4 goodgymers set out on another evening for our second litter pick of the year. We started from Siren bar and did a loop around Reading town centre, ending by Reading Minster.

It was a cold but refreshing night and we also had the pleasure of welcoming Ricky to the group for his first GoodGym task. Along the way, we collected a good 3 full rubbish bags of paper, wrappers, plastic bags and many many cans and bottles!

After a good haul, we ended the night with a group photo and a lovely farewell. Great job team Reading and looking forward to our next one!

GoodGym Reading have now completed their first community mission 🥳

Five goodgymers met on a cold evening to do a litterpick around Reading town centre. Armed with bags and litter pickers kindly brought by Anwen, they set off to fill their bags. It wasn't long until Jacqui found our first pick of some cans lurking on the pavement!

With a wandering loop around the streets, we talked about what tasks we will be looking to do in future as we filled up the bags.

Sam and Sion joined us for the last leg after their run and helped us fill the bags!

With plenty of rubbish collected between us, (including several items of clothing?!) we tied up the bags and decided to warm up in Siren bar and continue our chat about what we'll do next!

You'll find us on 8th Feb at Prospect parkrun, sign up here! https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/prospect-parkrun-6bbe246e-46ff-4cf9-9632-437f0736ccb8

The team assembled on site, with a small group having walked together and everyone else making their own way.

We were met by Jon who showed us the stacks of bulbs for planting and instructed us to fill the areas with as many bulbs as possible and then with any left put them in the flowerbeds in the playground.

Everyone armed themselves with tools and bulbs and got to work making a whole lot of holes and bedding the bulbs in!

Although all our work was hidden below ground we hope we will be able to see the fruits of our labour in the spring!

10 Goodgymers made their way to the Maidenhead community allotment to help with numerous tasks including digging out and moving an apple tree and replanting a plum tree in its place

Firstly we welcomed the wonderful Reading Goodgym members who straight away got dug in and did a grape job of emptying the raised beds of soil ready for a new glass house to be installed in its place

A smaller but still perfectly formed group of t(h)ree started by digging out the apple tree and replanting it in the fruit triangle- they then dug a hole big enough to plant the plum tree. I appleause them for their hard (apple) core work

Once the fruit trees had been relocated everyone peeled over to the fruit triangle to start to remove brambles and nettles.

Satisfied with our nights work we made our way home. Until next time

Thursday 6:15pm is GoodGym Windsor Night! 👑🏃‍♂️🏃‍♂️

Tonight we were helping Age Concern at The Spencer Denney Centre to do a second coat to finish brightening up their entrance hall.

This was a community mission so Mandy and Bekah met at the The Binoy for a social run to the task while Chris, Jenni and Jen met us there.

We were met by task owner Sharon who showed us where all the paints etc were.

We put on some dance music and the battle commenced. We started by laying down the dust sheets, finding our favourited brush/roller and painting away. Then it was time to attack the blue paint patches showing through that we had missed on the first coat so we worked on those first then got the rest covered. As it’s brick it was trickier to get good coverage but we were tactical and using different game with brush sizes. We did get a bit splatted in place we don’t quite know how 🤣

As time was getting on (obviously painting is fun as the time just flys) Jen started the washing down (soon joined by Jenni) of the paint trays and we took up the sheets so we could check our work. Seemed we had painted ourselves pretty well 😬🤣

Afterwards there was some basketball shooting practise on offer in the nearby park then time for home to get a wash!

Thank you all as always Windsor GGs 👑 ♥️👏🏻

What an amazing turnout for this evening's session to help at Wessex Primary School, particularly considering we didn't meet in our usual start location. Just when I thought I knew how many we were, more would arrive! Maybe we could call ourselves the Countless of Wessex?

A very warm welcome to Helen, Rachel, Jennie and Alison, who joined us from the school community. It was also great to meet Sion and Sam, who Jenni invited from Reading to find out all about this weird and wonderful thing called GoodGym. We hope you can launch in your area soon - we'll definitely come and visit when you do!

A great big cheer for Taskforce member Louise, who organised our task for this evening and recruited many of our newbies from the school community. Top marks and a gold star for you!

Many thanks also to Mr Beaven and Mrs Pope, who welcomed us to the school, treated us to some jelly babies and stuck around until the end. We talked about a return visit later in the year to help with pond area...can't wait!

During the first part of the session lots of us went for a run or walk around Cox Green. The walkers did a scenic 2km (we passed not one but two Co-ops!) loop, and the lucky runners did similar but with a few extra back and forths to give the walkers time to catch up. This helped us to arrive at the task all warmed up and ready for action.

Lou did a great job of rapidly dishing out tasks to eager GoodGymers, and soon enough everyone was busy. Jennie, Alison, Georgeta, Rachel, Gillian and Helen bravely tackled brambles in a nature area, Adam, Clara, Jenni and Chris bravely tackled brambles next to a fence and Angela and Sara made speedy work of sawing down an overgrown shrub.

Everyone else focused on an area in the middle, where jobs included emptying a raised bed of plants (behaving like locusts), sanding a fence and bench, and painting the fence. An intriguing mix of small toys was also uncovered in the process.

Many hands made the to do list disappear fast. Lou has already received a big thank you from Mrs Corbett, who teaches in the area where we were working. She plans to take the children out first thing to admire our work.

So why the reference to smarty pants? Are we calling Lou a smarty pants because she organised such a bumper evening? Or is Jenni a smarty pants for bringing her Reading homies? Maybe we're all smarty pants for going back to school? Or should that be smarty 'paints' because of the awesome job the painters did blitzing the fence?

Well all of these would be excellent guesses, and quite true, but no. The title pun celebrates the GoodGymer who got paint on her trousers and didn't want to get it on the seats in my car, so had the bright idea to remove her trousers. I couldn't park right outside her house, so (looking quite a lot like an Olympic track star) she did a sprint finish down the road in her pants. What a memorable evening!