"Reading brings us unknown friends."

"We read books to find out who we are."

"Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you."

"Books should go where they will be most appreciated, and not sit unread, gathering dust on a forgotten shelf, don't you agree?"

Portsmouth GoodGymers agree. Over 250 books were donated to numerous charities around the City, to bring joy & inspiration to new readers.

Matilda says it best: "Books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who live exciting lives."

A bit like GoodGym really.

Portsmouth GoodGymers searched at the back of their linen cupboards and their bathroom storage to donate 30 towels, of all colours of the rainbow.

The towels will re-stock the cupboards of the RSPCA's animal rescue centre in West Sussex, where pets receive care and treatment while waiting for their forever home.

Congratulations to Abby on achieving 50 Good Deeds! She decided to celebrate by lobbing her litter picker into the water and wading in to rescue it wearing only shorty wellies!

Jenny and Brian filled two large sacks to the brim with polystyrene, plastic and wood.

Val multi-tasked by litter picking, taking photos and talking excitedly to every passing dog.

It's only month two of the 2023 Tipner Challenge and we are already having an impact. Join us in March!

A new location for us today at Port Solent to clean the shoreline with the team from City of Sanctuary. We split into groups and started progressing along the shoreline collecting small bits of rubbish and logging them on the Jetsam app. We split into groups with one person having the Jetsam app so plastic and litter could be logged and photographed. Brian paired up with Scott and he found half a gardening fork that had been discarded after it had broken. Jo logged the rubbish on the app whilst Jenny and Vicki dug into the seaweed to find it. The seaweed was so dense that we all sank into it but thankfully didn’t get stuck whilst we were picking. As well as the large amounts of plastic wrappers, polystyrene, fishing line and rope we also added cutlery, retractable Stanley knife and plastic components from boats. We headed back to Scott’s car with the rubbish whilst Brian kindly offered to discard a large bag of rubbish and the broken fork.

Welcome back to Val, Jenny and Brian.

It was time for thermal vests and extra layers tonight... even Tony had his legs covered!

We started our litter pick round the BMX track but it was all frozen and pretty clean. So we went over the road to Foxes Forest and managed to find much more litter. All the usual suspects were picked up and we found some latex gloves so that almost counts on the clothing front!

Plenty of recycling was taken back to various green bins around the city and the rubbish all squeezed into one big bin bag.

Wilson, Jo and Katie did excellent work in the lighting department and Jen's head torch won the competition for brightest star in the sky.

To make sure no-one got hypothermia, we finished up after 45 minutes and went our separate ways home.

Thanks to everyone for braving the cold tonight, i think we did a great job! More good deeds logged for the January Challenge and a few extra kms too!

The sun came out for our social run!

John's Achilles didn't want to play so he took the lead as cheer squad and saved us a bench at the cafe.

Val, Judy (+Tess), Jenny and Brian took the 2k option with Tony and Vicki running the 5k. I also did the 5k option as pacer for my nephew!

We didn't manage to meet up with our new sign ups but hope they had a nice Sunday morning run/walk.

The coffee afterwards was definitely worth the wait!

Next social run is 20th March at Farlington Marshes. Sign up here

We took part in the first Portsmouth Plastic survey with Jetsam and University of Portsmouth.

We chose Milton Common as our survey point and the tide was out so we concentrated our efforts on the beach.

We photographed all the plastics we found for the survey. We found all the usual suspects (cigarette butt's, cans, bottles, food wrappers) as well as fishing wire, an onion bag, bits of packaging, extremely bad smelling half full/empty drinks cans, a pair of socks, a dustpan (??) and a rope wrapped in seaweed... Wrestling was the order of the day to free some of the seaweed and attached stones back to the beach.

We managed to squeeze all our findings into the bins in the area and Judy managed to rescue some recyclables to take home.

Good deeds done, we all headed off for various exciting Saturday activities!