What a night! A fantastic 20 Goodgymmers turned out to support Alexander Devine and their Easter Fundraising campaign and to celebrate 5 years of Goodgym Windsor & Maidenhead!

The evening was split into two parts…….our task and our party!

Part 1: Chick-stuffing! Hannah and Nicole from Alexander Devine provided us with stacks of chocolate eggs and knitted chicks! We had to stuff the chicks with the eggs and then add little tags so people knew who the chicks were supporting. There was a wide variety of chicks with added hats, bows and even bells! Each group found their own way of getting through the stacks of chicks and there was a whole variety of ideas to ensure the labels stayed round the chicks necks securely.

We managed to stuff and label ~550 chicks, smashing last years numbers! These chicks will be distributed to local schools, shops and businesses where they will be sold and the money will go to the Alexander Devine Children’s Hospice Service. This is a crucial resource for families with children who have life-limiting or life-threatening conditions. They provide support during the hardest times and ensure parents and siblings can make precious memories.

Part 2: Party time! Once we had got our fill of chick-stuffing it was time to celebrate 5 years of Goodgym in Windsor & Maidenhead! Everyone was given a coloured medal indicating their team and they gathered together the items beginning with G they had brought with them, and had to come up with a team name and a story about their mascot. We had Green-hatted, disco loving Gizmo, a couple of galivanting Gary’s, Goodie who enjoyed Grapefruits and golf ball collecting and Georgetta the gardening goddess!

It was then on to the games! Each one tenuously themed around our Goodgym tasks! First up was our love of the community allotment represented by potatoes in tights thrust at small posts, a game of skill and accuracy! Next we celebrated the Goodgymmers themselves, with ‘Pin’ the medal on the Goodgymmer, this involved blindfolds and mini mascots and a lot of loud encouragement! Of course we could not leave out our most dependable task; litter picking! As if by magic a heap of litter swept into the room and needed clearing, involving mini high-vis and litter pickers! Our final game was a well contested round of musical chairs….and we know about sturdy chairs as we have mended many at the community centre.

A party is not complete without cake, and we are lucky to have some great bakers in our group! Whilst we tucked in Amy encouraged us to think about our goals for the next Goodgym year….maybe a milestone to reach, a distance to run or trying our hand at social visits. An opportunity for us to step outside our comfort zone knowing our fellow Goodgymmers are backing us all the way!
We also took the opportunity to celebrate our combined and some individual achievements from the last 5 years and Amy gave us some incredible stats for the last 5 years: - 7267 Good Deeds completed by 438 Goodgymmers! - 1674 group sessions and 184 social visits! - Travelled 56,744kms! - Cheered each other 34,795 times!

We should all be really proud of ourselves, whether we were there on task 1 or tonight was the first, the difference we have made, and will continue to make in our community is incredible. 😊

Well Done Team! Here’s to the next 5 years!

Happy bird-day to us! This week marks 4 years since we launched GoodGym in Windsor and Maidenhead and it was brilliant to see a record number of GoodGym chicks and chaps at our celebratory group run/party. This evening's brood included 25 of us, the biggest number since launch night back in 2020.

Our evening was a fun mix of team games and an eggcellent task: filling knitted chicks and bunnies with chocolate eggs for Alexander Devine Children's Hospice Services' Easter fundraising campaign. As one GoodGymer from team 'Diya's Darlings' put it, we helped with 'reverse births for our four birthdays'!

A warm welcome to Didem and Amy, who were joining us for the first time. I warned them at the start that this 'group run' might not be 100% representative of our typical Wednesday evening, but maybe it was the perfect introduction to the weird and wonderful stuff we get up to?

There was loads of laughter, silliness and cheering, we did some walking and running round the park, we used litter pickers and hoops, hi vis and gardening gloves (in our relay game) and there was a lot of chocolate (although this time we didn't eat it as was part of the task). With many hands we blitzed the task super quick and made a difference for a local charity. There was also quite a lot of fancy dress and a healthy dose of competitive spirit.

Just a 'normal' GoodGym session then!

Something we don't normally do at GoodGym is have epic games of GoodGym themed Pictionary or 'Guess the GoodGym beneficiary' quizzes, which we did enjoy last night. However these games gave us plenty of opportunity to share stories about what we've been doing for the last 4 years, so hopefully it was a nice overview for newcomers as well as an opportunity for everyone else to reminisce.

The chick stuffing task was a cracking task, partly thanks to task owner Yazmin being so organised and bringing everything to the community centre for us, and partly because the chicks and bunnies were SO CUTE! Huge kudos to the army of skilled crafters, including a team of GoodGymers, who made these little characters.

Now you shouldn't count your chickens, but we couldn't play 'guess the number of chicks' without a count, so Yazmin and I risked it. The grand total was 356, which is worth a fantastic £1068 to the charity.

At the end of the evening I tallied up all the points from the various games and the final scoreboard read:

2 Awesome for this 30 points (although I regret not awarding Jess points for her amazing Victorian child meets washer woman fancy dress, so maybe that number should have been higher)

The Mighty Ducks 40 points

Diya's Darlings 49 points

The Regal Bunnies 58 points and the win! This team really shone in the Pictionary and pun rounds.

Having said that, I really think everyone who came along this evening (and who has contributed to our last four years) is a winner. We've now helped over 90 charities and community groups, venues and projects in our local area. We've done 5,375 good deeds in our local area, including 625 visits to isolated older people.

Winner, winner, chicken winner!

7 Goodgymmers answered the call for volunteers to knit or crochet Easter chicks or bunnies, which will each be filled with a creme egg and sold in aid of Alexander Devine Children's Hospice. At the time of writing, 29 have been completed, with maybe some more on their way before next week's deadline. Each will be sold for £3, meaning that we will have contributed at least £87 to this worthwhile charity. Well done to the team of Clare, Claire, Gillian, Jess, Nicola, Rosie and Sheila. Egg-cellent work!

On a freezing cold morning, Clare, Sol and Sheila made their way to Windsor to help marshal at the Santa Dash in aid of Alexander Devine Children's Hospice. It was an early start, gathering before it was light, but we were welcomed with hot drinks and a friendly group of volunteers. We had been asked to come looking Christmassy, and we all filled the brief, and Claire certainly did not disappoint, coming dressed in elf leggings, snowman hat and santa glasses. She looked fabulous and was nicknamed by one of the young runners as the Funky Outfit Lady! After a briefing fron Tai, our Taskowner, we were split up into groups, each responsible for marshalling 1 km of the course. We were assigned to the stretch along the Windsor Castle walls under the leadership of Sally. We put the signs out and walked our section of the course, deciding where to place the marshals. Our biggest concern was keeping the runners out of the way of the tourist groups queuing to visit the castle (or was it the other way round?), and a very narrow section due to some walkway resurfacing works. Some discussion with the castle staff resulted in the tourists being let into the castle grounds earlier than usual to relieve the pressure. Eventually the first of the runners came through, and we encouraged them along with clapping and cheering as they toiled their way up the hill to the castle and down the other side again (and helped keep us warm too). It was quite a sight, seeing them all in their red Santa suits, and the tourists cheered them on too. There were lots of families taking part, and some faces we recognised - Goodgymmers Amanda and Vikie and their families, and maybe others we didn't recognise, hidden under their Santa beards! 400 or so runners later, we could leave our posts and make our way back to the finish. Well done to everyone that took part