Another amazing session for a freezing cold Saturday!! 7 Goodgymers helped out with massive task of collecting over 3500 trees.. A huge operation that has been growing year on year to raise money for the charities , Pass The Smile and Myton Hospice. There were various jobs that needed doing , Jackie , Vickie and James unloading the trees ,which proved to be a very good workout Nigel was posted supplying the van drivers with tea and coffees and snacks ! Graeme was on registration for all the drivers that came in !! And Nigel and Catherine out on the road In the van collecting the trees !

It was a fun day despite the bitterly cold weather, great meeting positive people and amazing to be involved in such a wonderful cause .!!

Three Goodgymers made their way to the Canley area of Coventry to deliver leaflets for the Myton Hospices & Pass the Smile for Ben Christmas Tree collection in our final task of 2024. Last year, £35,000 was raised for the charities and we will be hoping to exceed this in 2025. With a list of streets left to leaflet, we covered around 4.5km delivering leaflets and admiring the Christmas lights and decorations.

Big Congrats to Graeme for hitting the big 100 deeds! Here's to another 100!

Have a lovely festive season and here's to many more good deeds in 2025!

(Picture credit: Russells Garden Centre posted on Coventry and Warwickshire Charity Xmas Tree-cycling Facebook page)

HO HO HO! A fun night joining Santa through the streets of Kenilworth for the Kenilworth Round table. In total we collected £496.44 for local good causes including Myton Hospice and Pass The Smile :)

A big thank you from Colin from the Round Table for all you help.

Despite the cold evening, four GoodGymers made their way to Canley to deliver leaflets. Laura, Lil, James, and Chris met up just outside the Cannon Park shopping centre to start their walk. The chosen route took us through a rather spooky alleyway, and out onto the Cannon Hill Road.

With much folding of leaflets, much hunting for letterboxes, and more than a little house envy, a good portion of the leaflets for Myton and Pass the Smile got posted to the unsuspecting residents of the area.

After avoiding a few wrong turns, we wound our way to the Kenilworth Road where we turned back to retrace our steps back to the meeting point. Although the selfie outside of Tesco perhaps wasn’t the usual GoodGym photograph, it was much warmer and brighter than the great outdoors.

There was a slightly worrying moment where we discovered how many leaflets were still left, but we gave our numb fingers the benefit of the doubt and congratulated ourselves on a job well done.

7 GoodGymers joined the small army of volunteers for Day 2 of the Christmas tree collection to help raise money for Myton Hospice and Pass the smile for Ben. What a morning to be out, the weather was beautiful!

Jackie, Vickie and Laura arrived at 9 ready for a briefing and to be directed to our station where our role was to unload the vans. Graeme, James, Katherine and Nigel were out in the vans collecting the discarded Christmas trees covering Leamington, Rugby, long Lawton and Binley Woods.

The vans arrived steadily where they were emptied by the main organiser's of the event. Jackie, Vickie and Laura then dragged the Christmas trees to the pile, ready for their impending doom. There were lots of trips backwards and forwards and some of those trees were heavy so a real all over body work out.

Jackie and Laura left at lunch time so we didn't manage to catch Katherine and Nigel, their van was so big to fill they didn't manage to get back to base until after lunchtime. They did amazing and managed to collect 51 trees in total!

James and Greame managed a fairly incident free trip apart from the van door jamming and they couldnt open it! Graeme sorted it - phew - and the van had to be repacked, strapping the trees to the roof in the dark.

After completing a wholes days shift, Vickie managed to rack up just over 7.5 miles - wowzers!

Give yourselves a pat on the back, you all did amazing! It was a great day, we had a laugh and met some lovely people and in total the team collected a whopping 1250 trees - woo hoo!

Good luck tomorrow Vickie and Graeme on round 2! They have also sent the sign up form for next year already, who is in?!

Thanks to everyone that made it to the last session of 2023 for our final leafleting drop!

As it was a little to far for a run from town, we met at the task this eve and took a casual stroll around a new(ish) estate in Westwood Heath. It was great to have Vic and Deb join us and to see Lil on the mend.

We split into 2 teams again to try and cover more ground and seemed to get around the area super quick. It was nice to check out people's Christmas lights and posh abodes! Taking it a bit slower meant we got to have a nice chat too, all in all a lovely evening.

Wishing you all a Merry Christmas, enjoy the break and get ready for some more GoodGym action in 2024!

p.s. Graeme hope you feel better soon!