'Tis the season to litter pick the streets of Oxford, so to Headington we headed for an evening of nattering and trash clearing.

We focused on the area surrounding the Oxford Brookes Headington campus, finding plenty of the usual suspects; cans, bottles, crisp packets etc. We were just chatting about how rarely we find pants these days, after a spate of unearthing them on almost every litter pick, when lo and behold Ben spotted a pair hooked on the railings. It's like we manifested them.

1 hour, several heavy bags full of trash, and a potential new recruit later, we deposited our haul for collection and headed off home to warm up.

Our winter food bank clean got going last night; a very welcome indoor task given the sudden chill!

Each winter we do a session roughly once a month to give the food bank a thorough clean. It's hard for their usual team of volunteers to take time away from packing food parcels to do a really thorough clean, so GoodGym taking over the task helps them focus on getting food out to people in need.

This month we cleaned fridges, emptied food waste, cleaned the wall behind the food waste crates, swept & mopped in the kitchen. In the main hall we moved the shelving along the wall closet to the car park, swept, mopped, cleaned the shelves.

The litter around West Oxford Community Centre has been quite heavy in the past, so we try to get out there a couple of times a year for a clean up. With the whizz-bang of fireworks all around we set off for our autumn session. Despite some Halloween detritus, and some unusual finds (a French dictionary, burglar alarms, mini-bedspread, pants), we were pleasantly surprised by the state of the litter. We collected far less than usual - good job West Oxford!

This evening we returned to the Warneford Hospital site to do some more work on their anniversary garden installation.

More compost was poured into the huge metal planters, more gambions were filled with stones and pinecones (pretty sure we could all have a crack at dry stone walling now!) and we were able to congratulate Anwen, Fred and Andy on their cracking performances at the Oxford Half Marathon!

Working quickly to race the sunset and dying light (said in my best Michael Sheen voice) we achieved a brilliant amount. Can't wait to see the finished result!

A few of us then went for a run, where I inflicted an intervals session on the group, SORRY!!!!

Until next week......... xoxo

Warneford Hospital is creating a new garden on the front lawn to mark the 200th anniversary of the site next year. It's a big undertaking, with an avenue of trees, and a series of huge planters made from curved corrugated steel sheets for the different wards to take ownership of.

Last night we were filling the gabion baskets which surround the planters for the trees. They were filled with a combination of recycled rubble and pine cones from the mature trees around the lawn. It was quite a creative process! We also shifted twenty large pallets into the bottoms of the 7 huge raised bed planters, and started filling them with a combination of woodchip and top soil. It was a race against the sunset, but we made good progress.

We'll be back next week for more of the same!

Thank you Vicky for the report title.