This evening's task was was a first for us - Himalayan Balsam bashing at Ockwells!

Himalayan Balsam is an invasive species, which threatens native biodiversity if allowed to spread, so task owner Ranger Tom asked for our help to stop it from going to seed and smothering the native flora mix at beautiful Ockwells.

Tom told me we would be going to what3words location ///police.hurt.dozen, which sounded a bit ominous. Add to that the planned 'bashing', and promised attacks from stinging insects and pollen and I worried we were in for a violent and painful evening.

The reality couldn't have been more of a contrast. We had a lovely peaceful walk through the park; ///police.hurt.dozen turned out to be a pretty, sun-kissed spot, not far from a stream and surrounded by trees and birdsong; most of the insects we met were gorgeous blue dragonflies, and we didn't even need to bash anything: the roots of the offending plants were very happy to come up with no more than a gentle tug.

We quickly amassed huge piles of pulled up plants, creating our very own Himalayan (Balsam) mountain range!

Bar the odd nettle sting (especially the one on Anne-Laure's face, which led her to declare that she was growing a face on her face!), it was the perfect evening to refresh and soothe body and mind.

Can't wait for more of the same at Battlemead Common at next Wednesday's Group Run/Walk!

10 Goodgymmers met at the Community Centre for tonight’s chair mending task.

We welcomed first timer Mark to the group by introducing ourselves and naming a film starting with the first letter of our name.

The group then headed into the park for 3 rounds of meet and retreat. Runners set off clockwise and the walkers anticlockwise, when they met they did a different exercise each time (jumping jacks, squats and lunges) and then retreated back the way they came. When they met again they confused themselves and went the opposite way to the last time and repeated!

Once all 3 rounds were completed the team headed back into the community centre to tackle the task. There have been multiple chair mending tasks this year but for Adam, Anne-Laure and Mark it was their first time and so Jack, our chairperson for the night, gave a demonstration and the team set to work.

Mark, Gillian, Rachel, Adam and Anne-Laure tackled fixing the screws onto the seats, whilst Scarlett, Matthew, Amy and Jess worked on attaching the seats to the bases. Jack and Amy then caused confusion on which way to turn the screwdriver – clockwise or anticlockwise? And was it a different direction depending on how you were looking at it??! I’m not sure this ever got resolved!

Lots of screwing, poking, pushing and pulling later the team had fixed 10 chairs, saving the community centre another whopping £2250 on purchasing new ones!

Just in case we weren’t dizzy enough by this point we then played a round of musical chairs where the chairless person came up with a chair based exercise for everyone to complete. Of course we completed the rounds both clockwise and anticlockwise and were serenaded with a series of ‘chair’ based songs such as ‘I’ll be chair for you’ , ‘Reach out (I'll be Chair)' and of course music from Cher herself!

Thanks to everyone who joined in our group run yesterday evening to help Nature's Haven, and a very warm welcome to newcomer Caroline. Big thanks to Tony for this evening;s report:

A small Windsor and Maidenhead council grant to the Nature's Haven and the Community Centre on Marlow Road is being used to plant a dwarf orchard and enhance the front of the building.

Before work got underway to clear the area for planting the Good Gym crew were able to start the evening with some fiitness first. With so many Good Gymers we used the Zebra crossing to access the Cresent, this resulted in an instant Google map worthy traffic jam, red of course.

With Amy leading from the other side of the road there was much leg waving, arm flinging, and some runs up the hill, dim street lighting ensured that personal best times were won by not necessarily getting to the top.

Then the digging and cutting started most people got bushed by the bushes, and stuck in the ivy, unfortunately the ‘wild boar rent a digging app’ was down so we had to do all the work not just MBWA. Eventually the triffids size stumps were overcome to leave vast creators of good planting soil.

Soon it was time to enjoy some fire pit moments with hot drinks and giant marshmallows so big that they caught fire really easily. Skill and pan ash was needed to stop them being charcoaled.

We understand that the Community Centre are currently looking for a press and some barrels...

MBWA (Management by Walking About )

Happy bird-day to us! This week marks 4 years since we launched GoodGym in Windsor and Maidenhead and it was brilliant to see a record number of GoodGym chicks and chaps at our celebratory group run/party. This evening's brood included 25 of us, the biggest number since launch night back in 2020.

Our evening was a fun mix of team games and an eggcellent task: filling knitted chicks and bunnies with chocolate eggs for Alexander Devine Children's Hospice Services' Easter fundraising campaign. As one GoodGymer from team 'Diya's Darlings' put it, we helped with 'reverse births for our four birthdays'!

A warm welcome to Didem and Amy, who were joining us for the first time. I warned them at the start that this 'group run' might not be 100% representative of our typical Wednesday evening, but maybe it was the perfect introduction to the weird and wonderful stuff we get up to?

There was loads of laughter, silliness and cheering, we did some walking and running round the park, we used litter pickers and hoops, hi vis and gardening gloves (in our relay game) and there was a lot of chocolate (although this time we didn't eat it as was part of the task). With many hands we blitzed the task super quick and made a difference for a local charity. There was also quite a lot of fancy dress and a healthy dose of competitive spirit.

Just a 'normal' GoodGym session then!

Something we don't normally do at GoodGym is have epic games of GoodGym themed Pictionary or 'Guess the GoodGym beneficiary' quizzes, which we did enjoy last night. However these games gave us plenty of opportunity to share stories about what we've been doing for the last 4 years, so hopefully it was a nice overview for newcomers as well as an opportunity for everyone else to reminisce.

The chick stuffing task was a cracking task, partly thanks to task owner Yazmin being so organised and bringing everything to the community centre for us, and partly because the chicks and bunnies were SO CUTE! Huge kudos to the army of skilled crafters, including a team of GoodGymers, who made these little characters.

Now you shouldn't count your chickens, but we couldn't play 'guess the number of chicks' without a count, so Yazmin and I risked it. The grand total was 356, which is worth a fantastic £1068 to the charity.

At the end of the evening I tallied up all the points from the various games and the final scoreboard read:

2 Awesome for this 30 points (although I regret not awarding Jess points for her amazing Victorian child meets washer woman fancy dress, so maybe that number should have been higher)

The Mighty Ducks 40 points

Diya's Darlings 49 points

The Regal Bunnies 58 points and the win! This team really shone in the Pictionary and pun rounds.

Having said that, I really think everyone who came along this evening (and who has contributed to our last four years) is a winner. We've now helped over 90 charities and community groups, venues and projects in our local area. We've done 5,375 good deeds in our local area, including 625 visits to isolated older people.

Winner, winner, chicken winner!

Mrs J had a good time with her family the previous week. We talked about siblings relationship and Kew Gardens. We chatted about the orchids! She taught me the name of some of the flowers. We can't wait for spring to come!