Maidenhead Town volunteers came together to water flowers that had been planted previously, including some litter picking and grafiti clearing.

The task was to attend three locations with the flower beds and find a local business to ask for tap water access. Some of the team focussedon watering. Some of us started litter picking along the way.

We ended up at West Street Car Park and did some grafiti clearing in the underpath to the Kidwells Park.

We circled the town centre and return to the Library cafe for a cup of tea. Great Saturday morning well spent!

Angela, Sheila and Jack gathered at Nature's Haven, alongside other volunteers, to continue the creation of the new mini orchard. Sheila and Angela fancied some physical work, so set about digging up some Choisya roots to clear the ground ready for seeding with wild flower seeds. Meanwhile Jack helped Roger pull ivy off the building. We admired the bee hotel that had been made that afternoon by a volunteer team from Centrica. Nature's Haven is living up to its name! We took a break for a cup of tea, some cake and wished Jack a Happy Birthday 🎂

Sheila joined a volunteer session led by the Maidenhead Town Team to brighten up the town centre. The task was to fill up the planters in two locations. We started with the planters on West Street. Plants and compost were provided by Braywick Heath Nurseries, and with 15 of us, we soon had them planted up. We then moved on to Providence place, and again the planters were soon filled with colour. Lots of passersby stopped to express their thanks for making it look much more cheerful. It was great to meet all the other volunteers and also may have done a bit of Goodgym recruitment in the process!

We made a return visit to Nature's Haven to add some Goodgym enthusiasm and muscle to clearance work that is going on to make way for a new mini-orchard. We welcomed Aidan to his first ever Goodgym session, and what a welcome addition he was to the group. Nicola was sporting her new 100 Deeds Tshirt, and looked great! Our taskowners Claire and Aleks were on hand to give us instructions for the evening. One group tackled moving a huge pile of branches, which had been cut down from the old shrubbery, to an area at the other end of the site, where they can be picked up for disposal. As Jen commented It was a perfect demonstration of how many hands make light work. Just as they were congratulating themselves on clearing the area, Aleks found them another enormous pile to clear. But they weren't daunted by the task, and by the end of the session that pile had been cleared too. Great work! Meanwhile another group set to, digging the shrub roots out of the ground. Not an easy task, as they all seemed to be interconnected underground, and the roots were tough. Undeterred, the team battled on, and every so often there were little whoops of triumph as another root ball was lifted from the ground! As the light faded we called it a day, and were treated to hot drinks and toasted marshmallows round the firepit. We love coming to Nature's Haven! A very satisfying task and we look forward to a return visit, perhaps to help plant the orchard?

10 Goodgymmers met at the Community Centre for tonight’s chair mending task.

We welcomed first timer Mark to the group by introducing ourselves and naming a film starting with the first letter of our name.

The group then headed into the park for 3 rounds of meet and retreat. Runners set off clockwise and the walkers anticlockwise, when they met they did a different exercise each time (jumping jacks, squats and lunges) and then retreated back the way they came. When they met again they confused themselves and went the opposite way to the last time and repeated!

Once all 3 rounds were completed the team headed back into the community centre to tackle the task. There have been multiple chair mending tasks this year but for Adam, Anne-Laure and Mark it was their first time and so Jack, our chairperson for the night, gave a demonstration and the team set to work.

Mark, Gillian, Rachel, Adam and Anne-Laure tackled fixing the screws onto the seats, whilst Scarlett, Matthew, Amy and Jess worked on attaching the seats to the bases. Jack and Amy then caused confusion on which way to turn the screwdriver – clockwise or anticlockwise? And was it a different direction depending on how you were looking at it??! I’m not sure this ever got resolved!

Lots of screwing, poking, pushing and pulling later the team had fixed 10 chairs, saving the community centre another whopping £2250 on purchasing new ones!

Just in case we weren’t dizzy enough by this point we then played a round of musical chairs where the chairless person came up with a chair based exercise for everyone to complete. Of course we completed the rounds both clockwise and anticlockwise and were serenaded with a series of ‘chair’ based songs such as ‘I’ll be chair for you’ , ‘Reach out (I'll be Chair)' and of course music from Cher herself!

Jack and Sheila helped out at the wonderful Nature's Haven. After Goodgym did such a great job removing shrubs, work continues to prepare the ground ready for planting the new fruit trees. We dug over the ground, removing all the bramble roots we could find, and there were many to be found! Jack's triumph was to dig out a shrub stump, with a little help from Claire. There is plenty more to do before the trees arrive!

Question : What do you get if you let 19 Goodgymmers loose on cutting down a shrubbery at Nature's Haven? Answer: A huge pile of branches that need shredding. Gillian, Jack and Sheila turned out the next day to help deal with the aftermath. Gillian and Sheila fed the branches into the shredder, reducing them down to small pieces that could go onto the compost heap. Jack helped with empty the trugs of shreddings and helping dig the cleared area with some other volunteers. The shreddings are likely to be used the mulch the new fruit trees once they are planted. The circle of life!

Thanks to everyone who joined in our group run yesterday evening to help Nature's Haven, and a very warm welcome to newcomer Caroline. Big thanks to Tony for this evening;s report:

A small Windsor and Maidenhead council grant to the Nature's Haven and the Community Centre on Marlow Road is being used to plant a dwarf orchard and enhance the front of the building.

Before work got underway to clear the area for planting the Good Gym crew were able to start the evening with some fiitness first. With so many Good Gymers we used the Zebra crossing to access the Cresent, this resulted in an instant Google map worthy traffic jam, red of course.

With Amy leading from the other side of the road there was much leg waving, arm flinging, and some runs up the hill, dim street lighting ensured that personal best times were won by not necessarily getting to the top.

Then the digging and cutting started most people got bushed by the bushes, and stuck in the ivy, unfortunately the ‘wild boar rent a digging app’ was down so we had to do all the work not just MBWA. Eventually the triffids size stumps were overcome to leave vast creators of good planting soil.

Soon it was time to enjoy some fire pit moments with hot drinks and giant marshmallows so big that they caught fire really easily. Skill and pan ash was needed to stop them being charcoaled.

We understand that the Community Centre are currently looking for a press and some barrels...

MBWA (Management by Walking About )