Yesterday, Anne and Harriet started to prepare the work to paint a beautiful mural “The Hive” on the wall of one of the school buildings. Vikki, the volunteer who organises the work for the school, was not sure whether teachers and/or parents would be able to come and help with the painting. Well, you just had to ask GoodGym: the response was fantastic!

This morning, from 9:00, seven GoodGymers from Woking: Agathe, Harriet, Kirsty Luan, Melanie, Stephanie and Anne, made their way to one of Knaphill schools. They were responding enthusiastically to the cry for help thrown at them yesterday.

Armed with bright coloured paints, brushes of different sizes and clear instructions from Vikki, we all went to task. We enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere and the opportunity to catchup with each other’s news after the summer while some of us could show their incredible artistic talent.

There is still more work to do, but today’s results are very promising! I believe there was a mention of adding some butterflies, ladybirds and dragonflies… which are the names of the different classes.

Vikki’s leadership is exceptional and GG Woking has already promised to come back to finish the mural, paint the other walls of the Hive. We will also give a hand to Mark, Vikki’s husband, who is preparing the foundations for a summer house, on the field. It will be used by the PTA and the Football clubs. Muscles will be required to put the summer house up and more painting will be involved then too!

Thank you GG Girls for today’s un-bee-lievably rewarding mission!

Two GG Woking members met at one of the local schools to help painting one of their buildings.

Harriet comes from Goldaming, where they do not have a GG group yet. Anne ran/walked to Knaphill and back (total 12 kms). It was great to see Harriet again. Harriet is keen to do any painting task/mission we publish on our website and the last one was in Pyrford two years ago!

Vikki, welcomed us and explained that she had already prepared one of the walls where "the Hive" mural will be displayed. Our task was to paint the "skirting boards". We happily applied the brown stain on the wood, the rain did not really help in the process, but we did our very best!

Tomorrow we will concentrate on painting the mural designed by Vikki (see photo of “the Hive”). It will be a great surprise for the children when they start school. We will carry on with refreshing the walls of the building later on in September.

We hope a few more members of GG Woking will be able to join us tomorrow!

On a dark and wet night I got to the meet up point for our task, Brookwood Farm playground for some plogging and Rosie was already there and waiting. Once I got my high-vis and torch on I went to join her. Only a few moments later we here met by Harriet and then we were all set-up and ready for the task. As Rosie had notices much litter on the entrance of the park we all agreed to start form there and work our way around. We were met with litter in the most awkward locations, on one occasion, I almost got eaten by a tree to recover a lonely bottle of beer. Both Rosie and Harriet were sharp eyed spotting the litter so well. Before long we had cleaned up the entrance with litter and decided that we will head to the Playground and resume the plogging hunt there. As the night was getting darker by every minute we continued to scour the playground until we gone around the whole circumference of the playground and we decided to continue around the outside edge of the playground. From there we were amazed at much more rubbish there was shuttered around the outside that we didn’t see while we were in the play area.

Grabbing the litter through the grills of the park, competition started to increase and in the end there was a huge tussle for the last piece litter. We then continued to go around the edge of the playground but hit a boggy patch in the field!! We did well to quickly collect the letter there without getting our feet too wet and once the last piece was picked up and disposed of, we were all very happy that we were able to put the 2 bags of little that we collect, where it belongs, in the trash 😊

Realising the field was a bit too marshy to go for a run there, we all agreed that it will be fun to finish on a pyramid exercise with five different exercises, starting with 2, then 4, then 6, then 8 and finally to 10. And then back down again. The first exercise was star jumps, followed by alternating jumping lunges, followed by squat jumps, then opposite elbows to knees and the last exercise being side-lunges, left and right. We started the pyramid nice and slowly so that we could get use to the exercises and order they were in. This was fun as to start with we all struggled!!! All the way up to 10 but on the way down we found our rhythm and finished strongly.

Having completed and good plogging session and exercise routine that left us buzzing, we decided to have a celebratory drink for a job well done.

Firstly I apologise for the delay in the report - a quick trip to the doctors yesterday turned into a day in hospital.

On Wednesday evening we met at Pryford Primary School. Well done to Anne and Sharon for running to the task! It was a turn out for GG ladies - think we may have frightened off the men of GG?!

We were met by Tina at reception who showed us what the task involved. It was nice to have task indoors- it's been a while since we have been let loose with a paint brush. Our task involved painting the canteen area where the children have scuffed the lower area with their shoes. The first challenge though was to open the paint can.. it took all our strength and many goes with an arrange of tools but Harriet was successful and we could get to work. Its been a long time since seeing Harriet at a GoodGym task so it was wonderful to have you back. Also welcome back to Anne who has been away for a while visiting her family in San Francisco.

We all worked well together and fitted into our jobs roles nicely. The before and after difference was impressive.

It was also nice to receive a lovely thank you email in the morning after the task saying what a great job we all did and how impressed they were with the way we left things so clean and tidy.

Next week we will be meeting at Brookwood farm - this will either be a litter pick of a leaflet distribution, or even both!

Have a lovely week.