It was fab to welcome back Tracey for our task this evening, after a break away from GoodGym. We made our way to St Faith's, and got straight to work with litter picking, lopping and sweeping.

Tracey and The Katies took on litter picking, Our team and managed to put together the best part of a full outfit with their finds - pants, trousers, a sock and a glove, as well as coat hanger to display them all!

Team Dave were in lopping duty, tidying up the brambles and budlia round the front of the church. Dave spent as much time in the bag of cuttings as he did out of it.

Jim helped David from the church with clearing the side path. They made such a difference I didn't recognise the place when I walked back through at the end of the task.

There was quite a lot of Double Trouble tonight, especially when the we included the church volunteers too! Two Katies, two Jens and in impressive three Davids. We very much enjoyed some tea, squash and biscuits before heading back to FCC. And we also learned plenty about looking after snakes 🐍 - fortunately we didn't come across any in the church yard.

After meeting at FCC and the introduction of the Litter Pick Bingo cards, we split into two teams to head to Kingston Rec. Sammy, Jim and mini-GGer Betsy made up our running group, whilst the rest of the squad walked a slightly sneaky back route.

Just as we were starting our picking challenge, seven-year old Harry and his dad came over and were very excited to join in. Along with their two dogs, they came in a very commendable joint second place with Sammy. Jim found an impressive stash of onions for everyone to secure their "vegetable" - it would have been disappointing to do a pick at Kingston Rec and not find one. After a miraculous find of a chilli pepper in a bush, Betsy and Wilson were the first to call BINGO! The competition was fierce throughout, and there was much debate as to whether something counted as a "suspicious liquid", or if something was large enough to reach "Big Ticket Item" status. Honourable mentions to everyone who took part, as even the lowest score was an impressive 6/8.

First of all, it was great to meet James this evening, joining us for his very first session - welcome to GoodGym!

We took a brief detour on our way to PARCS to find one of the Portsmouth Centenary Lions at Fratton Park, then tested a new route to get to our task.

Sammy and David took on some hedge trimming, weed scraping and litter picking duties in the front garden. Team work made the dream work, with the pair developing an interesting large broom / small dustpan technique to sweep up the cuttings at the end of the task.

James, Dave and I visited the back garden, which had become an absolute jungle of brambles. James seemed to very much enjoyed using the loppers, and also showed impressive dexterity to both chop and lift the brambles in one movement. We cleared a huge spaces, which is now on its way to being ready for service users at PARCS to tend to.

On our way home, we collected two more Lions, making a set of three ahead of the England match. Fingers crossed for a good result!