It was a community mission of two halves - Sue joined Carol at the Baby Bank facility to aid with the continuing big clothes-sorting task. Meanwhile Sheila was helping at a Gifting event, where families who are struggling financially could come and choose Christmas gifts for their children. It was an amazing event, a collaboration between the Baby Bank, Abri and Achieving for Children. There were so many lovely new toys to choose from, parents could choose 3 or 4 items per child. The parents were so grateful that they would have something to give their children this Christmas - some got quite emotional. And we also gift-wrapped them if requested, while the parents had a coffee and a snack made by the community chef. A really joyful event that helped 65 families and 150 children.

Tony, Sue and Sheila braved the coldest morning of the season so far to go and help muck out the pond at Braywick Nature Reserve. After donning waders ( all except for Sue, whose neat little size 3 feet would have been swamped in the sizes available) and long gloves, we made our way down to the pond. We had to climb over the fence as the gate padlock was frozen, and break the ice on the pond, but Tony was straight into the water in the partially-drained pond. Together with Rangers Tom and Rosie, and members of the Parks Team, we set to work digging out sludge from the edge of the pond into buckets which were then emptied out on the edge of the area. Always being mindful of not digging into the pond liner. Tom and Tony got the pump going to lower the water level and reveal more lovely sludge. We all ended up covered in mud, but had a great time helping out, and after a hose-down back at base, made our way home for a warm-up Feeling like you've missed out? More mud-moving scheduled for next week https://www.goodgym.org/happenings/help-maintain-the-pond-in-the-braywick-nature-reserve-088520ce-95d4-4ffb-aec3-600e17c6253a

Thursday 6:15/ 6:30pm is GoodGym Windsor Night! 👑🏃‍♂️🏃🏻‍♀️

Tonight we were just off the Maidenhead Road in Windsor on a committed mission. The long pathway had got so overgrown that the access to the houses that were occupied by the elderly residents was proving difficult.

Getting there:- Jen and Didem walked from The Binoy. Bekah, Helen and Mandy ran from home. Sue and Adam met us there.

Sue and Adam made an amazing head start 💪🏻👏🏻alongside Helen by the time the other walkers/runners had arrived and Sue had luckily taken some before photos in the light 👏🏻📸 . They had chopped then filled a huge bag full of cuttings. The rest of us needed to catch up so we got our gloves on and chose a tool from Sue’s mobile shed 🤣 we had quite a long stretch to cover so we took an area and cut back what we could. Lots of spikey brambles, stinging nettles etc but we battled well.

We had a chat about our days/weeks while we worked and Bekah multi tasked as she was also the photographer 📸👏🏻

The sunset a dry evening was lovely but darkness was soon upon us and despite our torches we couldn’t continue as it was so dark along the passage and we were running out of bags.

We dragged the bags to the main road for the council to collect.

Fortunately (or unfortunately however you prefer to look at it 🤣) there was time to do a quick workout. Jen had a challenge to do squats today so the traffic passing by got a good view 🤣

Not forgetting the Windsor curtsy and bow before we partly walked together before going our separate ways home.

Thank you for coming. 👑🏃‍♂️🏃🏻🏃🏼‍♀️