session or attend regularly and learn a new skill while enjoying the fresh air. So, we did and finished off our group session with fitness exercises in the Saunder park nearby. GoodGym-er Rosie, lead the group back shining her 50 deeds' GoodGym T-shirt!

Tonight twelve runners took the short run to one of our favourite local tasks. Why our favourite? Well it definitely has nothing to do with the free cakes on offer! We've been going to the Community Kitchen run by the Brighton and Hove Food Partnership since the kitchen began and they are always ready with some great cleaning tasks to get the kitchen ready for classes.

Amaryllis and Rosie set to the tough but rewarding job of bringing the ovens back to life, it was a grease ridden nightmare but they made them look fantastic by the end.

Jane started the evening in horror at the scale of mis matched utensils in cupboards, after calming down she soon made light work of the mess!

Fresh from their Worthing half-marathon heroics Angela and Ben polished up the dining table and chairs.

The rest of us busied ourselves with general cleaning around the kitchen until the whole place was sparkling! For all our hard work we were rewarded with some amazing cakes.

It was lovely to see some old faces tonight and big thank you to Frances for sharing the tasks around us all.

Today the GoodGym gang ran 7 km to Wellsbourne Community Garden and back.

We welcomed new members Paul, Paul and Paul.

Stalwart member Rosie was running her 50th session!

We met Lucy, our task owner, at the Wellsbourne Healthcare Centre. She explained they had a volunteer gardening day tomorrow. Our task was to dig holes to plant wild flowers and plants to attract pollinators. We readied our destructive green fingers and shovels and got to work. Others made swift work of tidying and weeding the garden.

Stefania did a fitness exercise session to work on all those muscles we had neglected while running and digging.

To thank us, lovely Lucy kindly gave us cooking herbs from the garden and chocolate. How nice 🙂!

Thrilled at the prospect of it being LIGHT OUTSIDE since the clocks went back, we enjoyed a sunny (but still chilly) evening in Hanover.

With plenty of new faces at the meeting point, we started with introductions and congratulated Pippa on 50k last weekend, and wished Olivia good luck for the London marathon on Sunday. Then it was straight into some hill workouts, with a long slow hill to endure at the start, then a wee speedy one up to the Pepper Pot at the top of Queen's Park.

Arriving at the task, we were met by fellow Goodgymer Michelle, who has a side gig as a primary teacher. She showed us the half-built monsters being prepared for the Children's Parade, which kicks off Brighton Festival in May. The theme is Where the Wild Things Are, and we were wildly excited to get stuck in! Whether it was constructing leaves from willow sticks, adding a layer of papier mache to a giant monster, stripping colourful ribbons off sticks, or blowing up rugby balls, we all channeled our inner 8-year-old and had a great time.

We were sad to wrap up when the bell rang, but playtime wasn't over! We braved the chill wind to complete an 8 minute interval workout, and discovered that some playground equipment is a lot more challenging than it looks. Finally it was home time, and we ran our separate ways, with some of us making a detour to take in a fab view of the setting sun 🌞

Thanks everyone for a great task, looking forward to more sunny and (hopefully) warm sessions in the coming months 😎