You've heard of the three wise men, bearing gifts, but this morning saw the three wise women travelling across Luton following a star... ok following a SatNav , but it was close. Gill, Rebecca and Karen met at Sundon Park Baptist Chuirch, and while they were not bearing gifts, they soon got busy packing up the gifts of food that have been donated by local people and companies. The Breakfast Boxes were soon filled with lots of good things to help support families who will need a top up over the winter break from school. So while there was no gold, frankincense or myrhh, the boxes were filled with fruit, bread, eggs, milk, oats, cereal, honey, tea bags, and a whole lot more, before being distributed to the families who visited the church to collect them.

We enjoyed the task, and it was lovely to catch up with other regular volunteers from the church including 4 teenagers who give up their time every holiday to support this project.

We teamed up with ABCD Luton and the kids at the youth club to tackle the nettles and overgrown weeds where the playground structures used to be.

Amazing effort from our GoodGym trio of Kelvin, Karen and Rebecca who made quick work of what was a large task, together with Kevin and Phyl from ABCD Luton and the local kids who also got stuck in and attacked the weeds!

The site is now clear for potential funders to see and hopefully they'll get the funding needed to build a new playground. 🤞

Like almost all GoodGym missions, we started by pulling up the ragwort weeds. Then we cut any small saplings over an area at the top of People’s park. Finally, cutting the overhanging branches from trees above.

Once the prep work was done the trimmers cut the grass as we raked the debris. The seeds gathered at the mission last Saturday arrived in a van and were strewn on the newly cleared and cut areas.

This is a long-term project so we won’t see the results soon, but hopefully next year the wildflower seeds will have transformed the area!

Ten GoodGymmers got together tonight, including Martin, Mark and Sam who joined us for their first GoodGym run, welcome!

We ran 3km and up one of Luton's steep hills, to reach Phyl and Kevin with our task on Vauxhall Way. Overgrown weeds all along the footpath needed pulling up to smarten up this stretch of road.

With ten of us going at it we made short work of the job, all clean and clear, many bags of green waste gathered, we returned back to our start point, via a short core blast workout in the park.

The six of us met up, and after a short period of confusion about the meeting point and an impromptu litter pick, we eventually found the main task site.

United with Trevor from the council and the volunteers from the Luton and Dunstable Conservation group and TCV we set to work, dragging the bits of tree and bush they were cutting back down off the hill into a pile by the road.

The work we did was part of an effort to boost the ecological value of the spot and integrate it with the rest of the common. The bramble cutting created a new access point to the Common and the brush clearing and tree pruning will ensure the species-rich grassland will get plenty of sunlight and continue to thrive.