This evenings task was to help Slough Outreach at their new unit in Cippenham with a clothes sorting task.

On arrival Shin met us in the shop which was now looking really amazing with loads of newly donated items. But that wasn't where our task was going to be.

Instead Shin walked us over to the storage unit and took us into a huge room which was literally spewing with black bags full of donations! Our task was to sort the bags into piles of children's toys; children's clothes; women's clothes; men's clothes; homeware; books and CD's and items suitable for the homeless.

As the task looked mammoth, we decided to get stuck in and do our run afterwards...we are like the Salvation Armani as no task is too big for us!

Straight away we had the room divided into sections and bags were being torn up, emptied and sorted. A hive of activity which we all XL'd at! It's always a soleful experience sorting through donations especially shoes! What we unraveled tonight was that ladies clearly know that donating is a fashion ...their pile was the highest, closely followed by the children...they pulled their socks up and outgrew their superhero outfits ...but the men don't sweat it as their pile was the smallest - cap-tee-vating to see the trends here.

Shin was over the moon that we had managed to sort the whole room out...so a big shout out to the team

• Helping Hands Hamid;

• Joyous Jen;

• Jovial Jean;

• More Giving Manjit;

• Magnanimous Mehdi;

• Plentiful Pam;

• Raring To Go Ruth

Well done all....enjoy the rest of your Monday Punday

Oh what a night!

15 of us all dressed in our best ready to party the night away at the returning Slough CVS Awards Nights.

We had been shortlisted under Group of the Year award category and although I knew we had a good chance we were up against some great competition (some of whom were our task owners!).

The night started as all good nights do, with a dressed up crowd sipping on gin n’ juice with a chocolate fountain. Though the late arrivals (Nisha, Ricky and I) missed the chocolate fountain!

As we entered the lobby area we bumped into our ever so glamorous team members Jean, Ruth and Agni. Wow! Did you see how amazing Jean looked!!

After having our 1st photo taken (1st out of around 100!) we made our way into the function hall to see the rest of the gang at our tables.

Each and everyone looked amazing!

Slough CVS team opened the event with key note speakers and a warm up act from Ramesh, CEO!

And dinner is served… a delicious medley of South Asian food and a tray of fish..

We nearly won on the raffle! 170 is close to 180 right? But not close enough.

Then onto the dancing act from Creative Academy!

Dr Jim and Dom were an amazing double act on stage presenting the ceremony. A few drinks were consumed by now so can’t tell you how funny they were but I know I laughed (a lot!)

First up were the Business Impact Awards followed by our much awaited Volunteer of the Year Award. We had our very own Sutyee shortlisted for this category for all that she does to support junior parkrun.

Drum roll please……

The award goes to…. Cindy! Well done Cindy…

The highly commended award goes to SUTYEE!!! Wohooo! Applause please as she stands to receive her certificate

Next onto Public Sector Partnership Award

Now the one we were waiting for - Group of the year

First up is a short film on each group nominated. As always, each time GoodGym is mentioned there are cheers all round. Pipe down GoodGym!

And I am delighted to tell you that we received awards in 2 categories

Highly Commended for Making a difference to the environment

Winners of Designing innovative projects!

Even more applause 👏

What a night. It ended with a disco that had everyone up and dancing

We had such a great time! Uber Ricky dropped us home and somehow 'stole' the award which left me in a panic thinking i'd lost it! Luckily the thief returned in the morning with award intact!

Enjoy the photos.. we certainly enjoyed the night

This evening we were on our first task of helping Slough Outreach with their new Charity Shop come Community Hub in Cippenham.

This unit will be used to support the community as a place to meet, donate items for resale and items for the Outreach work that Shin and his team do.

Our task was to give the shop a clean up - many hands make light work... and that clearly showed this evening as we blitzed through the task in 45 minutes.

Prior to Shin arriving we went for a little jog around the block lead by our very own Jen...

On Shin's arrival we quickly made our way inside the warmth of the shop and got the dusters out to give the shelves a new lease of life.

• Jen, Agnija and Jean went straight onto window duty - it looked pane-ful but they did a smashing job;

• Mehdi was on mirror duty - he gave himself a great reflection;

• Hamid and Ruth were quick with those dusters but cleaning feels like a never-ending marathon, it’s a real dust-ance challenge;

• Peter had made a new best mate with Henry! They were like shake n' vac putting the goodness back.

Sorry, I’m a bit dusty when it comes to coming up with puns, so I'll stop there.

To summarise, it was great to have the opportunity to help Shin with this new community hub. It's going to be a great asset to the local community and we look forward to helping out as much as we can.

Ps - I think I found my new shoes for the Awards Ceremony next week!

Twas the night before Halloween and the good people of GhoulGym Slough were out and ready to give the town a Hallo-Clean at Salt Hill Park

We met at the Salt Hill Activity Centre and after a little photo shoot with Mike we descended into the deep dark depths of the park.

