We were back at YMCA this evening to tackle the garden with Ellie, Steph and Leszek seeing the wonders of the YMCA garden for the first time.

We arrived slightly early so fit in a little more in the time available. Leszek got to work quickly clearing the litter in the left hand corner whilst I focused on hacking back the big bushes / trees encroaching on the public highway.

Ellie did an excellent job giving the grass a short back and sides and Steph chopped and moved into bin bags all the branches needing taking away.

Sarah found many random items whilst clearing the best one of which was a phone!

The session went quickly with eight bags of rubbish accumulated before heading home. We look forward to returning next month 😊

Goodgym Southampton is one year old today!! 🎉🎂

To celebrate we went to city farm with an army of goodgymers ready and eager to help with whatever task Tom may have had in mind for us. We were pretty sure it was going to be more goat mountain shenanigans but were shocked when farm volunteer Danni mentioned that this evening we would be helping put all the animals to bed and meeting them all by means of celebration and thankyou.

We were thoroughly spoilt - getting to feed the sheep and goats, getting walked by the new pygmy boys, putting the chickens and ducks to bed and meeting all the reptiles from the blue tongued skink to the gecko and giant african land snail.

After our tour of the farm we were kindly given use of the community room to celebrate our birthday with cake and drinks kindly supplied by Energise Me and Ellie.

We were also delighted to see Paul and Simon back with us after last weeks litter pick and to welcome Aimee for her first goodgym task.

Its been an incredible year with 157 tasks(!!!). Heres to seeing what year two brings!

Before birthday celebrations could commence at the farm this evening we were back to work delivering the 10,000 leaflets alloted to us to deliver.

We had 8 super helpers this evening and it really did prove that 8 and not 3 is the magic leafleting number! We even held a guard of welcome honour for Leszek who found us.

we very quickly got through 200 leaflets with some time for frolics thrown in before heading back to the farm. Great job team!

Wow what an evening!

We had a gap in the diary this evening with no community organisation based tasks so decided to do our first litter pick.

Living directly behind an alley which is regularly frequented with litter that solo attempts make little difference to i was keen to get it sorted for a task.

We were joined this evening by two lovely newbies Simon and Paul who forgo both climbing and the pub to join us!

Its fair to say we were kept busy for the full hour. We had separate bags for recycling cans (which ellie is going to take to the air ambulance collection) general waste and glass.

We filled several very big bags and had a great time chatting along the way. A real noticeable difference has been made to the local community, well done team!

Today we were very pleased to help out at Toes in the Water. This was a community event organised by local river swimmers to raise money for Friends of Itchen Estuary who help to take care of the local river. The event helped to raise attention to the pollution problems facing our seas and rivers while raising much needed funds to protect them. We helped to get the boat club ready with decorations and assisted stall holders (who were donating their profits) to get set up. Some GoodGymers also got crafty making signs to raise away of the sewage problems in the river. We were hopefully to enjoy a swim but unfortunately it was not safe to do so due to recent sewage discharges. We made sure make up for this by filling up on tea and cake before dancing the day away to Southampton Ukulele Jam. That certainly helped hit our fitness goals for the day before helping to clear up!