Let's get this litter Clewer-ed up!

This Sunday lunch-time seven runners headed to the Pirate Park and Clewer Memorial Rec to do some litter picking in the park and some weeding around the Clewer war memorial. The band of GoodGymers were joining a community crew led by Councillers Helen Price, Amy Tisi, and Windsor resident Tracey Carter, who aims to make family friendly litter picks in Windsor a monthly activity.

The GoodGym group hadn't quite sailed the seven seas to get there, but we did have Sara, Pam and Gauri representing Slough, Adele representing Windsor, and Amy, Matt and Anna from Maidenhead. Extra kudos to Anna for running a swashbuckling 18km in her quest - we are pretty sure that's a record for the distance covered en route to a community mission. Three cheers and a yo ho ho for Anna!

Today's treasure was not doubloons, but litter collected from around the park. Cllr Helen Price gave us a safety briefing specifically highlighting the need to avoid any sharps, and then she, Tracey and her team, and Adele and Matt set off, brandishing litter pickers like cutlasses and carrying bin bags to collect their booty. Anna also joined this treasure-hunting gang when she arrived.

At first glance there didn't appear to be a huge amount of litter in the park, but Adele filled a bin bag quicker than you can say 'pieces of eight' and it was amazing how many cigarette butts, bottles, cans and small pieces of plastic packaging were hauled in once we found our sea legs.

Meanwhile Sara, Gauri and Pam joined Cllr Amy Tisi to battle the bind weed and brambles around the Clewer War Memorial - a task that felt particularly timely as we reflect on 75 years since the end of the Second World War. These three GoodGym Slough hearties now have an incredible 225 Good deeds between them, so with all hands hoay its no surprise that these old salts made great progress.

After an hour it was time to heave to, but there is more work to be done. In particular the hedges lining the path have sadly been under seige from box caterpillar and need to be removed, so we may be back to help with that.

On our first community mission in this area, it was great for Area Activator Amy to meet the Councillors and Tracey and we all agreed there is scope to do more together. Our next task at the Pirate Park is painting the new community space behind Woody's Cafe, which is a big job that we will do over a number of community missions. Better brush up on our pirate slang....