Five goodgymers met at Upton Court Park and walked around the edges and lesser known areas to pick litter on a sunny spring morning. Two sacks were filled and the park left a better place. It was great for everybody to take time out of their busy lives and have a chat and improve the natural environment.

Six smiley Goodgymers set out from Salt Hill Activity Centre in the sunset, putting their best foot forward to deliver leaflets to local homes about Food Cycle. There was lots of chat and banter, and lots of optimism about the clocks changing soon - and excitement about getting out together in the light for fitness activities and group tasks.

Six volunteers met at Upton Court park to litter pick the car park on a beautiful sunny morning. This was followed up with a muddy walk to Eton where we were joined by Abdul making us the magnificent 7. Jean ran back while the rest of us grabbed coffee and cake before the return walk to Upton Court Park.

Six 'good gymers' met in Upton Court Park on a windy morning to litter pick the green gym and car park areas before walking into Eton. This was our first walk of the year so it was good to catchup and share our news whilst getting some much needed fresh air. Some left us part way to continue their walk, Jean declaring she'd leave us at the church! A welcome coffee was had in Eton and a brisk return walk to Upton.

Ho ho ho how we have missed a group task at Stoke Park Active. Thank you Clare for arranging this task for us… we had great fun.. for those who missed it… Yule be sorry

We made our own way to the task where Clare was waiting for us to do some Gangsta Wrapping of gifts for the Stoke Park Active members. Once we knew what we were doing there was Noel time like the present to get stuck in.

It was great to have Didem visit us from neighboring Windsor and Maidenhead GoodGym. Hope you enjoyed your trip to Slough.

There was a hive of activity as everyone merrily crackered on with their wrapping and chatting.

Once we finished there was a lovely caroling of happy birthday for me (for tomorrow)… and of course there was cake for everyone - well it would have been rude-olph of me not to bring any..

But wait there’s myrrh

Clare had a secret Santa up her sleeve with a snowball fight!

She divided us up into two teams then had us then beat each other with balls… you snow the drill!

What a wonderful way to finish off 2024 of GoodGyming

Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas and see you in the New Year

Four good gymers met with members of Stoke Park Active to litter pick Upton Court Park and walk to Eton. It was a chilly and misty morning and a brisk walk was needed to keep us toasty. The trees were stunning and Jean posed gracefully with a swan gliding by.

This evening we helped The Global Book Trust with a book sorting task. It was great to have Merlyn, Jean, Peter and Ruth along tonight with a surprise visit from Ricky!

We helped Jillian move some donated clothes bags off the stair well and into the store room and then helped to clean a few crates of books whilst Peter got handy with some shelves.

A bitter sweet session for me as we ended my very last group session as the Area Activator for Slough.

Ending my Eras tours

You have to be a Swiftie to know what this means!

After 6 years of leading GoodGym Slough group, this evening I hung up my 'group run trainers'. It's been an epic 6 years and I've loved every minute of it all, but alas, it's time to get my Monday evening's back and spend some time with my little Swifties.

In true GoodGym stylus...I pen my very last report...so here are my Era's

The Beginner Era (2018 - 2019)

I first heard of GoodGym when I was a volunteer Run Leader for Run with Active Slough. My council contact aka Ciaran told me of this wonderful opportunity where you combined running with volunteering in the community. My absolute dream job! And it really has been that...I'm so very proud of everything we achieved.

The first session was huge!! We had 29 people in attendance including my sidekicks Nisha, Sut and Chrissy. I roped Mo into coming to help be the front leader whilst I back marked and we all made our way over to Cippenham stream to help clear it out for the Salt Hill Stream project. We first met Ricky here who did minimal running in those days (and now look at him...chipping away at the World Marathon majors!).

I lost a person that day (but it was ok as he never actually signed up...so I didn't need to write a heart break song about our lost relationship)

One person told me he was enjoying the session but would get more done if I actually helped - never saw him again!

But the rest of you kept on coming .... Making us a force to be reckoned with. Our very first session and very last session had Ruth and Ricky in attendance!

We even won an award in our first few months of operating..with Get Berkshire Active!

The Getting Stronger Era (2019 - 2020)

As we moved from our first year to our second, we kept on growing. We had people run past us on Monday's then come and join us the following week - remember Mabu and Antonio?

Ricky, Sut and Darren were our trusted Run Leaders and we had Jen, Sandy, Nisha, Harsha, Jenny, Ruth, Pam and Sara as task force members helping to log tasks and find new ones.

By now we were established and the original year lul of finding tasks was well and truly over. In fact it was hard to fit every task in!

The Covid Era (2020 - 2021)

Well that bugged us didn't it!

I still recall an email from Tim (GG member and Public Health at Slough Council), asking me what we were doing to mitigate the spread of covid within our group run sessions. What's covid I thought? Isn't is that the oversees issue which we don't need to worry about?? Clearly it wasn't. It was very much everyones issue.

