Seven Goodgymers helped with various jobs around Kate's Place in Florence Park. We moved some wood to make a "dead hedge" habitat, lifted some turf to plant some seeds, and weeded around trees. The main task however was transporting many many watering cans (and even a flexi trug bucket) full of water from the tap at Flo's cafe over to the trees and hedges that needed it after the dry spell we have had. Of course, at the end of our session it began to rain!

We spent a sunny Wednesday evening helping out at the Marston Community Allotment. We weeded bindweed and nettles from a no-dig bed (sssshhh, don't tell - we had to dig a little bit to get the epic roots out), watered all the planted-up beds, and shovelled and barrowed compost to top up one bed and fill a raised bed.

Speedy work from all involved!

This evening we returned to Boundry Brook Nature Reserve to do some woodland clearing.

After admiring the new mural outside the reserve we headed in to be greeted by the lovely Helen. Our tasks this evening involved clearing up silver birch logs from some recent tree felling, creating brush piles with smaller branches and generally doing a bit if a spruce and tidy of a couple of clearings.

It was a gorgeous evening and we set to work, rescuing earwigs and snails as we worked and enjoying the glowing evening light.

After an hour and a bit if steady work we had assembled a good stack of silver birch logs, debated whether we'd be any good a caber tossing and created a MASSIVE brush pile, slightly trapping John and Fred as a result!

After checking on the path to the bird-hide which we helped to create last year, we headed off to do our various different forms of exercise; the goodgymers had a riverside run and Helen was due at a Morris Dancing session. GLORIOUS!

What a lovely day to be out on the river!

Today we teamed up with the Falcon Boat Club to clean up the river and river banks between Donnington Bridge and Heyford Hill ring road bridge. We've worked together to clear litter from the river many times now, so we know we always recover a big haul, but it still surprises us every time JUST how much stuff we pull out of the river and off the banks!

Today was no different, with the canoe teams getting creative to float a drowned moped back to base, 2 trollies wheeled up to the road from under the bridge, and many many bottles and cans picked up. In sartorial news, the garment of the day was shoes - we found sliders, a pair of trainers, and several socks to go with them - but honorable mentions go to the buried coat and the pair of shorts.

Great work once again team - that was a brilliant amount of litter cleared up.

Welcome to GoodGym to all our new GoodGymers today: Adam, Dima, Muireann, Nazanin, Daniel, Deb, and Carmen!

We usually take the opportunity of the darker winter months to gradually work our way around the food bank giving it a thorough clean. We haven't been able to fit in with the food bank schedule for a couple of months, but with ITV due to film there tomorrow, tonight the diary was cleared for us to do an emergency clean.

We swept, we mopped, we wiped, we dusted. We sorted expired food, we threw out an unmentionable amount of black bananas, we even scraped food off the walls. Within an hour the whole place was looking much more camera ready.

Welcome to GoodGym James!