While riots rocked the UK we kept well out of the way of any trouble by heading out along the river to clean up a litter-ally enormous amount of trash in Rose Hill.

Rivermead Nature Park and the river path to Sandford have long been litter hot spots, and we usually do a big clean up there each year. This time our main focus was a lot of dumped clothing and rubbish under the ring road bridge, and Trev also brought tools to remove plastic embedded in the ground further along the footpath.

In a return to GG Oxford litterpick tradition we found plenty of underwear - mostly bras rather than pants this time - as well as a plethora of litter pick favs. We would definitely have done well on our litter bingo cards tonight!

We finished our evening with some blackberry foraging, birthday cake, a paddle in the river, and with best wishes to our long-time GoodGymer Sarah who is moving to Costa Rica on Friday. Best of luck Sarah!!

Scything is always a GoodGym favourite, and we had the perfect heatwave task this Wednesday of scything nettles in the shade of the woods at Aston's Eyot.

There are lots of muntjac deer who call Aston's Eyot home, and they eat their way through absolutely everything, leaving much reduced biodiversity. To try and counter this the Friends of Aston's Eyot are creating fenced areas throughout the nature reserve which the deer can't break into. In those areas the flora and fauna will have a chance to recover, increasing the variety of plant life, and providing food for a wider range of bugs and beasties. The next area to be fenced is within the woodland, but the nettles needed clearing before the Friends of Aston's Eyot could decide the exact outline of the protected area. Always happy to oblige, we scythed and raked away for an hour clearing a woodland glade ready for fencing.

Breakaway teams lopped low-hanging branches of some trees overhanging a pathway, pulled creeping thistle (prickly!), and re-scythed the young nettles starting to pop back up where we chopped them back earlier this year.

Welcome to GoodGym Maria!

Last night we gradually extended the wheelchair accessible path to the bird hide at Boundary Brook Nature Park. A convoy of wheelbarrows, a pair of shovellers, a fine duo of rakers, and Bethan working those biceps on the heavy roller had the path inching ever closer to joining with the rest of the path network. There are just a few metres to go now to join it all up with the paths we built in previous years. Go team!

...is wheelchair accessible paths around the nature park. So who better to shovel and barrow 10 tonnes of gravel to make the dream a reality than GoodGym?!

We are actually quite the pros at this task, having created the current network of wheelchair accessible paths around Boundary Brook Nature Park 2 years ago. Those paths stood up to the wettest of winters pretty well, showing up the need to link up some other areas to the network. Tonight we started to build the path to the bird hide (a project we also had a hand in). We certainly got our step count up and a decent upper body work out pushing gravel all across the site to the furthest point!

There might be some sore arms in the morning, but also pride in what we managed to get done.

Watch the Countryfile episode featuring Boundary Brook Nature Park and Wytham Woods here.

With Boundary Brook Nature Park Open Afternoon this coming Saturday GoodGym were called in this week to make sure all the paths were clear and wide enough for wheelchairs and buggies. We took a 'divide and conquer' approach, with teams heading to different zones of the nature park to ensure that the paths were fully accessible. The site is now ready for visitors this weekend. In two weeks time we will return to replenish the gravel along the paths to help them stay dry and usable year round.

We scythed up a storm at Aston's Eyot last night. Working our way along and beyond the fence we built last summer we cut a swathe through the nettles, raking them out as we went to let light get through and hopefully give some other plants a chance. Forming a scythe-rake-remove production line we were a pretty efficient work crew! Some veteran GoodGymers had their first go at scything, plus we were pleased to welcome 2 new GoodGymers to the crew: Welcome to GoodGym Weronika and Eleftherios.

Find the Friends of Aston's Eyot website here.