Today we gave St Christopher's a spring clean, with Chris enthusiastically trimming the front hedge and leaving it superbly cut. Meanwhile Adam fresh back from his Japan adventures, Claudia on her first task (welcome!) and Sam swept up leaves. We filled four bags and two green recycling containers.

This morning's task was in the spacious gardens of St Christopher's, a residential home in St Margarets for young people, where we removed thorns and weeds and gave it a general tidy up. It emerged that two of the fab five are classics alumni and one of us completed a parkrun-GoodGym double 💪🏽

Big congratulations for member Susan who hit 100 tasks, a 4km run, a gardening task AND cake, it was a busy Monday evening for GoodGym Richmond!

Starting at the Tap where Susan was adorned with the celebratory wings and presented with the group card, the group went through a warm-up before heading down to the riverside to cross the bridge and head to St Christopher's.

At the home, the task was to give the front area of the large building a cleanup, something we are very familiar with! The group set about trimming hedges, weeding and sweeping leaves, as well as discovering a very dead Christmas tree that was chopped up to fit into the garden recycling bin and give space for Spring growth in the beds.

The task was completed with a lovely range of cakes that Susan kindly brought along to share, so many that we left some for the young people at the home to enjoy too!

A final run back to the Tap finished off the evening well. Congratulations Susan, 100 complete!

Join us next week for our monthly trip to our sponsored riverside plot, as well as more celebrations, this time for Rosie's 100th!

This week marked a special milestone for Susannah who reached 100 GoodGym tasks! 🥳

The group met at Tap Tavern for an intro, warm-up and to adorn Suze with her ceremonial wings (to match the GoodGym 100 t-shirt design) and give her the card signed by the group and showing some of her 100 highlights. Suze joined in summer 2021 and has carried out tasks in an impressive SEVEN GoodGym areas.

The evening's task took us over the river to St Christopher's where the group prepped the vegetable patch ready for growing season. It was overrun with weeds so there was a lot of digging involved, overseen by wonder Rosie who actually knows what we are meant to do with plants!

45 minutes later and the area was transformed, with some potatoes, brocolli, cabbages, carrots and wild garlic found along the way. The group however opted for less green treats as Suze cracked open the cookies and flapjacks she had brought along. Perfect to get the legs moving again to run back to the Tap!

Congratulations Suze and thank you for all the good you do.

This terrible dark Monday night, we met at the lair/Tap Tavern to run for our lives along the river and across Richmond Bridge to St Christopher's Fellowship to get involved in a gourd time and some hair-raising activities:

Jason/Chris took to the hedges with vigour, creating a Chainsaw Massacre of branches on the driveway. With cunning speed, the evidence was quickly hidden by Top Hat/Adam where noone would discover it (in the garden waste bins).

Stealth-like cats Night/Pippa and Shade/Liz, pruned and shaped bushes into purrfection.

The Butcher/Jp sharpened his blades and took whole flanks off the overgrown bushes.

Haunted Hunter and his owner Teresa scared off intruders and kept the team safe.

The Mobiliser/Lucy had to join late after gruesome delays (the less asked the better), but dialled straight into the action.

Mario/Rosie jumped into action to make the driveway look pretty peachy.

Drusilla/Nina got her teeth stuck into raking leaves and Jack Skellington/Sam made no bones about joining her to get the job done.

The job was done quickly and efficiently and we could have slipped away under the darkness of night, if it wasn't for those pesky kids (Pumpkin Beth and T-Rex Monika) who caused curtain-twitchers and local zombie walkers to look on in fear/confusion!

Liz rewarded the team with bloody marshmallows before leading the exorcise back over the bridge to the safety of the lair.

While most of the group headed straight to the task location this evening, three runners met at the Tap Tavern for a quick run over the Bridge to St Christopher's. On arrival, Liz shared information on some of the upcoming tasks, talked about both the end of summer social and Christmas party in the same sentence, and we all welcomed Christy for the first time!

We have helped at St Christopher's so frequently that even though the person on duty didn't have specific instructions, we set about giving the garden a bit of 'the usual'! Cutting back the bushes, taking out brambles, sweeping the driveway of leaves and giving the front hedge a trim. Many hands make light work, even as the dark descended on us and there was just time for a giggling group picture before everyone headed home.