Well done to all the GoodGymers who came along this evening for a fun mix of scavenger hunt, Christmas crafting and cake. Our official Christmas night out is tomorrow at the Off the Tap pub quiz, but this evening felt like a party to me! Maybe I've been to too many 5 year olds' birthday parties recently...

Of course there was some method in our madness. I will explain in reverse order:

The cake was to celebrate Claire's 50th good deed. Claire's first good deed with us was rescuing baby toads, her 50th was making reindeer, and in between she's done everything from planting oak trees to marshalling a Santa dash in fancy dress.

Congratulations Claire, we love having you in our group! A huge thank you also to Rachel, who made a fabulous chocolate cake AND a free from lemon drizzle.

The Christmas crafting was our task for the evening. We were making decorations for the first GoodGym tree at the St Luke's annual Christmas Tree Festival. The festival raises money for the church, plus their chosen charity, No 22, the Maidenhead and Windsor Youth Counselling Service.

The festival is also a great way for charities like GoodGym to raise awareness of their involvement in the community, and many of the trees (including ours) are donated to families in need after the event.

It is a really festive spectacle, and very much worth a visit while it's open to the public from the 8th to 10th of December. Click here for full details.

Many thanks to the Maidenhead Community Centre for providing us with a venue for our crafty task, and to the GoodGymers turned elves, who led our various crafting activities.

Nicola made sure we weren't flagging while we made bunting; Jess's snowmen were the stuff(ing) that Christmas dreams (and nightmares!?) are made of, and Sophie and Claire had us making reindeer. I Donner know how they were Blitzen so many! As the evening unfolded I also renamed myself origAMY, Can you guess what I was making!?

A special mention also for Georgeta and Sheila, who weren't with us this evening, but who have still made decorations for the tree. Georgeta has made a beautiful quilted star including the GoodGym GGs and Sheila has crocheted a gorgeous doll, complete with GoodGym t-shirt. I can't wait to see them on the tree!

And the Scavenger Hunt..?

Since the Community Centre was also our start location, there was no real need for a run or walk this evening, but I wasn't about to let everyone wriggle out of doing some exercise. Before we settled down to our creative gluing, cutting, folding, and tying, I challenged the group to a scavenger hunt. They had no more than 25 minutes to find and photograph as many things from my list as possible - including things like a dog, a snowman and a post box.

We formed two teams of walkers and two teams of runners and gave the walkers a head start while the runners warmed up. Teams devised their own routes and impressively everyone ticked off everything on the list and made it back to base on time, having covered 2-3km on foot. There were also some very creative photos taken along the way, and some entertaining chats with dog owners. I think next time I will need to make the challenge a bit trickier!

Thanks everyone for your contributions to a fun evening. If you would like to help hang the decorations on the tree at St Luke's, there is one space left on this community mission next Wednesday from 4-6pm. Do also check out the listings for all the group activities planned so far for December and January. Hope to see you soon!

On a freezing cold morning, Clare, Sol and Sheila made their way to Windsor to help marshal at the Santa Dash in aid of Alexander Devine Children's Hospice. It was an early start, gathering before it was light, but we were welcomed with hot drinks and a friendly group of volunteers. We had been asked to come looking Christmassy, and we all filled the brief, and Claire certainly did not disappoint, coming dressed in elf leggings, snowman hat and santa glasses. She looked fabulous and was nicknamed by one of the young runners as the Funky Outfit Lady! After a briefing fron Tai, our Taskowner, we were split up into groups, each responsible for marshalling 1 km of the course. We were assigned to the stretch along the Windsor Castle walls under the leadership of Sally. We put the signs out and walked our section of the course, deciding where to place the marshals. Our biggest concern was keeping the runners out of the way of the tourist groups queuing to visit the castle (or was it the other way round?), and a very narrow section due to some walkway resurfacing works. Some discussion with the castle staff resulted in the tourists being let into the castle grounds earlier than usual to relieve the pressure. Eventually the first of the runners came through, and we encouraged them along with clapping and cheering as they toiled their way up the hill to the castle and down the other side again (and helped keep us warm too). It was quite a sight, seeing them all in their red Santa suits, and the tourists cheered them on too. There were lots of families taking part, and some faces we recognised - Goodgymmers Amanda and Vikie and their families, and maybe others we didn't recognise, hidden under their Santa beards! 400 or so runners later, we could leave our posts and make our way back to the finish. Well done to everyone that took part

This evening we had our annual torch-lit adventure to Burchett's Green Infant School to help uncover the playground from a blanket of leaves.

We met at the Butterfly Trail Car Park armed with lots of lights, welcomed everyone, warmed up and headed off into the dark, dark woods of Maidenhead Thicket.