With no running for me tonight (legs are like the living dead after the Dublin marathon yesterday!), I sent the team out for a lap of the park - walk it, run it, jog it… just don’t get totally ghosted with your efforts!

Back from their fitness efforts we stuck to each other like glue and worked as a team to clear a section of the park.

With plenty of dirty hidden treasures in the bushes we had enough to keep us occupied. But when Hamid found what looked like a dumped rucksack with clothes and then we found rope and sheets we decided the witching hour was upon us and time to move on to another part of the park.

Although we had some great masks and accessories tonight, the best dressed award had to go to Sandy - we loved her outfit - she got it at the new boo-tique in Slough- Give em pumpkin to talk about!

With 6 full bags of rubbish collected it was time to call it a night! Everyone was thanked for their efforts and offered a ‘hero’ chocolate - bone appetite!

Witching you all a happy halloween

Tonight's task was all about spreading the love and letting the locals of the Britwell area know about the services that Antz Kids and Artful Hub provide as well as a little bit of self promotion about GoodGym with our new leaflets! Nothing wrong with being loud and proud of what we do.

A very warm welcome to Keith on his first session with us. We hope you enjoyed it and return for more.

We started the evening by doing a game of head, shoulders, knees, toes and cone followed by knee tag... as we are all a little unfamiliar with the area we were in today, we decided to do our 'run/walk' part in Kennedy Park.

Then we split into 3 teams and went off for 30 odd minutes in 3 different directions to get the leaflets distributed. Our original task tonight was sadly cancelled so Eva very kindly gave us her leaflets to distribute - such a leaf-saver! We followed the usual rules - no junk mail signs meant we leaf-t that house out and in my case - any signs of 'beware of the dog'!

As always we rolled up our s-leaf-s and got the job done.

Next week is our Halloween special! Please come along to Salt hill park (outside the Activity centre) for a goulgym litter pick of the park.

Thank you to everyone involved in tonight's task.

We had a host of activities going on tonight. With walkers, runners and those driving direct to the task all by 6:15 so we could safely get the allotment plot turned over whilst we still had light.

Mehdi, Hamid and I arrived first and got all the tools out whilst the light was on our side.

Jen was our first walker with a sustainable travel plan of walking, trains and walking again.

Soon followed by Clare and Peter.

Next we had an influx of runner vs cars! with the much awaited arrival of Ricky for his 95th task! (not sure why I thought it was your 99th) Good to see you!

Dr and Kam arrived just as a little difference in opinion was taking place. Good job that Savi is a voice of reason.

Just Gimme the Light

The plot we were clearing needed digging over, shearing of the sides, re positioning the blue tarpauling and sweeping the sides to make it all look tidy. We actually managed to get it all done before the day light faded but with the extra light from our lights. Great effort from everyone.

Hot Potatoes

Sarah had kindly offered us some potatoes which the Home Start team had recently dug up. We were boiled over to get them.

Fitness Fun Mash up

As we had a mixed method of arrivals today I thought the team might like a mini PT session using dumbells, kettlebells and med balls!

With deadlifts, woodchops, halos, bent over rows and a killer lunge set! All steamed up! I think the team saute enjoyed it?

We have now finished our monthly sessions at this allotment until next year.

Next week we have an indoor task at St Mary's Church on Church St. Back to normal meet up time of 6:30pm at Upton Court Park.

We certainly delivered tonight with 7 goodgymers at Parvaaz.

Met at Salt Hill with a few meeting at the task location, our task was sweeping up the leaves in the garden and car park area. Eva got straight to work sweeping us off our feet with her wonderful trips to Portugal. Eva the garden looks amazing.

Kam and Pam covered the alley way entrance weeding and clearing up the leaves, Agnieska helped to sweep one side of the car park whilst Mehdi and Hamid covered the other side.

Total of 12 bags WOW.

Eva kindly brought some treats for us all too.

Next week session we are back at St Mary's for more painting. https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/fence-painting-03904176-9b0b-4e31-9a2f-3ce8a9cf68bd

We look forward to seeing you all at our next task.

We descended on the allotments tonight knowing that the daylight hours were fading fast and that we would have to be a bit speedy on tonight's task.

With a team of 9 helpers even an overgrown plot was no battle for us! With tools in hand, we got to work - we were all beetrooting for each other! The weeds were very high again, but given the recent wet, dry, sunny, wet weather it's no wonder...we could all loose the plot when faced with these conditions.

Hamid worked very hard tonight and beavered away at all the spickey roots, Mehdi took charge of the wheelbarrow duties, whilst Kam, Jean, Sandy, Devajani, Maya and Pam worked on their little patches until all the weeds had been removed.

By 7.30pm it was getting too dark to do much more, although the plot looked miles better than it did at the beginning.

Great job all round!

Next week we are meeting at Salt Hill Activity Centre for 6.30pm and making our way to Northampton Ave to help Parvaaz Project with their garden space.