A Happy New Year from GoodGym Nottingham who met for their first task of the year yesterday. Unfortunately, our planned indoor task had been cancelled due to illness, but not to be deterred or put off by the chilly weather, we decided to meet for a spot of litter picking around the Carrington area of Nottingham.

We met at the Carrington Community Garden where we did several tasks in the summer. It was fully dark and not much above freezing, and it seemed impossible to believe that we were there at the same time, in daylight, and sweating buckets in shorts and vests just a few months ago!

After a quick sweep of the Community Garden itself, we split into two groups and headed off to see what we could find to fill our purple bags before the cold got the better of our fingers and toes. Peter, Tom and Nigel went in the direction of the Pirates Park and St John’s churchyard, whilst Leah, Florence, Khiltee, Matt and Rachel ventured towards the underpass and shops at Carrington. We managed to fill four bags of litter overall, including Matt’s best find of a military style hat complete with badge.

We could have definitely carried on picking had we not started to freeze a little and had we also not agreed to reconvene after 45 minutes to head to the pub (a little reward for our efforts). After a quick photo, we waved goodbye to Nigel and the rest of us popped into the local for a cheeky drink to welcome in 2026 and to debate the pros and cons (?) of having a birthday on 31st December – happy belated birthday to Matt!

Sadly our post-Goose Fair litterpick at Forest Rec didn't live up to the excellent rubbish standards of last time we cleared up after a major event there – Nigel's inflatable alien really will take some beating, it seems!

That's not to say we got a bad haul though! Despite someone (the council maybe?) managing to give the place a good cleaning between Rachel and Peter's pre-task reccies and our arrival, we still managed to fill a good few bags of rubbish.

Hannah's crank took the prize for most unusual bit of litter, while Elspeth and Leah managed to find half a loaf of very stale, very mouldy bread, followed by its bag a few metres further down the fence.

Shoutout to Scott for coming to his very first task with us – hope to see you again soon!

Someone please remind me to charge the headtorches, looks like we'll be needing them for outdoor stuff from now on!

Well done to Debbie who went along go the latest Hyson Green litter pick. She reported: "It was lovely to team up with the community clean champions again and help clean some of the area".

A crew of five GoodGymers turned up for what might be one of our last dark tasks of the winter!

Hi-vis and headtorches donned, we headed out onto Racecourse Road to give it a spruce up.

There was certainly plenty of rubbish, so much in fact that we had to leave one section to the council for safety reasons. We even found a Sainsbury's bag with two unopened bottles of Stella that had been there so long that weeds had grown right through the handle!

All in all a productive hour of picking, ending with a fond farewell to Emily from the council who has been our contact there for the past couple of years (that long already??) and is now moving onwards and upwards.

Matthew, Debbie and Rachel joined the Sherwood Clean Champions for a spot of litter picking on a beautiful sunny Saturday morning. We met Rob from the Clean Champions at the entrance to the Pirate Park, where we equipped ourselves with pickers and purple bags. We then set off for an hour around the local Carrington area.

We first tackled the Pirate Park itself, then the roads behind it and around St John's churchyard. We also managed a little detour to the Carrington Community Garden, a small green space off of one of the residential streets. Here we found a lot of litter amongst the bushes, but it was a lovely little hidden gem of a space which has GoodGym written all over it for a potential future task (if we can find out who looks after it....).

Tim, Nigel, Tom, Peter and Rachel headed to Queens Walk Recreation Ground in the Meadows for our task this week. This was a new location for us, just down the road from the Meadows Foodbank where we have spent many-a-Wednesday evening.

Keen beans Peter and Tom had met a little earlier to do a 5k run before this task, while the rest of us walked and trammed our way to the meeting point.

We met Emily from the Clean Champions on arrival who gave us our litter pickers and hi-viz, and after donning our head torches we set off around the park to see what we could find. Emily joined us too, so between us all we managed to fill 6 bags.

Thankfully the weather was a little bit kinder to us on this task and we didn't get too cold or wet. But we all agreed that the clock change and warmer days cannot come soon enough so that we can enjoy some lighter tasks and get back into some mid-week gardening!