May Anytime Anywhere Litter Pick

A big well done to everyone who got involved in our May Anytime Anywhere litter pick.

This is one of those wonderfully simple GoodGym tasks that anyone can do, wherever they happen to be. A short walk, a pair of gloves, a bag, a litter picker if you have one — and suddenly your local patch is a little bit cleaner.

Across the month we had GoodGymers out and about doing their bit in different places, including Barnet and beyond.

Paul Browning was out in Kidbrooke, south east London, alongside the Quaggy, where he filled three battered “bags for life” from either side of the river. He also pulled out and destroyed around 200 Himalayan balsam plants, which are highly invasive and damaging to river banks — a brilliant bit of extra environmental care while he was there.

Peter Van Tongeren reported his usual combination of “little litter picks out and about” along with some obstacle removal, including heavy canisters.

Sally and Paul also managed to avoid the Champions League final by doing a litter pick — and even found a quiet wisteria-covered pub for a cocktail afterwards, which sounds like excellent reward-based volunteering!

It was great to see people joining in, whether individually, in pairs, or as part of a walk, run or cycle. These small acts really do add up. As the weather gets hotter, more people are outside, bins fill up more quickly, and rubbish can easily spill out or be pulled around by animals. That makes these local litter picks even more valuable.

Thank you to everyone who signed up and took part in May: Harvey, Paul B, Matthew, Paul, Sally, Peter, Jacqui, Richard and Mel.

The June Anytime Anywhere litter pick is already listed, so please sign up if you can. It’s a flexible, useful and very visible way to help look after the places we live, walk, run and enjoy.

Well done everyone — small actions, big difference.

parkrun (the junior version or otherwise) is most certainly not a race, but occasionally you do have to doff your cap to one of our Sunday morning runners who clearly had more than one weetabix for breakfast this morning. Our first finisher, on a first time visit from his usual course at Leyton, crossed the line in an awe inspiring 6:56, more than a minute clear of his closest "pursuer" - chapeau m'sieur, as they say in bike racing. The maths is easy to work out his per km splits!!

Thanks as ever to our very helpful GoodGym volunteers who arrived at the big tree this morning and made sure everything ran smoothly - Hilary, John and Harvey were deployed as Course Marshals at key spots around the course, whilst Sooz and Nick kept it all largely under control at the start/finish line by barcode scanning, marshalling, encouraging and run directing, and all of our 40 finishers, including 1 absolute first timer, and 2 who received their half-marathon wristbands for each having completed 11 runs, crossed the line smiling (if a little red faced and out of breath), although a few needed to be guided towards the finish funnel...

More of the same under the big tree next week (super speedy times not guaranteed...) - join us if you can!