Ashley and Pete joined David once again at the church. This time for a spot of tree felling and boarder clearing. Pete set about clearing the boarder while Ashley tackled sawing down a dead part of a tree. After Ashley got tired of sawing (about 5 minutes), Pete stepped in to finish the Job, nice one. The boarder was cleared and everyone enjoyed some homemade blueberry muffins - thanks David!

Ashley and Pete were joined by Naomi for our semi regular tidy up of the Derby Womens Centre garden. Usually it takes Ashley and Pete 1 hour to complete this task but since there were 3 of us it took 50 minutes. A fun task with a great result.

Mandy, Grant, Lewis and Pete returned for another session at St Matthew’s church. The mission was to bring a little TLC to the Garden of Rest. We cleaned the commemorative slates around the boarder - these being local people who had passed away in the 1800’s. We also cleaned the more recent stones in the central area. We also checked on the boarders we had created on a previous mission - the local schoolchildren have started to plant flowers and bushes, and the area is starting to come a live. Great to catch up on a lovely evening, and as ever thanks to David for the tea and biscuits.

Ashley, Pete, Mandy and Rachel met at the usual Tuesday night start point for a litter picking session with a difference. As well as the usual waterproof jackets, litter pickers and bin bags, the group were all carrying backpacks which were filled to the brim with donations for The Hope Centre foodbank. Especially Ashley's who had some bumper packs of tins with him.

As part of a national initiative by GoodGym, this session had been put in the calendar to bump up supplies following a busy Easter at the foodbank.

The group headed off to litter pick along the route to the foodbank, where Pete regularly helps out at as a volunteer. Along the way the group saw building work coming along for the city's new performance venue and an exciting outdoor social space for events and live music, 'Electric Daisy'. Donations were gratefully received and the group headed on to continue litter picking in a loop of a route around the city centre. Slightly less competition between our litter picking King and Queen, Ashley and Mandy, than usual as Ashley's focus was on his weighty bag of donations and not beating Mandy to the most litter to be picked/most unusual item found.

The group had a local resident comment on how bad the litter down their street can be, particularly after Friday and Saturday night and so will look at adding in this route to litter picking sessions in the future.

If you are able to make a donation to the foodbank, check out the items they need the most and see details of where and when to drop them off here.

Thanks to everyone for helping out this evening, Mandy had already been volunteering during the day so extra GoodGym points for her.