‘ And wouldn't it be nice to live together In the kind of world where we belong?’

A special parkrun this morning, with the colours of Pride very much in evidence. Goodgymers helped the morning along from set-up, through marshalling to keeping time. After a gray mizzling start the sun popped his hat on and came out to play. A great morning!

This weeks group run took us on a relatively short run to Penrose Roots to Recovery where we met up with the task owner Pete sitting comfortably on a chair enjoying the early evening sunshine 🌞. This weeks task had the team chopping back nettles that had grown up behind the poly tunnel at the allotment. The team made relatively short work of cutting down the troublesome plant although I think there may have been 1 or 2 moments that reminded some of their childhood as they got the odd sting. Some of the nettles were put into a vat of water to be left to break down into liquid fertiliser. After a couple of group photos 📸 the group headed to the bandstand in Wardown Park to do a little workout with resistance bands. 💪 Then we headed back to town to finish the evening. Fantastic effort tonight by all, Thanks to David for leading the run and the workout. I look forward to seeing you all at next week's 🏃‍♂️ 🏃‍♀️

All seemed normal on this week's group run as we headed up the hill to the giant Welcome to Luton gravel sign on the hill by the motorway. 🛣️

But on arrival we found an unusual guest waiting for us. It was a member of the BBC Three Counties Radio team with the news that we have been nominated for the Three Counties People Awards! Our task was given a lovely boost as we were asked to record some audio about GoodGym, what we do and why we love it. In between planes roaring overhead we all got a chance to say a bit about ourselves and also wish BBC 3CR a happy 40th birthday, ready for the celebration in a few weeks.

All of that showbiz stuff aside we also managed to weed the gravel, sort the black and white pebbles back into their right places and get the sign looking great again and welcoming all the drivers and pilots on their approach to Luton!

The plan for the group run was to return to Holy Trinity Church to complete the Spring clean we started a couple of weeks ago. With the Dave on vacation, responsibility for leading the run was passed to Gill- but with a fairly direct route along the A6 it should be quite straightforward. With Gill on her bike she met up with Sam & Omar in the town centre and after a warm up led by Sam they were on the 3 of us were our way to the task. Part way through the run/ride a crazed ringing sound could be heard, getting closer and closer. As they tried to clear the path, the noise was added to by Gail's unmistakable laughter… and then there were 4. Before long the church was in sight along with another red tee shirt and another bike. Joe and Estherhad run and cycled to join us… and then there were 6. A good sized team to get the job done swiftly, or so we thought. However the church was in darkness, the door was locked and a quick phone call to the verger established that there had been a mix up and he wasn’t able to let us in. After some deliberation (i.e. standing around looking like the lost sheep from the parable 🐑 ) it was decided that, rather than abort our attempts at doing good, a spot of plogging was in order. But being unprepared was a problem. Targeting the Tesco local - Sam and Joe bought 3 pairs of Marigolds while Gill managed to blag some free bin bags from a member of staff. Marigold yellow with GoodGym red might not be the best colour combo, but with one glove each we were bobbing and weaving to pick up the litter on the route back towards the town centre. Plogging with a bicycle is not the easiest - but needs must and good team work meant we collected a fair amount of rubbish. Well done team.

Weeks of drought are not ideal for recently planted trees and Konni from the Luton Orchards Project has been looking after lots of newly planted fruit trees at various spots around town.

So, when we got a call from Konni about helping to water 70 trees in Wigmore Park's Covid memorial orchard we jumped at the chance to add this worthy task to our schedule.

We started in the town centre and welcomed Esther to her first ever session and had a warm-up. Then we began the 4.5km up-hill to the airport and then to on to the park where Konni waited for us with hose-pipe and watering cans at the ready.

On arrival we set up a watering relay system to make sure every tree got two cans of water, marking the trees with pegs to mark them as done.

We marked a couple of milestones at this session, it was our 200th group run, and Gill brought cupcakes to celebrate recently achieving 500 good deeds! We had a quick celebration with the cupcakes and some Luton apple juice provided by Konni before we bid her farewell and ran back off into the sunset!