Congratulations to Katie on reaching 500 GOOD DEEDS this evening! We reminisced on some of Katie's most memorable tasks over the years - so many fun memories!

College Park was remarkably tidy, but we still managed three reasonably full bags of rubbish on our turn around the area.

Good Deed complete, we went on a brief walking tour of local Christmas Lights, and even managed to collect the last two photos for the festive scavenger hunt. The evening was rounded off with a quick pub trip to celebrate an amazing year of GoodGym Portsmouth.

Today brought more tidying and weeding around the beds adjacent to the woodland path. Lots of leaves which we left, covering an abundance of shoots already poking through - there should be a very colourful Spring when the Bluebells appear. There are snowdrops to just waiting to flower right now. The Rose beds had been given a blanket of mulch all tucked up for the winter, and the holly and red berries gave it a very Christmassy feel. It was chilly in spite of our hard work, and we appreciated our hot drink in the Cafe at the end of the session.

There was a great turnout of volunteers today in spite of the arctic rain and wind. Waiting for the rain to stop, we had a warm cuppa in the hub at the start of the session, then ventured out to the beds by the hub to start clearing out the weeds and giving the grasses a hair cut. Lorna (now known as Lorna scissorhands) was a dab hand at crafting some great haircuts including one that looked remarkably like Tina Turner's style in her Nutbush City Limits era. We made great progress and managed to do, what would be 2 day's work for one person, in just 90 minutes. We warmed up weeding, raking, sweeping and shifting and enjoyed another hot drink supporting the local Cafe in the Park before going on home.

The weather gods were kind to us and paused the rain just long enough for us to fill a big, black bag of rubbish and have a good catch up.

Well done to mini GGer, Jack, for seeking out the interesting and unusual finds at Tipner shoreline! These included large pieces of rope, a flip-flop and 2 different-sized wheels.

With Laura, Katie and I to help pick up the smaller bits (including, of course, a sock!) we made a visible difference to the beach in just 45 minutes. Four heavy sacks of litter collected, and less litter to return to the sea on the next high tide.

Hopes dashed that the rain would hold off, I set about giving the rec a clear up.

Plenty of cans found. A used firework remnant! A hat, as there is always clothing! And spookiest of all (albeit slightly late for halloween), a bubblegum wrapper. Not scary on its own, however the 'are you afraid of the dark' podcast I was listening to had a discussion on bubblegum flavours at exactly the moment I spotted it.