We came up with a game called 'Rabbits and Fox' to challenge the runners whilst keeping them in sight of the walkers. If I called 'Rabbits', the runners turned heel and ran back the way we had come, until I yelled 'Fox' and they ran back to the walkers. Depending on where we were on the route in relation to obstacles like gates, I sometimes switched it up and called 'Fox' first to send the runners ahead, before 'Rabbits' brought them back to the walkers again. It was a great way not to lose anyone! The walkers covered just over 2km, whilst runners did over 3km.

We were welcomed at the school by head teacher Mr Harris, and by GoodGymer Tony, who had made his own way to the school so he could bagsy the leaf blower.

We quickly got stuck into the task and made great progress sweeping up leaves, bundling them into hippo bags and tipping them out of the playground. We were provided with some excellent tools for the job, including a broom perfect for a 5 year old and a plastic tractor, which Nicola and Jess put to good use.

Sol, Matthew, Scarlett and Emily made unbeleafably quick progress at the far end of the playground and Claire did a broomin' marvellous job on the steps, while Tony was chatting away on the blower.

While we worked, Mr Harris recovered some balls from beyond the fence and Nicola and Jess seemed to be having so much fun with them, it only seemed right that the rest of us down tools and join in. I asked them to come up with a fun fitness game for us and they did not disappoint. We had to leap over a crate, weave in and out of buckets, throw, catch and duck! Sol liked it so much she had a second go.

Then it was time for a quick group photo on the climbing frame, an even quicker weeeee down the slide, a goodbye to Tony and Mr Harris, and a second round of Rabbits and Fox on the way back.

It is always a treat to head away from the bright lights of Maidenhead and into nature. The woods and fields can be spooky, but with lights and friends they feel safe and even magical. It was a chilly evening, but our walk/run, super satisfying task and fitness game warmed our bodies, and the good company, silhouetted trees, moonlit clouds and stars warmed our spirits!

See you there same time next year?

21, yes you read it correctly, 21 amazing goodgymers met at the Natures Haven Garden at front of Maidenhead Community Centre. Amy our lovely leader wasted no time in greeting us, introducing Claire C and Aleks from Nature Haven and explaining the evening’s plans before embarking on a well needed warm up session on this chilly November night.

The group divided up into a running and two walking groups, our destination was Waitrose where we donated to the Foodshare collection box.

Once back at the Community Centre the task was a continuation of our last visit, clearing more of a densely planted bank, so tools at the ready, muscles flexed, let digging commence.

Pretty soon there were whoops and cheers as root stumps were raised in the air in celebration as one by one they were liberated from the ground. As time passed numbers were randomly shouted out, 3,6, 8 !! these were the number of stumps dug out. The record was 11, and the dream team was Tony and Ben; there was nothing wooden about their performance!!

Bush-whisperer Kanika also deserves a special mention. She freed one stump by winking at it!

Mandy and Anne-Laure also worked ex-tree-mely hard in another part of the garden and after much pushing and pulling they became the proud parents of root baby twins.

Among us lesser mortals, moans and groans could be heard as we struggled to ease the root balls, who knew these shrubs had soooo many roots. Gillian was a trooper and never gave up, pulling and pushing at these pesky stumps.

And as our arms and legs tired we were rewarded with a snap and a pop, the roots came free, what a re-leaf!! another one bites the soil. We mustn’t forget all the work that clearing up gang did, depositing the roots and sweeping up all the debris.

All our hard toil was rewarded with very welcome cups of hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows. Thank you so much to Claire and Aleks for your kind hospitality.

With the happy satisfaction of completing the task, tummies full of hot chocolate and marshmallows and the faint odour of smoke in our hair we headed home. We wooden have it any other way!!

We skipped the rain tonight for our pot-holing task supporting Holyport football club. After warming up at the Co-op Jess led the walkers to the meeting point whilst Amanda led the runners. The group met at "the tree" to do a lovely meet and retreat loop of a local housing estate. They must have thought we were bonkers squating in the road at our half-way point but we had a giggle. Louise was having a bit of a Blair Witch moment waiting alone for us at the task so we hopped to it and went to meet her. Claire, Rachel, and Scarlett got cracking shovelling a mountain of gravel from a large pile into the holes on the road. Matthew did some great work wheel barrowing and Sol was relentless at unloading it and ensuring the road was level - great work team!

Mandy opted for the "hands on" approach further down the path whilst Jess and Emily worked so hard raking and smoothing out the bumps in the road. Remarkably, no one fell in any puddles or slipped on the way in or way out.

Our fun fitness session tonight took us all back to our youth with kiddie party games which had everyone in stitches. Jess' team won but the second round was a very close match!

What a fun task this was - lots of "high ho" moments. The road is much more accessible but there is still lots more to be done so this won't be our last session here - and hopefully it won't be the last of the dry ones here either!