On a sunny , but chilly morning, 6 Goodgymmers helped out at Ockwells Junior Park Run. Gillian, Tessa and Amanda were marshalling and dotted around the course, James and Sheila were barcode scanning and timekeeping respectively, and Amy was Run-directing the whole show. We directed, encouraged, cheered and congratulated an impressive 118 youngsters around the course. What a lovely way to spend a Sunday morning!

This evening's group run took us about 2km up the hill to All Saints C of E Junior School, where it turned out we had just 20 minutes to blitz a gardening task.

No problem! When a dozen GoodGymers are fenced into a small triangle of land and Nicola is armed with a children's spade, we can do quite a lot of scarifying, weeding and generally flinging bits of turf around.

This was exactly what was needed to prepare the ground for master re-soiler Angela, who arrived just in time to spread some fresh compost around.

We then bombed the area with seeds and we hope nature will do the rest to turn this patch into a lovely wildflower haven for pollinators.

After what was possibly the speediest bit of gardening we've ever done, we headed off to celebrate Scarlett's 50th good deed with some of Gillian's gorgeous ginger cake. Scarlett started GoodGyming in July 2023, so has done really well, notching up more than 1 good deed a week. Congratulations Scarlett - here's to the next 50!

Last night, 10 Goodgymers met at the Community Centre for a pre-match pep talk before heading off to tackle tasks awaiting us at Holyport FC.

Once there, we split into two teams, armed ourselves with shovels and paintbrushes (not at the same time, although I’d like to see what that task would be) and the game began!

Team Shingle was well practiced at making pothills out of mountains from our previous matches here. They managed to get rid of two piles of shingle by hiding them in potholes along the access road to the pitches, before the final whistle was blown.

Meanwhile, it was a total eclipse of the fence as Team Painters covered a lot of ground (and fences), but finally won the day when the paint went in off the woodwork to seal the victory with a dazzling display of beautiful brushwork.

There was no need to go into overtime, even though we’d probably have like to - by the end of the night, the match was won by both teams. Another three points to Goodgym, which we were all over the moon about!