Well done to all the GoodGymers who came along this evening for a fun mix of scavenger hunt, Christmas crafting and cake. Our official Christmas night out is tomorrow at the Off the Tap pub quiz, but this evening felt like a party to me! Maybe I've been to too many 5 year olds' birthday parties recently...

Of course there was some method in our madness. I will explain in reverse order:

The cake was to celebrate Claire's 50th good deed. Claire's first good deed with us was rescuing baby toads, her 50th was making reindeer, and in between she's done everything from planting oak trees to marshalling a Santa dash in fancy dress.

Congratulations Claire, we love having you in our group! A huge thank you also to Rachel, who made a fabulous chocolate cake AND a free from lemon drizzle.

The Christmas crafting was our task for the evening. We were making decorations for the first GoodGym tree at the St Luke's annual Christmas Tree Festival. The festival raises money for the church, plus their chosen charity, No 22, the Maidenhead and Windsor Youth Counselling Service.

The festival is also a great way for charities like GoodGym to raise awareness of their involvement in the community, and many of the trees (including ours) are donated to families in need after the event.

It is a really festive spectacle, and very much worth a visit while it's open to the public from the 8th to 10th of December. Click here for full details.

Many thanks to the Maidenhead Community Centre for providing us with a venue for our crafty task, and to the GoodGymers turned elves, who led our various crafting activities.

Nicola made sure we weren't flagging while we made bunting; Jess's snowmen were the stuff(ing) that Christmas dreams (and nightmares!?) are made of, and Sophie and Claire had us making reindeer. I Donner know how they were Blitzen so many! As the evening unfolded I also renamed myself origAMY, Can you guess what I was making!?

A special mention also for Georgeta and Sheila, who weren't with us this evening, but who have still made decorations for the tree. Georgeta has made a beautiful quilted star including the GoodGym GGs and Sheila has crocheted a gorgeous doll, complete with GoodGym t-shirt. I can't wait to see them on the tree!

And the Scavenger Hunt..?

Since the Community Centre was also our start location, there was no real need for a run or walk this evening, but I wasn't about to let everyone wriggle out of doing some exercise. Before we settled down to our creative gluing, cutting, folding, and tying, I challenged the group to a scavenger hunt. They had no more than 25 minutes to find and photograph as many things from my list as possible - including things like a dog, a snowman and a post box.

We formed two teams of walkers and two teams of runners and gave the walkers a head start while the runners warmed up. Teams devised their own routes and impressively everyone ticked off everything on the list and made it back to base on time, having covered 2-3km on foot. There were also some very creative photos taken along the way, and some entertaining chats with dog owners. I think next time I will need to make the challenge a bit trickier!

Thanks everyone for your contributions to a fun evening. If you would like to help hang the decorations on the tree at St Luke's, there is one space left on this community mission next Wednesday from 4-6pm. Do also check out the listings for all the group activities planned so far for December and January. Hope to see you soon!

12 GoodGymers were up bright and early for a task at Boundary Brook Nature Park. We split into two groups to tackle raking, and digging for our old nemesis - the bramble root.

Boundary Brook have won a grant to plant some different species of grass and create a 'living library' for people to come and learn about them. Hopefully there will now be room for more grass and less bramble!

There was plenty of random conversation about the horrors of children's tv, how we could probably have our own GG band by now, and all about badgers (How big are they? How do you catch them? Just how accurate is the Animals of Farthing Wood?).

We also had congratulations for Louise on her 100th task!

21, yes you read it correctly, 21 amazing goodgymers met at the Natures Haven Garden at front of Maidenhead Community Centre. Amy our lovely leader wasted no time in greeting us, introducing Claire C and Aleks from Nature Haven and explaining the evening’s plans before embarking on a well needed warm up session on this chilly November night.

The group divided up into a running and two walking groups, our destination was Waitrose where we donated to the Foodshare collection box.

Once back at the Community Centre the task was a continuation of our last visit, clearing more of a densely planted bank, so tools at the ready, muscles flexed, let digging commence.

Pretty soon there were whoops and cheers as root stumps were raised in the air in celebration as one by one they were liberated from the ground. As time passed numbers were randomly shouted out, 3,6, 8 !! these were the number of stumps dug out. The record was 11, and the dream team was Tony and Ben; there was nothing wooden about their performance!!

Bush-whisperer Kanika also deserves a special mention. She freed one stump by winking at it!

Mandy and Anne-Laure also worked ex-tree-mely hard in another part of the garden and after much pushing and pulling they became the proud parents of root baby twins.

Among us lesser mortals, moans and groans could be heard as we struggled to ease the root balls, who knew these shrubs had soooo many roots. Gillian was a trooper and never gave up, pulling and pushing at these pesky stumps.

And as our arms and legs tired we were rewarded with a snap and a pop, the roots came free, what a re-leaf!! another one bites the soil. We mustn’t forget all the work that clearing up gang did, depositing the roots and sweeping up all the debris.

All our hard toil was rewarded with very welcome cups of hot chocolate and toasted marshmallows. Thank you so much to Claire and Aleks for your kind hospitality.

With the happy satisfaction of completing the task, tummies full of hot chocolate and marshmallows and the faint odour of smoke in our hair we headed home. We wooden have it any other way!!