Mandy, Grant, Lewis and Pete returned for another session at St Matthew’s church. The mission was to bring a little TLC to the Garden of Rest. We cleaned the commemorative slates around the boarder - these being local people who had passed away in the 1800’s. We also cleaned the more recent stones in the central area. We also checked on the boarders we had created on a previous mission - the local schoolchildren have started to plant flowers and bushes, and the area is starting to come a live. Great to catch up on a lovely evening, and as ever thanks to David for the tea and biscuits.

Along with Reg and Nat from Trees for Derby, a group of volunteers from GoodGym Derby made a big impact on a Tiny Forest on Saturday.

The sun was shining and the group welcomed Helen from Severn Trent for her first GoodGym session! It was fantastic to have Helen there as she had been at the planting for the Tiny Forest site so it was great to have her knowledge of the site and to provide a bit more background to it. Like the fact each Tiny Forest has been named after a Commonwealth country or nation, with the one we visited being named after the national bird of the Maldives, the white-breasted waterhen. Severn Trent created the Tiny Forests to give communities more access to green space and to leave a lasting environmental legacy of the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games. Find out more about the Tiny Forest the group helped here.

Mandy, Ashley, Grant and Rachel planned to clear the area of weeds, loosen some of the identification tags around trees and do some litter picking to tidy up the spot. On arrival, Reg requested the group helped to trim back some of the plants and focus on clearing weeds....which there were a lot of! In a joint effort, a huge dent was made in a short space of time to clear the site and get it to a stage where the trees that had been planted could flourish. Gardening gloves and leg coverings were welcomed as there were lots of thistles to pull out. Ashley had the find of the morning when he located one of the Tiny Forest tiles and looked underneath to see the insect groups that had made it their home.

We'll be back at the Tiny Forest again to help with regular maintenance and are hoping to join up with Trees for Derby again for a combined effort. Thank you to everyone for attending and helping make a big difference to this small green space in our community. The weekend held some exciting plans for the group as Helen was going to be welcoming a rescue dog into her home and Grant was going on a 100 mile bike ride on Sunday.

Tracey and Gwyn met Alex from The Derbyshire Cricket Foundation and the happy cricketers and families at this heartwarming event. After an early discussion, there was a throwing game (involving us in a lot of running to get the balls back), then catching practice (I was the worst catcher) and batting and bowling. It was so good to see an improvement in everyone's skills even in this brief time. We all got together for tea and biscuits and a chat afterwards. Thank you everyone for a lovely morning.

Ashley, Pete, Mandy and Rachel met at the usual Tuesday night start point for a litter picking session with a difference. As well as the usual waterproof jackets, litter pickers and bin bags, the group were all carrying backpacks which were filled to the brim with donations for The Hope Centre foodbank. Especially Ashley's who had some bumper packs of tins with him.

As part of a national initiative by GoodGym, this session had been put in the calendar to bump up supplies following a busy Easter at the foodbank.

The group headed off to litter pick along the route to the foodbank, where Pete regularly helps out at as a volunteer. Along the way the group saw building work coming along for the city's new performance venue and an exciting outdoor social space for events and live music, 'Electric Daisy'. Donations were gratefully received and the group headed on to continue litter picking in a loop of a route around the city centre. Slightly less competition between our litter picking King and Queen, Ashley and Mandy, than usual as Ashley's focus was on his weighty bag of donations and not beating Mandy to the most litter to be picked/most unusual item found.

The group had a local resident comment on how bad the litter down their street can be, particularly after Friday and Saturday night and so will look at adding in this route to litter picking sessions in the future.

If you are able to make a donation to the foodbank, check out the items they need the most and see details of where and when to drop them off here.

Thanks to everyone for helping out this evening, Mandy had already been volunteering during the day so extra GoodGym points for her.

Ashley and Rachel met with Jon from Shoulder to Shoulder volunteering group to discuss collaborating to help out in the community.

Following the meeting, GoodGym volunteers went about litter picking in the city centre.

Due to the poor weather conditions, no photos were taken from the litter picking loop of the city centre but one bag of rubbish was collected.

Great that a new connection was made and the team are looking forward to spreading the word about Shoulder to Shoulder.

Tracey and I went over the border to Yorkshire for the very welcoming Hillsborough parkrun. It was recommended to us by Sheffield GoodGym-ers: thank you for that! It was raining as we went there, and for the first timers' briefing, but the parkrun gods stopped it for the actual run, and balanced that by giving the park some hail afterwards. We had a good breakfast at Depot Bakery in the park, then set off for a Freedom parkrun walk in the hail.