We had a bit of an unusual session this week, stretching our creative muscles rather than our physical ones. I think this was very much appreciated in the sudden cold snap - great numbers tonight!

Dave and Sinéad kept to Gym in GoodGym for us, with a couple of laps of the churchyard before joining us in the community centre to get creating.

We had beautiful table pieces, wreaths, orange peel tree hangings, hand-decorated garlands and some very intricate and mathematical giant baubles. Wilson showed true determination, and with the help of Maxine and baby Margaux completed their challenge! Katie and Vicki were another dream team, producing another masterpiece.

Special thanks to Judy for her creativity, resources and epic foraging skills for providing us with such a lovely task this evening. It was truly wonderful!

We ventured out of the city this evening, with a slightly shifty-looking rendezvous in Sainsbury's car park. Walking and running groups made their way uphill to St Andrew's Church, where we met up with Chris, the church's volunteer gardener.

An impressive array of tools made their way from Chris' car to the compost area, where we set to work loading the contents of a make-shift compost heap into bags. This will allow Chris to build a functioning container for the compost, keeping things much tidier.

In her enthusiam, Judy somehow managed to upturn a whole shovel-full of compost over Ness, who in turn nearly took David's head off with a pitchfork. I wonder if I might need to work on my risk assessments! Wilson unearthed a 10ft python* whilst digging, which Ness kindly and carefully moved to a safe new home.

We certainly worked up an appetite, but luckily Val provided some tasty brownie bites to fuel our run back.

*it was a slow worm

Well done to mini GGer, Jack, for seeking out the interesting and unusual finds at Tipner shoreline! These included large pieces of rope, a flip-flop and 2 different-sized wheels.

With Laura, Katie and I to help pick up the smaller bits (including, of course, a sock!) we made a visible difference to the beach in just 45 minutes. Four heavy sacks of litter collected, and less litter to return to the sea on the next high tide.

Today we welcomed Elvis to his first session, give him a cheer! He got stuck into the big cut back and had razor sharp eyesight for spotting rubbish!

Dave was double good deeding, starting with us and the heading off to junior parkrun. Judy is also double deeding today with a run sandwiched in between. Top GoodGyming!

Favourite finds today were a rocking swan 🦢, corkscrew and mini football ⚽

Good work by all!

But not quite yet.... we were very lucky with the weather - warm and only a few drops of rain. Judy brought plants from home to put in our Friends of Victoria Park planter - they are hardy winter plants, taking the place of the summer flowers as they gradually die off. Today we were two groups, one digging up plants for re-planting over by the Civic Office and the other group doing the weeding and re-planting. Once finished, we went back to the Hub to enjoy a hot drink with some very tasty biscuits.