These boots are made for walking...

GoodGym is very lucky. Lucky in the sense that anyone can come to one of our sessions and for an hour and a half feel involved, feel part of a group, do something good for someone else and get in some exercise.

It's mental health awareness week and once again we kick start our week with our usual Monday meet up, run/walk, talk and task. There are times even I lose my mojo and don't feel like leaving the house on a Monday night, however, as soon as I am in the car, I'm usually raring to go because I know I will have a lovely chat with someone, share some news with others or just enjoy the outdoors.

Our task tonight was a litter pick at Wexham Park Hospital, with our meeting point being Shaggy Calf Lane and a nice 1.5km walk to the task location. We had 3 of us helping tonight, with Devanji joining us on her second session (welcome back). A nice evening stroll was what the mind needed tonight.

On arrival at the hospital, we stayed together and rummaged around the bushes to see what we could find. Our oldest find was a packet of KP crisps with a best before date of 2016! Our most expensive find was a mobile phone, with the rest being the usual of beer cans, soft drink cans, food wrappers, cigarette butts and a pair of walking boots - definitely made for walking!

Within 45 minutes the 3 of us had collected 4 bags of rubbish. Litter picking is actually very therapeutic! Give it a go some time...we could be partners in grime!

Ending this week's report with some facts about mental health:

• 1 in 6 people, or approximately 45.8 million adults, report experiencing symptoms for common mental health problems, like anxiety and depression, in any given week in England;

• Nearly half (43.4%) of adults (24.5 million in England) think that they have had a diagnosable mental health condition at some point in their life;

• 61% of adults with mental health conditions don’t access treatment;

• 98% of people agree that mentally ill people experience stigma and discrimination;

• 25% of people in England, approximately 14.1 million adults, say they feel lonely at least some of the time;

• Three-quarters of registered suicide deaths in the UK in 2020 were for men;

• 1.4 million over-65s in the UK today are lonely;

• The median age of onset for anxiety disorders is 11 years;

• 74% of UK adults have felt so stressed at some point over the last year they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope;

Next week we will be at the allotments