We had a team of eight join up with the other friends of People's Park to carry out a thorough cleanup of the park.

Weeks of nice weather had attracted lots of daytime park users who left all the usual litter scattered around the fields bushes and trees of this large site. There was also a fair bit of evidence of a night time economy, as well as the fly tipping of a few random items, this time a push chair, a freezer drawer, a walking stick and a children's ride on car thing were the main features of an impressive haul of 16 bags of rubbish!

All seemed normal on this week's group run as we headed up the hill to the giant Welcome to Luton gravel sign on the hill by the motorway. 🛣️

But on arrival we found an unusual guest waiting for us. It was a member of the BBC Three Counties Radio team with the news that we have been nominated for the Three Counties People Awards! Our task was given a lovely boost as we were asked to record some audio about GoodGym, what we do and why we love it. In between planes roaring overhead we all got a chance to say a bit about ourselves and also wish BBC 3CR a happy 40th birthday, ready for the celebration in a few weeks.

All of that showbiz stuff aside we also managed to weed the gravel, sort the black and white pebbles back into their right places and get the sign looking great again and welcoming all the drivers and pilots on their approach to Luton!

Beautiful spring sunshine welcomed us as we gathered at the Green Flag to launch another round of the monthly People's Park litter pick.

Splitting up and roving around the park we collected all the litter dropped by recent park users enjoying the warm weather.

The trees in the orchard also got a thorough watering with those on that task getting lots of steps in by having to walk watering cans out from the nearby houses and across to field to the trees and return for refills.

When our time was up we returned to the flag with our collected bags to count them up: 14 bags in total, not bad for a morning in the sun 🌞

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This week our Group Run took us up the hill to the sunny Ferndale Leisure Gardens, an allotment space that had been underused for some time and needs the old plots clearing out of all the old junk collected by past tenants to make inviting open spaces ready for new tenants.

In this visit we tackled a tough patch that we couldn't deal with last time. There was a pile of something buried under thick brambles. This time we brought some clippers to cut away the bramble and gain access. It was a pile of corrugated metal roof panels, old windows and wooden pallets among other random buckets and broken spades and old hose pipe.

With seven of us on the case we managed to extract all the junk and carry it up the hill to the entrance gate and sorted it into piles of wood, plastic and metal which will be collected for recycling.

We'll be back here again in a few weeks because theres plenty more plots that need clearing out!

It was a glorious sunny morning, and just the kind of weather to get a good group of us out in People's Park for the monthly litter pick. It was great to see Yasin and Derrick, who we haven't seen for a while. MArtin managed to get in a few extra steps on the walking machine in the play park.

Between us we managed to find all the ingredients from a recent romantic evening at the park, a few spent prophylactics, a half a bottle of whisky, assorted beer cans and wine bottles and even a pair of M&S finest lacy briefs with a delightful lipstick pattern on them!

At the end of the session Rachel treated us to an Easter Egg Hunt, although we were slightly disappointed that she hadn't got dressed up as the Easter Bunny!