So as we halted all group sessions and went into isolation from running, from work, from school...my phone started ringing non stop! I had community groups wanting to form alliances to set up a Slough Covid response unit; Slough CVS needing volunteers to help support those isolating and GoodGym HQ wanting to see what we could do to help the community.

So whilst home schooling 3 kids, we were getting busier and busier with shopping tasks; pharmacy presciption collections; wellbeing calls and then the vaccine centre! Our good deed count went through the roof.

Vacc-ation from isolation

Well, that was one way to see your friends! We soon had a GoodGym shift at the vaccine centre. I was leading the Friday 7am to 2pm shift during the first 2 rounds of covid shots! With many other GG'ers helping out on Friday’s and over the weekends, it almost felt 'normal' again to stand next to someone! (and not on a zoom quiz night!)

Thank goodness every era ends! We were glad to see the back of this one

The Return of the Mac Era (2021 - 2022)

The new normal was anything but normal. We were still going strong with lots of Community Missions being logged and the return of Monday night Group Runs, but somethings never went back to normal.

We were still going strong and getting new tasks in and logged and responded to. Jean didn't need to run laps in her garden anymore! And races were back!

Remember Ricky and Harsha's London marathon event and the support we gave them around Windsor, Slough, Iver, Hillingdon? It was like they had their very own entourage handing them drinks, gels, helping them on pit stops! Cheering them on every corner... Even Eluid doesn't get that treatment!

The Up and Down Era 2022 - 2023

We met some amazing new members in Medhi, Mohammed, Eshan, Hamid. When life throws you lemons - make lemonade! Boy did these guys try to make that lemonade. We fought the Bibby (and won...) But alas, each one of them had to leave Slough for differing reasons.

More new task force members in Helen, more new task owners and more new members - life was looking Good(Gym).

This era was a bit wobbly though....we'd sometimes have 10 plus attendees and other times only 2... sometimes that mattered other times it had little impact… But we were still a big hit in the community.

The Mixed Emotions Era 2023 - 2024

We turned 5 in 2023 and it was around this time that I thought about hanging up my GG trainers...but I cleary loved my role too much as it took me till after our 6th anniversary in 2024 to finally decide that my time was up.

As the solid team we are we helped Jean through a horrendous experience and kept her sprits high.

We won another award with Slough CVS this time. And we have another shortlisted nominee for Novembers awards (Go Jean Go)...

I'm immemsely proud to say that since we started in 2018, we have clocked up

4917 Good Deeds

It's a numbers game...

As I finish off this report and still give you all my commitment to stay on as a task force member, I hope that we can still continue to grow GG Slough.

I hope we can attend more sessions; list more sessions; find new task owners; shout about what we do on social media and continue to wear our tee's with pride.

GoodGym is a community and we are all part of that community....let’s keep those good deed stats high! and keep our numbers up...

Jen is fighting hard for 500; Helen is pounding the 100 target and Peter and Abdul are a force to be had at nearly 50....keep smashing those targets guys. I'm still very much chasing the 1000 good deed count (long way to go yet).

So from the bottom of my heart - THANK YOU - to each and every one of you that has been on this amazing journey with me - but lets keep traveling together!

This evenings group run task consisted of two people but sometimes less is more!!

Jean and I managed to finish off the last patch of overgrown weeds on bed number 5 just before the sun went down

This was our task at the allotments until next year due to the dark evenings. It was also our penultimate group run as next week I finish as the Area Activator next week.

Did you see the sky tonight? And the beautiful full moon? Experts say its another Northern Lights experience tonight and I think they might be right!

Tonights task was to deliver leaflets for the Food Cycle group who are offering hot meals every Monday lunchtime at the Salvation Army on Stoke Rd. Our task owner Natalie asked if we could highlight the service to locals living nearby.

So that's exactly what we did.

It was so lovely to meet Merlyn on her first ever task with us. And what a lovely gentle first task it was. We met at the Salt Hill Activity Centre at 6:30 and by 6:45 we headed off on a nice gentle walk to Stoke Rd where we met Devajani.

Soon we divided off into smaller groups and started working our way around Grays Rd, Littledown Rd, Belgrave Rd, delivering all the leaflets we had.

Within 45 minutes we had delivered them all.

Thank you all for getting involved in this task.

We had to change the task this evening from a group run to a community mission as the allotments have no lighting and with it getting darker earlier (what's up with that!!!!! So not ready for the darker nights)... we needed the extra day time hours to do the task safely...

So we all made our own way to Cherry Orchard Allotments and got to work on plot 5 bed 4. Thankfully the soil was soft this time (last month is was rock hard!).

It was great to see the progress the task owner Home Start Slough have made on the plots..

We spent an hour chatting, digging, pulling the weeds and just catching up on life.

As the light faded we stopped and got ready to leave.

Next week we have a new task owner (Food Cycle Slough) who would like their new food service promotion so we will be delivering their flyers for them around Salt hill and Baylis area.