It’s been a long time since we last came to Ryvers Primary school and fortunately the task of forestry garden (that required long leggings and tops and welly boots had been changed to play area tidy up!) phew! Thank goodness for that else we would have melted into this heat wave!

We met at Harrow Market and after the task brief we started our walk down to Trelawney Avenue.

It was actually really lovely to actually chat (and not be out of breath!). I had a lovely chat with Jean as we led the way to school with the naughty kids trailing behind us.

When we arrived on site Meera was there to give us access and show us the area we were working in.

Always a class act

The task was to blitz the Year 1 play area. There were Lego bit with no bobs, sand tray with a hole in my bucket toys and mud kitchens with actual mud! Plus a pile of toys that needed a decision on if it should stay or should it go!

With 8 of us in class today it was almost a full register!

Pam and Jean took to brushing the leaves and debris from behind the shelving units - just two ladies having fun in the sun

Dr was in demolish mood as he sea’sed the day!

Harsha, Meera, Nimi and Jen beavered away from this toy to that - they were having such a good time but then it t’is the sea-son to be happy

With the whole area done and dusted in 35 mins we had plenty of playtime left! So a good old obstacle course was the only way to go. A hula, a bat n ball, a bouncy thingy-ma-jig and the winning team - Team Meera win this week! But let’s see who makes a come back next week when we return for more playtime!

Every January Goodgym offer participants a chance to experience the group runs/walks outside of our normal Group Run day of Monday’s.

As we were doing a task at a local Primary School in Langley and wanted to offer a walkable option, we changed the meet up point from Salt Hill to Upton Court Park.

Great to have Erin join us on her second session with us and , Gauri who we haven’t seen for a while. But a very warm welcome to Kate on her first session with us!

Saturday is Kool when you go to skool

At GoodGym Slough we are lucky to have task owners and runners doubling up. One of our regular runners Meera is also our main task owner at Ryvers Primary School…so organising a Saturday opening of the school was easy peasy lemon squeezy!

Our meet up at Upton Court Park worked well too as it gave anyone wishing to get extra miles in an opportunity to do parkrun first at 09.00 and then get to our start point at 10.00. Ricky who is on a super miles challenge was one of those taking advantage of the change of venue...think he has clocked up over 50 miles already in January…but don’t worry Ricky…if you collapse, we will stop your Garmin...Kate, Ihfaz and Jen also clocked up some extra miles at parkrun today....well done guys!

Walking is the new running

I wanted to offer a walk option to this group run as generally if our task location is up to 2km away from base, it is possible to walk to the task….so just an option for those who want to to get involved in future GoodGym sessions on Mondays..

However, today, everyone was up for running so after our welcome brief, task overview and warm up…we headed out along Upton Court Rd..

On arrival, Gail one of our other walker/task owners, met us on site and gave us the low down on what needed doing... as well as offering us a Danish pastry or two!

With a vast amount of grounds to cover, we spilt off into smaller teams:

• Captain Hook team headed by Ricky went to work in the nursery play area to sweep, tidy and litter pick.

• Meera’s mermaids went off to the far garden area to rake and sweep.

• The Sandstorm team headed by Gail and very ably assisted by Ifhaz went to sweep up all the sand.

• And finally, the In the Night Garden team, headed by Sutyee went off to do deep dark depths of the learning garden to do a tidy up.

Forty minutes in and the playtime bell had sounded. Twelve bags of sodden leaves, debris and general rubbish had been collected, as well as lego sorted into boxes and footpaths swept!

Just in time for the Hungry Caterpillar team photo and a doughnut or two!

Well done everyone.

Welcome back! As we start 2019 with a bang and extra weekend sessions to help you with some of those targets we have all set ourselves on 31st December…to get fit, to do more to help others, to volunteer more, to help our older generation…one place covers all of these – Goodgym!

With a change in base location (just for this session), we knew we couldn’t start at Upton Court Park without doing what hundreds of runners do every Saturday….parkrun... Well done to Ashu and Emily on completing their first ever parkrun!

So 11 of us decided to add in extra kilometres to our group run today and parkrun before we met the addition 2 runners for the welcome brief.

A very warm welcome back to all our runners and a special welcome to Louise who was doing a bit of tourism parkrunning today. We got chatting and discovered that she also is part of the Goodgym team in Hudderfield.. she then decided to do two tourisms today and join us for our session! Also a really warm welcome back to Emma and Ashu

Our task today was to help Ryvers Primary School with their Forest Learning Garden. Our task was to weed, rake, cut back trees and bash some nettles.

With a few tired legs already, we slow-leaf left Upton Court Park and made our way to school.

On arrival, we met with Ranjit who gave us our task brief and safety brief (mainly not to fall in the pond and special note to Darren not to cut all the vegetation)

We then divided into 3 teams:

• The Raking Bad Team
• The Bruce Tree Team
• The Pond Squad team

Keira and the Raking Bad team had to rake over and spread the soil so the area was ready to have the plants seeded. Well done to you guys... star team work with Pete being well managed by the team leader! Your good seed done for the day

Chrissy and The Bruce Tree team’s job was to give the Buddleai tree a short back and sides. Which with Ruth in the team was done in an amazingly quick time!

And last bud not least, Nisha and The Pond Squad team had the job of cutting back the willow and bashing back the nettles.

This team were having too much of a good sting today. They were so determined to finish off this area that they refused to listen to the countdown timer!

A family of foxes frequent this forestry area but unfortunately for us they were visiting their distant cousins – The Wolves (Did you know that a fox can run 30 miles per hour? Well now you do! I think we need a fox for our Goodgym January Challenge..we’d be done in no thyme)

With our time up, we had given the area a face-leaft so we got ready to run back to Upton Court Park.

Always great to see the results of our hard work (in the daylight). We can all be rest assured that today, we’ve helped this lovely school maintain their Forest Learning Garden, so on Monday, the children will have the opportunity to enhance their learning in this natural area

Ranjit was happy from her head to her tomatoes with all our efforts.

Next week’s run on Monday is back at Salt Hill Activity Centre starting at 18:30. It’s a starter session so ideal for anyone wishing to try Goodgym for the first time.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend and see you on Monday