Paint no stopping GoodGym Windsor and Maidenhead!

This evening we headed to Kiddies Cabin for some fence painting. Kudos to Sheila, Anita and Rachel, who started the task on a community mission this morning and were keen to come back for more. Also a big warm welcome to Julia for her first session with us and welcome back to Fiona!

Our run/walk was 2-3km, depending on whether you fancied a lap of sunny Oaken Grove Park or not, and there were a couple of nice inclines to help us work up a sweat. Thanks to Sheila for walk leading and to Georgeta for back marking the runners.

Our task owner Leigh had been super organised and left out everything we needed, so we were able to get stuck in on arrival. In about 50 minutes we covered 10 fence panels with the sludgey brown paint, as well as Rhi's legs, the odd shoe, a bird house and a smattering of freckles on my forehead. We also learned that Julia and Rachel are much better at counting than I am.

Just when we thought the fun was nearly over, Anita revealed her reason for meeting us at the task rather than joining the walk or run. In an extended celebration of her 50 good deeds with GoodGym, Anita had brought with her a wonderful feast including an utterly scrumptious home-made chicken biriyani, prosecco and chocolate. The biriyani in particular was heavenly. Thank you so much for spoiling us Anita and congratulations again on your 50 good deeds.

We will no doubt be returning for more painting at Kiddies Cabin in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on the listings and hope to see you soon.

Meet and Retreat

The weather was miserable, but faces were smiling as we met and welcomed everyone at the Coop in North Maidenhead. Our warm up walk (0.75km - thanks Sheila for leading the four walkers) and run (1.5km - thanks Jess and Sophie for back-marking the five runners) brought us all together again at Sandringham Road - a circular street en route to the task that was just crying out to be used as a track.

Here we paired up runners and walkers and sent them off in opposite directions round the loop. When they met, they greeted each other with squats and then turned around and 'retreated' back the way they had come. The walkers kept a consistent pace, so the challenge was for the runners to up their pace on the retreat and get back before the walkers. We completed the exercise twice and the runners did really well to beat their walking partners both times. Maybe next time we can squeeze in a third round?

Holyport by name, Pot-holey by nature...

Then hi ho, hi ho, it was off to work we went. Our task for the evening was shifting shingle for a community football club, who are Holyport by name, but pot-holey by nature. Well their access road was pot-holey anyway. Now it's only half pot-holey!

With help from our lovely task owners Richard and Jason, and by the light of their superior floodlights, we worked as a team to shift 35 heavy wheelbarrow-fulls of shingle along the lane and into the puddly holes. As we worked the rain poured down, but spirits were high and the work kept us nice and warm. Whether breaking up the shingle with a pick axe, shovelling and forking it into the wheelbarrows, running it down the lane, or tipping it out, we got an excellent workout. This soggy work was accompanied by cheerful chatter and the singing of various songs about the number 5. It was very satisfying to hear the rhythmic chip and scrape of tools on stone, and to see a big dent appearing in the shingle pile

Eat and Retreat

We were making such satisfying progress that it was hard to stop, but Richard's cookies and Anita's wonderful home-made sweets gave us a good reason to call it a day. We munched happily as we headed for home. We hope to return again soon.

This evening's group run took us to St Luke's Church in Maidenhead, where we tidied up around gravestones and celebrated a milestone - Georgeta's 50th good deed!

Most of the evening was spent looking forward to celebratory cake. While we were thinking about the cake, we also enjoyed doing lots of other things:

• The runners had a chatty 3km run to the task - thanks to Juli for knowing the way and Jess for back-marking
• The walkers covered 1.5km - thanks Sheila for walk-leading
• We found it quite exciting and a bit spooky being in a dark cemetery. Particularly since the vicar had warned us to Luke out for dead bodies...
• We trimmed the lower branches of 3 or 4 trees, shifted some logs, cut back brambles, cleared up litter and swept up lots of leaves.
• Steve, Jess, Fiona and a hand fork had a fight with a root and lost
• Diya and Anita had a fight with a holly branch and won
• Kanika and Nicola felt watched by the resident falcons (the ones responsible for the aforementioned dead bodies!) whilst litter picking the perimeter
• We pondered whether the church had a steeple or a spire or both. Thanks to Steve for post-session research confirming that St Luke's has a spire. Thanks also to Kanika for sharing that a steeple is the whole tower of a church and the tapered top bit is the spire. I was starting to feel confused so did some of my own research and learned that the father and the nephew of the architect of the spire at St Luke's both had the initials G.G....
• Kanika's research also revealed that a spire can be the young shoot of a plant. St Luke's definitely had those! It was lovely to see these signs of Spring pushing up through the ground. The snowdrops were particuarly pretty.
  

Finally it was time for cake and celebrations. Thanks to Sheila for her beautiful and scrumptious chocolate cake, and to Anita for amazing homemade namak para savoury snacks and fabulous brownies. And thanks to Georgeta for giving us a reason to celebrate by doing 50 good deeds. Well actually it's 51 now...her good deeds are piling up so steeple-y we can barely keep track!

Georgeta is a regular group runner, and also one of the most active mission runners in our area. Whether she's tackling a hedge, designing a bed for potatoes, or fishing a tree stump out of a stream whilst balancing on a few twigs, Georgeta always faces the task with good humour and impressive strength and determination.

Her approach to fitness is similar - not only does she walk, run and cycle, but she has been known to run in wellies and to cycle gloveless in freezing weather and to still reach her destination smiling. She also makes a heavenly carrot cake and is a skilled seamstress. You can admire her zig zag stitches on our GoodGym flag next time it has an outing.

Georgeta, congratulations on the huge amount you have done to help in our community over the last year. You're an in-spire-ation!

Inspired by the January Challenge, lots of GoodGymers were looking for opportunities to go the extra mile and pick up a good deed before the month finished. Sadly, we know there is also no shortage of litter out there begging to be cleared up.

So with only a few days of January left, we decided to squeeze in one more community mission - a litter pick for GoodGymers to do in their own time and in a place of their choosing.

We listed a similar session last year during Lockdown, and at the time the rules meant we couldn't meet up in groups, so we called that session 'Pick 'n' Don't Mix'. By contrast, this year we encouraged people to team up and work together and it felt really sweet to be able to use the far better title 'Pick 'n' Mix'. After all, GoodGym for us is not just about getting fit and doing good, it's also about connecting with others and being sociable.

Over the last few days it has been great to see the WhatsApp buzzing with suggestions of places and times to team up, pictures of full sacks of litter, and above all amazing team spirit.

Gemma got the party started by joining other Cox Green residents litter picking on Sunday morning. Diya and Kanika then picked up the baton, reporting back on Sunday afternoon. Sheila, Anita, Juli and Fiona did a windy but fruitful marathon session along the Braywick Road on Monday morning, and Georgeta collected two huge bags on Shoppenhangers Road during her Monday lunch break. On Monday afternoon Amanda and I found we have uncannily similar 'litter picking selfie faces', while Jess and Rich showed great stamina heading out in the dark and cold on Monday evening. It was also great to see we inspired Becky from Sheffield to get out litter picking - well done Becky!

Great work team! Think we might have earned some real Pick 'n' Mix now?