We went to Whitley Growallot on a sunny Sunday afternoon to help them with some preparations for growing food for next year!

There is so much to be done on the allotment all year round to be able to grow food for the community, so today we were tasked with clearing one of the large triangular beds to give a head start for next year's planting.

There were some onions to be harvest, and garlic to be saved for replanting, but all the weeds needed to go!

After almost two hours of work, we were able to cover the bed with cardboard and tarp to hopefully make sure the weeds stay away over the winter, so the bed will be easier to plant into in the new year.

With lots to be done, we'll be back again soon, to help at this great community asset!

We headed out along the Oxford Road for this week's task of a litter pick. We welcomed Charlie back for her second task, and Freyja, already a GoodGym centurion, for her first task in Reading. It started off slow, with not much litter around, but then the bags started filling up. We were thanked by a few people for what we were doing, which was very kind.

Along the way we found the usual mix of rubbish of bottles, cans and packets, but we didnt egg-spect to find a number of egg boxes and an Uno card!

In the end we filled 7 bags of litter along our 3km walk. We took our group photo outside New Beginnings, where we'll be for our next task on 18th October.

On Monday three GoodGymers took to the streets of west reading to support Thames Hospice by delivering leaflets. We covered a good stretch of the neighbourhood, spreading the word about the new Thames Hospice superstore and managing to race the sunset and finish just before the last of the daylight disappeared. A steady pace, teamwork, and a shared cause made for a rewarding session and we all definitely hit our step goals. Mission accomplished!

I went to Reading Repair cafe for the second time, to help with the checking-in and recording of everything that got fixed during the session.

There was a steady stream of people bringing their items, with lots for the experts to help with! A tv that wouldn't turn on, a radio/cd player that wouldnt play CDs, some jeans to turn up and a hole in a jumper to mend, a kettle that wouldn't stay on, some tools to sharpen, an overlocker that wouldnt run, and a few printers that wouldn't print!

There was so much to do and lots of items were able to be fixed this week, saving over 250kg of C02 from being put into landfill, equivalent to over 5 trees being left to grow for 10 years! What a great outcome!

Six GoodGymers set out to clear up Kings Road and Queens Road on Monday evening.

Armed with our new litter pickers and bags from Reading Council RAYS (Reading adopt your street), and joined for the first time by Narah and Daniel who is going to be leading GoodGym Basingstoke, we set off!

After another day of rain showers, we were lucky with a dry evening, however, the wind seemed to have blown quite a bit of the rubbish away... or so we thought!

Even on our 2km loop, we still managed to collect 6 bags of rubbish between us! As luck would have it, as we were finishing up, we met the leader of Keep Reading Tidy, who thanked us for our work. Maybe there will be a future collaboration for us!?

We were back at the Weller Centre for probably our last outdoor task of the year without needing headtorches before we'd finished!

There was hedge trimming to be done and shredding of the already cut bags of branches to get through. We started by dragging the deceptively heavy bags around the building, where Shirley donned safety gear and got to work on the shredder. Jenni and Chris, joined by taskowner Katie, worked on the hedge. With the extra long loppers we were able to get some of the high bits, and make the hedge neater.

With the light fading, we piled our trimmings, put the tools back in the well organised shed, and admired Shirley's work reducing a whole bag of cuttings to a small pile of fine shreds.

Next week, we're back over in Reading town centre for some litter picking, sign up to join us here