Longlands Care Home in Blackbird Leys asked for our help to breathe new life into their gardens, to support the residents getting out and enjoying them this summer.

They have pleasant green spaces with mature trees and a patio courtyard garden. One of the things they would particularly like to establish is a vegetable patch, so that residents can start seeds off inside, move the plants into the garden later this spring, and then use the produce in the care home kitchen for meals for residents.

Our task this Wednesday was to get the garden borders and pots weeded ready for planting, the bits of litter and cigarette butts cleared, and the paving slabs pressure washed. It turns out that pressure washing is a new favourite task - very satisfying to see the dirt wash away!

Congratulations on your 100th Good Deed Venetia!

A huge pat on the back everyone: we made it through the winter! The clocks change this weekend and it'll be return of light evenings from next week.

Ovada are a non-profit gallery space with limited funding and a small staff team. Car park hire is a key source of income that enables them to run events, exhibitions of socially engaged work, and an education programme where they offer a number of subsidised and bursary places.

With only a small staff team it is hard to keep on top of maintenance, so they called in our GoodGym flash mob to get their car park area ship shape.

Bundled up against the spring showers we litter-picked, shifted rubbish out for collection, weeded, and pulled up nettles (achieving the first nettle stings of the year).

In the hour before the light faded we got the area looking a lot better and less nettley. Now we just need some dry weather for the mud situation to improve!

10 Goodgymers braved the rain for a return to the Thirsty Meeples board game cafe. Despite being quite a large group we managed to find three different games we could all play - Moniker (a mix of charades, one word descriptions, and mime), Fake Artist (the dubious drawing skills), and Deception (figuring out whodunnit). We discovered Colin the Caterpillar is surprisingly hard to draw, there are many ways to commit murder in parks and toilets, and not everyone has a very convincing poker face.

Thank you to everyone for joining these social sessions during the wintery months, any suggestions for more fair-weather options, let me know!

The brief: Plot a route around as many of the Oxford Monopoly board locations as you can in an hour.

The tasks: Take litterpickers and plog as you go, and see how many GoodGym posters you can put on display around the city.

The scoring system: 1 point for every monopoly board location you make it to, 1 point for every GoodGym Task related item you spot along the way, 5 points for every GoodGym poster you put up.

This game/task brought out some serious competitive streaks in our running and walking teams. Sneaky tactics were used, like dividing the group to reach more locations, sprinting to an extra monopoly board square with 3 minutes to go, and deploying the (ex) Lord Mayor as a GG Task related item. Fun and exercise was had, we raised awareness of GoodGym, picked up plenty of litter, and it was a quirky way to plot a walk/run route around town.

We have been teaming up with the Falcon boat club for river cleans for a few years now: a lovely partnership where we have fun, do good for the environment and learn new skills.

Unfortunately, after the wettest February on record, the river conditions weren't safe for less-experienced canoeists this time, so we adjusted our plans. GoodGymers split into 3 teams to tackle the litter on different parts of the Thames Path, with a trio of pro-canoeists on the water collecting the full litter sacks and taking them back to the boat club. We collected a literal tonne of trash, with bikes, shoes, cans, bottles, hub caps, and (fan-favourite) pants all forming part of our stash.

The sun came out in time to enjoy tea and snacks on the boat club terrace at the end.

Great work as always team!

Welcome to GoodGym Jo and Daphne!

A gaggle of Goodgymers assembles atvthe Rose Hill Community Centre this evening for potentially the quickest task we've ever done.........

35 pairs of trainers were paired and packaged up ready to wing their way to Jog On for redistribution and/or recycling.

New litter bingo cards were made (including dubious art work and riddles) ready for our OxClean litter pick next week.

Cake was consumed, chats were had and Ben was garlanded with the garland of joy for his 100th Good Deed!!

A small group of us then headed out into the, thankfully not rainy, night for a 3.5 mile trot.