Yesterday, Anne and Harriet started to prepare the work to paint a beautiful mural “The Hive” on the wall of one of the school buildings. Vikki, the volunteer who organises the work for the school, was not sure whether teachers and/or parents would be able to come and help with the painting. Well, you just had to ask GoodGym: the response was fantastic!

This morning, from 9:00, seven GoodGymers from Woking: Agathe, Harriet, Kirsty Luan, Melanie, Stephanie and Anne, made their way to one of Knaphill schools. They were responding enthusiastically to the cry for help thrown at them yesterday.

Armed with bright coloured paints, brushes of different sizes and clear instructions from Vikki, we all went to task. We enjoyed the relaxing atmosphere and the opportunity to catchup with each other’s news after the summer while some of us could show their incredible artistic talent.

There is still more work to do, but today’s results are very promising! I believe there was a mention of adding some butterflies, ladybirds and dragonflies… which are the names of the different classes.

Vikki’s leadership is exceptional and GG Woking has already promised to come back to finish the mural, paint the other walls of the Hive. We will also give a hand to Mark, Vikki’s husband, who is preparing the foundations for a summer house, on the field. It will be used by the PTA and the Football clubs. Muscles will be required to put the summer house up and more painting will be involved then too!

Thank you GG Girls for today’s un-bee-lievably rewarding mission!

5 Woking GoodGymers, Agathe, Anne, Julie, Melanie and Rebecca, made the most of the warm and light evenings while they are still around, to do a littler picking run.

It was a great opportunity to catch up as a couple of us have not completed a mission for a while. We also explored a new route some of us had not been to before while picking up litter next to a stream.

We cleared up the usual crisp packets, vapes and drinks cans but also a sock!

Plogging is meant to be one of the least favourite GoodGym tasks, but here at Woking we love it. It makes our community a better place, prevents more litter being dropped, shows GoodGym doing tangible good in public and a good chance to have a chat. It was nice to be thanked by people walking past.

If you could not join us this time, we might see you next Wednesday? In the meantime, have a great running week.

As I arrived at Woking leisure center some keen GoodGymers were already there waiting. As I grabbed a cheeky espresso from the cafe, GoodGymers Jemma and Julie joined me. As we were catching up, Anne sent a message letting us know she had arrived at the entrance with the litter pickers. Anne, Jemma. Agathe, Julie and I waited for one last GoodGymer. As we were all keen to get into some 'plogging' action, we each spread out and started to canvasing the entrance to the leisure centre and a little bit of Woking park, quickly making a big difference.

Olalekan, kindly let us know he was running a little behind, so I offered to hang back and let the others to stretch their legs and get started. They headed of towards Egley Road and I did some squats to stay warm. It did not take too long before Olalekan arrived and we were off. As I started to run out of the leisure centre, ran down Westfield Avenue, past the football grounds, seeing little bits of littler, here and there. I realised I had gone the wrong way!

After a quick call to Anne heading the main group, I had just turned off too soon so Olalekan and I back tracked and went up along Wych Hill lane. Back as a group we continued the great team work as we worked along Egley Road, and filling our first litter bag, awesome work from Woking GoodGymers 😁

Starting on a new bag we entered the cul-de-sac along Hawthorn Road, a magnetic license plate was found along with lots of cans and bags. As we came closer to Hoe Stream we knew it wasn't long to reach the leisure centre. As we had finished filling the second bag we added that to the bin.

We thought it would be a straight run along the stream back to the leisure centre, but realised that toads had taken some of the path to migrate to their breeding pond! After observing them with our torches, we, obviously, were careful to avoid them!

Thanks go to Agathe for the lovely drawing she made to illustrate our task.