A small but perfectly formed team of GoodGymers turned out this evening, despite Storm Babet and traffic carnage doing their best to deter us.

Our quintet took on a litter hot-spot on the edge of Rose Hill, clearing the approach to the Littlemore underpass on each side of the ring road. It was smelly (discarded nappies), squelchy (rain sodden shoes), and very very soggy. Nonetheless, we filled several sacks with litter before the storm got the better of us.

Great work hardcore GoodGymers!

It was a chilly night for a litter pick, with winter starting to make itself felt, but we turned out in force at Rose Hill Community Centre.

Our litter picks in the area around the Community Centre and the estates surrounding The Oval are always highly appreciated by the staff at the community centre and the local Low Carbon group - we were even joined by a member of Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon group last night.

With quite a large area to cover we find it's best to split into smaller groups to tackle different streets - divide and conquer! We set ourselves an hour limit so that no one got completely chilled to the bone and scattered across Rose Hill, litter pickers and yellow rubbish sacks in hand. We got heckled by a local who appeared to think that we were the Council and should clean up the area more often (the big 'Community Litter Pick' stamp on our bin bags not seeming to give them the clue that we were volunteers), found masks, cigarette butts, hedges full of cans, and all the other usual suspects. Aladdin put us in a cheery mood when we got back to the community centre with his gold sequin shirt, very Pro photo taking, and appreciation for the clean-up job we'd undertaken.

Our litter picking conversations included possible updates for the GoodGym litter bingo cards (newspapers are out, wet wipes are in), whether squirrels really get addicted to nicotine from littered cigarette butts, and favourite festive treats. Clearly we need to be supplying panettone, cheese and biscuits, and mince pies at our Christmas 'do'!

What a lot of litter!

Helping Rose Hill and Iffley Low Carbon 17 runners, walkers and cyclists met at Rose Hill Community Center where Trev and Katherine from RHILC explained how we can help the environment by clearing up our litter.. or in this case Rose Hills!...

no strangers to mess the last time we were in Rose Hill in April we cleared an amazing amount from under the bridge Watch the video if you missed it!! Trev initially was worried there wasn't much to be picked on this Wednesday evening in November... how wrong he was!...

So splitting into group, we covered streets around the Oval, Rivermead Road, Spencer Crescent and Asquith Road, and the Southern Bypass (a little futher along that last time!). The estate is now looking spick and span but there is still quite a bit on the Bypass (why do people chuck rubbish from their cars? or even bag whole bags of rubbish or clothes and not take it to... a bin!!!)

Pant, yes! Shopping Trolleys, tick! Pumpkin, indeed.. Mog the forgotten cat, aww.... serial killer in the paper, aahhhhhh!!! we got a bit of everything! Thanks especially to the committed GGers who were stuck on the A34 on the way to the task.. no COPing out though and even Bethan and Lorenzo joined us in the end! Top picking commitment guys!

Welcome back Chloe and Jack on your second GG Tasks!

If you would like to know more about RHILC, or to get involved please do goto the website, sign up to the mailing list or let Trev know!

9 Goodgymers joined about 100 people to plant almost 600 Trees, which this week in total for the Oxford projects, will join 2,500 trees planed in various locations in our city! Woop woop and wow! :)

The trees we planted today were Oak, Wayfarer, Birch, Spindle, White beam, Hazel, and Cherry, and form part of the recreation field behind Rose Hill Community Center.

GoodGymers welcomed, dug, planted, moved Mulch.. “Mulch Ado about Nothing”, “It’s All About the Mulch ‘bout the Mulch, no trouble”! We watched the Nepalese Community in Rose Hill describe how to plant trees in their native language to those who didn’t speak English! <3 We also ate biscuits and drank coffee.. Ben joined us for his birthday.. Epic thing to do.. Happy Birthday Ben.. I believe he planted 15 or possible closer to 20 trees in the end!

Welcome to our new GoodGymers! Emily, Dylan and Welcome back to a few familiar faces great to see John with his young family. Sometimes other things get in the way of coming to GoodGym every week!! it was amazing to see you all.

Thanks all for coming, it was a frosty and sunny way to start off our Christmas build up and I hope these trees will be here for a good number of years for people to enjoy!

Welcome Grace. And welcome back from Patagonia Aoife These GoodGymers sure do get about!!

Leafletting

Not so many runners this week as it was wet wet wet, but we managed to get up to Rose Hill folded and delivered to about 300 houses (well 300 x 4 = 1200 leaflets!! eek!) for the Rose Hill Low Carbon group, Tree Planting, Repair café, Open Mic and The Christmas fair.

Trev almost lost everyone on the famous Oval Roundabout (I need beepers!).. everyone enjoying it too much.. We remained un-political in our leafleting despite timing, but carefully avoided houses, which perhaps had had a bit too much canvassing these last days!!!

Kudos particularly to Ben who not only won at Burpies, and is building up quite a substantial GoodGym streak, but made fantastic gingerbread Movember biscuits for us.. if you want to do Sponsor Ben Here

(Aoife commented that Ben was one of the Best GoodGymers!! She then modestly corrected that to ‘he’s certainly not one of the worst’!!) <3

We were a bit late home but well fed, thanks for coming everyone, see you next week or Tree Planting on Saturday!

With apologies to Munro Leaf for borrowing his story of Ferdinand the Bull and twisting it!

Watch this first....Ferdinand the Bull.

Once upon a time in Oxford there was a running club and their name was Goodgym. All the other running clubs in town would run as fast as they could without stopping, but not Goodgym. They liked to jog along socially and do good deeds. They had a regular haunt up in the East close to the Oval. It was a friendly community centre and they would run there regularly and help the community.

One day a parcel arrived from London containing the biggest, shiniest, red-est flag in the country. All the runners ran around full of ideas of where to pose with the flag, leaping and jumping and hanging off the monkey bars so the flag would be displayed to its best advantage. The runners knew that it was important to get a great picture to celebrate 10 years of Goodgym. So they went to their favourite outdoor gym equipment and posed around the monkey bars.

The community centre staff saw them and they shouted with joy. Here was the most useful running club of all. Just the one for the leaflet delivery for the National Careers Service! So they gave them leaflets and litter-pickers, and what an evening it was! Flags were flying, litter was being picked up, leaflets were delivered ... and all the lovely runners had the warm glow that comes from doing good.

First came the Anwen and Bethan with long grabby litter pickers and silly sunglasses. Next came Trev and Ben who ran around the streets at the fastest pace, then Tim and Julia and Isabella and Faruk working one way and another round the streets of Rose Hill distributing their leaflet cargo. Then came the ultimate pairing, the proudest of all — Sarah and Rachael with the Garland of Joy. Rachael glowed in the glory of the garland having run her furthest ever distance in the Round Norfolk Relay at the weekend. She was beautiful in the flowers, and bowed to all her admirers.

Leaflets delivered and litter picked the runners ran to the middle of The Oval and everyone shouted and clapped because they had done their Good Deed for the evening so it was time to run home. But not so fast. When they got back to the community centre and left the 2 sacks of rubbish for the bin and saw there was still light from a beautiful sunset in the sky they stopped for a moment and posed as a group for the ultimate Goodgym 10 years photo. They had red flag and litter-pickers, and bin bags and a Garland of Joy. The best of Goodgym.

And we definitely know the runners will be out again next week, running to another community group, doing another good deed, wearing the flower garland. They are very happy.

For those who ran and got involved in the conversation regarding Bull Fighting (red flag to a bull?) and Minoan Bull leaping, here is your Thursday inspiration: Minoan Bull Leaping.

HAPPY 10TH BIRTHDAY GOODGYM!!