This evening we were back at one of our very original task's - Wexham Park Hospital doing a litter pick task. It was great to have Jean back after a little break.

Also really good to see Rosa, lovely to catch up with you.

We met at the top of Shaggy Calf Lane and I briefed the team of the task, the distance and that we would be doing a litter bit of running

Running? But I like walking said Hamid

That was no problem either as we had Jean on back marking duties so walking is never an issue. But guess who was leading the 'run' pack? Yep... Hamid. He had decided to run instead and what a good runner he is! He's kept that talent a secret.

As we approached the hospital grounds we bagged up the bags onto the litter pick loops, paired up and got to work.

Each pair managed to fill a bag each, just proving the fact that we need to continue supporting the hospital with this type of task.

Thank you for everyone's help tonight.

Next week we will be in Cippenham helping Slough Outreach with getting their storage.

Three volunteers, three bags of rubbish and the odd take two to pick up the item

It was a night where no one could be blamed for not wanting to come out. It was wet, it was windy yet weirdly mild.

We took a nice leisurely walk from our meet up point to Wexham Park Hospital.

On arrival, we got to work litter picking in all the little nooks and crankies finding plenty of unusual items alongside the 'usual' pint!

The site was pretty busy again with cars but we still managed to get 3 bags full One for the master, one for the dame and one for the little boy who lives down the lane (after 5 years of writing these reports... sometime this is litter-ally all I can think off!).

After around 40 minutes and luckily escaping the rain, we headed back to our meet up point.

We also have a community mission at Thames Hospicare on Friday morning and next Monday we are helping St John the Baptist church with an indoor clean up task.

https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions

We will finish tonights report by wishing us all the best for the Slough CVS awards ceremony where we are shortlisted for Group of the Year!

Good Luck to us ❤

We were back at Wexham Park Hospital this evening to do our 6 weekly litter pick of the grounds.

With a small team on night duty (yes it was dark by 6:30! here comes the winter!), we bandaged ourselves to each other to prevent any injuries and got to work.

It was a busy night at Wexham with a constant movement of cars so we decided to hit the 'breakout' spaces at the very front of the site. Plenty of rubbish right near the bins (as always!).

We each managed to fill a bag and decided to call it a night.

Next week, we are on our last session at the allotments.

Tonight's task was to help Wexham Park Hospital with a litter pick task. We've now been helping Mike and the team at Wexham since we first starting operating in Slough and it's been a nice little give back each time to the NHS.

With my legs feeling a little sore from The Big Half race yesterday, I had already decided I could not run today. I think everyone was secretly pleased with that announcement, so we made our 2.5km route up to the hospital from our meet up point at Masaani on Shaggy Calf Lane.

En route we bumped into a lovely man from Japan who expressed an interest in joining us in the future - we hope he does!

On arrival, we could see the levels of litter had increased so we quickly got to work on collecting as much as we could. It was the usual finds - cans, crisp packets, masks, parking tickets, items of clothing!

Working in pairs or small teams we systematically made our way around the front of the hospital collecting 4 bags of rubbish.

Thank you everyone for all your help today.

Next week we will be helping St Mary's primary school in Farnham Common for a fence painting task.

GoodGym is very lucky. Lucky in the sense that anyone can come to one of our sessions and for an hour and a half feel involved, feel part of a group, do something good for someone else and get in some exercise.

It's mental health awareness week and once again we kick start our week with our usual Monday meet up, run/walk, talk and task. There are times even I lose my mojo and don't feel like leaving the house on a Monday night, however, as soon as I am in the car, I'm usually raring to go because I know I will have a lovely chat with someone, share some news with others or just enjoy the outdoors.

Our task tonight was a litter pick at Wexham Park Hospital, with our meeting point being Shaggy Calf Lane and a nice 1.5km walk to the task location. We had 3 of us helping tonight, with Devanji joining us on her second session (welcome back). A nice evening stroll was what the mind needed tonight.

On arrival at the hospital, we stayed together and rummaged around the bushes to see what we could find. Our oldest find was a packet of KP crisps with a best before date of 2016! Our most expensive find was a mobile phone, with the rest being the usual of beer cans, soft drink cans, food wrappers, cigarette butts and a pair of walking boots - definitely made for walking!

Within 45 minutes the 3 of us had collected 4 bags of rubbish. Litter picking is actually very therapeutic! Give it a go some time...we could be partners in grime!

Ending this week's report with some facts about mental health:

• 1 in 6 people, or approximately 45.8 million adults, report experiencing symptoms for common mental health problems, like anxiety and depression, in any given week in England;

• Nearly half (43.4%) of adults (24.5 million in England) think that they have had a diagnosable mental health condition at some point in their life;

• 61% of adults with mental health conditions don’t access treatment;

• 98% of people agree that mentally ill people experience stigma and discrimination;

• 25% of people in England, approximately 14.1 million adults, say they feel lonely at least some of the time;

• Three-quarters of registered suicide deaths in the UK in 2020 were for men;

• 1.4 million over-65s in the UK today are lonely;

• The median age of onset for anxiety disorders is 11 years;

• 74% of UK adults have felt so stressed at some point over the last year they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope;

Next week we will be at the allotments

As the weather drops down towards the zero, the heroes are still out doing something productive and helpful. With our first task to Wexham Park Hospital planned for this evening, we met at our usual spot in Shaggy Calf Lane ready to rumble as soon as everyone arrived (it really was that cold!).

We were ready for some good clean fun of littering the outdoor space at Wexham Park Hospital...every litter bit helps.

It was good to have Joe back for a session and as always and to pick up his January miles!

On arrival, we got straight to work. Sticking together for safety reason we found many frozen items mainly

• masks
• squashed Red Bull cans
• gloves
• bed sheets!

Did you know?

• More than two million pieces of litter are dropped in the UK every day;

• The cost to the taxpayers for street cleaning is over £1 billion a year;

• cost of keeping the streets clean per household: £30;

• most commonly found litter types on beaches: small plastic or polystyrene pieces and cigarette stubs;

• percentage of people perceiving litter as a problem: 28%;

• how engaged people are in doing something about it: 580,000 volunteers.

There are a few ways to report litter to the local council:-

• Via Slough Borough Council website;

  • Via Fix My Street app;

• Via Love Clean Street app

We are now half way through our January Challenge and have reached our half way point of good deeds .. we just need another half! to meet our target. Thank you to everyone who is getting involved. Our distance challenge may need an extra push - we are a quarter of the way in our challenge of our 2100km target.

Next week we will be at Parvaaz Project over in Northampton Ave. Meet up point is Salt Hill Park (at the Activity Centre).