With light evenings comes the return of tasks in Oxford's green spaces, and one of our favourites is Aston's Eyot. Tucked between the Iffley Road and the river, the Eyot was a rubbish dump in the 19th Century, but it's now a thriving nature reserve managed by the Friends of Aston's Eyot.

Wednesday's task was nettle removal. Scything and pulling the nettles allows light to get through for wild flowers, and removing them reduces the richness of the soil, which wild flowers prefer. This should all help increase the biodiversity of the area. Scything is always a fan favourite at GoodGym, so there were plenty of volunteers for that task. Henry very competently assembled the new scythe, and Axelle did great work pruning back an elder tree which was getting a little thuggish. Some of the GoodGymers were lucky enough to spot 2 muntjac deer on the way home - it's always surprising and delightful how much nature can thrive yards from busy city streets.

Great work team!

Welcome to GoodGym Emma and Ines.

This week we made our second trip to Bayards Hill Primary School to help with the progress of their garden. The aim is to have a functioning garden so that the children can learn about the life cycle of plants and understand how food is grown. Armed with various tools and with one eye on some VERY threatening clouds we set to work weeding a huge pile of soil, rescuing some tulips in the raised beds, amassing a petting zoo of snails and assorted other bugs, redistributing some daffodil bulbs ready for next spring and topping up some planters with de-weeded soil. Many hands made quick work and we thankfully finished just as the rain started, it was a soggy run back to base though!

A huge pat on the back everyone: we made it through the winter! The clocks change this weekend and it'll be return of light evenings from next week.

Ovada are a non-profit gallery space with limited funding and a small staff team. Car park hire is a key source of income that enables them to run events, exhibitions of socially engaged work, and an education programme where they offer a number of subsidised and bursary places.

With only a small staff team it is hard to keep on top of maintenance, so they called in our GoodGym flash mob to get their car park area ship shape.

Bundled up against the spring showers we litter-picked, shifted rubbish out for collection, weeded, and pulled up nettles (achieving the first nettle stings of the year).

In the hour before the light faded we got the area looking a lot better and less nettley. Now we just need some dry weather for the mud situation to improve!

We have eyes and ears everywhere, and this week it was Axelle's turn to direct us to the litter hot spots of West Oxford. After a pleasant jog the back route to our rendez-vous point we exchanged podcast recommendations as this weeks ice-breaker. For your listening delight here are the GG Oxford Top of the Pods:

• Adam Buxton
• Who trolled Amber Heard
• Gardeners World
• Just one thing
• Dungeons and Daddies
• Changes by Annie Mac
• The rest is history
• My favourite murder
• This podcast will kill you
• The rest is entertainment
• Taskmaster the peoples podcast
• Blank check
• 28 ish days
• Ukraine cast
• Bad women
• Things fell apart
• How to fail
• Duolingo Intermediate French

Then on to the more serious business of clearing up the trash. It's always quite interesting the different litter we find in different parts of town. This is an area full of retail parks, so although we picked up the usual food detritus we were surprisingly low on booze cans and bottles this week.

Welcome to GoodGym Andy! Always a joy to have Django the pup along, and glad to have made Botley a little safer for his paws.

We don't litter pick for the free pizza, but it sure helps!

Last night we set out to litter pick the Marston cycle path along Marston Ferry Road. It's an area which has been reported to us in the past so it has been on our radar, but this was our first attempt to clean it up.

With a full team of GoodGymers we were able to divide into 3 teams and fan out into different areas of Marston to litter pick. We sent a group out along the Oxford Road, another over to Marsh Lane, and the 3rd group headed up the cycle path. Although during our initial recce the area had seemed fairly clean, we were soon picking up plenty of fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, drinks cans, and even someone's airpods (which we will try to reunite with the owner if they ever dry out). Ellie's group win GoodGymers of the week award for litterpicking outside the pizza shop (very mucky) and getting gifted a large pizza as thanks - they were even kind enough to bring it back to share with the whole group!

Welcome to GoodGym Kim, and also Remy the pup!