Make Space for Life had lots of apple trees to prune at the Community Orchard, so they asked for some help from GoodGym. Sarah , Viv and Anne-Laure joined Fiona on North Town Moor. Together with other volunteers we had a quick lesson on pruning apple trees from Taskowner John, and were let loose on the trees. We snipped and lopped the branches, trying to maintain an open shape and cut back anything that was too thin to bear the weight of the fruit. A quick coffee break and re-fuelled by biscuits, we returned to our task. We all learned something and will have the confidence to try it out on our own trees in the future! John was grateful for our help and we hope to be invited back in the future

Thames Hospice is running a fund-raising campaign in the summer called 'Trunks Across the Thames' and they put out a call for people to make elephant-themed items which can be sold in pop-up shops. Not a typical GoodGym task, but 8 GoodGymers took on the challenge to release their creative side. And boy, did they surpass all expectations! Give them a wide brief, and it's amazing what people came up with! Jess was first out of of the blocks with some beautifully cross-stitched cards, and Hannah crafted some fantastic resin keyrings. Angela had a crafting evening making some fun felt elephants and even found some elephant bunting. Viv re-purposed some old football-themed pillowcases to make our largest contributions. Sheila tackled a variety of techniques, producing knitted and sewn soft toys, badges, and some zippered pouches made from elephant fabric scavenged from a Googym task for the Green Skills Library. Georgeta produced some beautifully mounted photographic prints of elephants she had made friends with in Indonesia. Carys brought out her artistic side with drawings of elephants and Amy made some cute origami elephants from which she made some beautifully crafted and original cards. I was so impressed with the time, enthusiasm and creativity which everyone put into the task. Jess from Thames Hospice says a huge big THANK YOU!

Well done to everyone who helped tidy their streets and parks; we've had a good run of January Friday litter picks. Feels like we could keep going though, judging by the amount of litter we all seem to find, wherever we are...

No despair though. The Power of One is not to be underestimated! We keep doing our part, things will improve!

There may be litter everywhere but these GoodGym-ers aren't willing to give up! Well done to everyone who collected bags and bags of litter off their local streets 👏

4 coal tits, 6 sparrows, 2 robins, 2 grey doves, 1 blue tit & 4 pigeons

Well done everyone for supporting nature this weekend. Remember to upload your findings to the RSPB website, when you get a moment. There's a live leaderboard; with two million birds recorded so far..... what will be the final tally?! Full results will be published in a few months time. Thank you for getting involved, I hope you enjoyed your birdwatching.