Four good gymers met with members of Stoke Park Active to litter pick Upton Court Park and walk to Eton. It was a chilly and misty morning and a brisk walk was needed to keep us toasty. The trees were stunning and Jean posed gracefully with a swan gliding by.

This evening we helped The Global Book Trust with a book sorting task. It was great to have Merlyn, Jean, Peter and Ruth along tonight with a surprise visit from Ricky!

We helped Jillian move some donated clothes bags off the stair well and into the store room and then helped to clean a few crates of books whilst Peter got handy with some shelves.

A bitter sweet session for me as we ended my very last group session as the Area Activator for Slough.

Ending my Eras tours

You have to be a Swiftie to know what this means!

After 6 years of leading GoodGym Slough group, this evening I hung up my 'group run trainers'. It's been an epic 6 years and I've loved every minute of it all, but alas, it's time to get my Monday evening's back and spend some time with my little Swifties.

In true GoodGym stylus...I pen my very last report...so here are my Era's

The Beginner Era (2018 - 2019)

I first heard of GoodGym when I was a volunteer Run Leader for Run with Active Slough. My council contact aka Ciaran told me of this wonderful opportunity where you combined running with volunteering in the community. My absolute dream job! And it really has been that...I'm so very proud of everything we achieved.

The first session was huge!! We had 29 people in attendance including my sidekicks Nisha, Sut and Chrissy. I roped Mo into coming to help be the front leader whilst I back marked and we all made our way over to Cippenham stream to help clear it out for the Salt Hill Stream project. We first met Ricky here who did minimal running in those days (and now look at him...chipping away at the World Marathon majors!).

I lost a person that day (but it was ok as he never actually signed up...so I didn't need to write a heart break song about our lost relationship)

One person told me he was enjoying the session but would get more done if I actually helped - never saw him again!

But the rest of you kept on coming .... Making us a force to be reckoned with. Our very first session and very last session had Ruth and Ricky in attendance!

We even won an award in our first few months of operating..with Get Berkshire Active!

The Getting Stronger Era (2019 - 2020)

As we moved from our first year to our second, we kept on growing. We had people run past us on Monday's then come and join us the following week - remember Mabu and Antonio?

Ricky, Sut and Darren were our trusted Run Leaders and we had Jen, Sandy, Nisha, Harsha, Jenny, Ruth, Pam and Sara as task force members helping to log tasks and find new ones.

By now we were established and the original year lul of finding tasks was well and truly over. In fact it was hard to fit every task in!

The Covid Era (2020 - 2021)

Well that bugged us didn't it!

I still recall an email from Tim (GG member and Public Health at Slough Council), asking me what we were doing to mitigate the spread of covid within our group run sessions. What's covid I thought? Isn't is that the oversees issue which we don't need to worry about?? Clearly it wasn't. It was very much everyones issue.

So as we halted all group sessions and went into isolation from running, from work, from school...my phone started ringing non stop! I had community groups wanting to form alliances to set up a Slough Covid response unit; Slough CVS needing volunteers to help support those isolating and GoodGym HQ wanting to see what we could do to help the community.

So whilst home schooling 3 kids, we were getting busier and busier with shopping tasks; pharmacy presciption collections; wellbeing calls and then the vaccine centre! Our good deed count went through the roof.

Vacc-ation from isolation

Well, that was one way to see your friends! We soon had a GoodGym shift at the vaccine centre. I was leading the Friday 7am to 2pm shift during the first 2 rounds of covid shots! With many other GG'ers helping out on Friday’s and over the weekends, it almost felt 'normal' again to stand next to someone! (and not on a zoom quiz night!)

Thank goodness every era ends! We were glad to see the back of this one

The Return of the Mac Era (2021 - 2022)

The new normal was anything but normal. We were still going strong with lots of Community Missions being logged and the return of Monday night Group Runs, but somethings never went back to normal.

We were still going strong and getting new tasks in and logged and responded to. Jean didn't need to run laps in her garden anymore! And races were back!

Remember Ricky and Harsha's London marathon event and the support we gave them around Windsor, Slough, Iver, Hillingdon? It was like they had their very own entourage handing them drinks, gels, helping them on pit stops! Cheering them on every corner... Even Eluid doesn't get that treatment!

The Up and Down Era 2022 - 2023

We met some amazing new members in Medhi, Mohammed, Eshan, Hamid. When life throws you lemons - make lemonade! Boy did these guys try to make that lemonade. We fought the Bibby (and won...) But alas, each one of them had to leave Slough for differing reasons.

More new task force members in Helen, more new task owners and more new members - life was looking Good(Gym).

This era was a bit wobbly though....we'd sometimes have 10 plus attendees and other times only 2... sometimes that mattered other times it had little impact… But we were still a big hit in the community.

The Mixed Emotions Era 2023 - 2024

We turned 5 in 2023 and it was around this time that I thought about hanging up my GG trainers...but I cleary loved my role too much as it took me till after our 6th anniversary in 2024 to finally decide that my time was up.

As the solid team we are we helped Jean through a horrendous experience and kept her sprits high.

We won another award with Slough CVS this time. And we have another shortlisted nominee for Novembers awards (Go Jean Go)...

I'm immemsely proud to say that since we started in 2018, we have clocked up

4917 Good Deeds

It's a numbers game...

As I finish off this report and still give you all my commitment to stay on as a task force member, I hope that we can still continue to grow GG Slough.

I hope we can attend more sessions; list more sessions; find new task owners; shout about what we do on social media and continue to wear our tee's with pride.

GoodGym is a community and we are all part of that community....let’s keep those good deed stats high! and keep our numbers up...

Jen is fighting hard for 500; Helen is pounding the 100 target and Peter and Abdul are a force to be had at nearly 50....keep smashing those targets guys. I'm still very much chasing the 1000 good deed count (long way to go yet).

So from the bottom of my heart - THANK YOU - to each and every one of you that has been on this amazing journey with me - but lets keep traveling together!

This evenings group run task consisted of two people but sometimes less is more!!

Jean and I managed to finish off the last patch of overgrown weeds on bed number 5 just before the sun went down

This was our task at the allotments until next year due to the dark evenings. It was also our penultimate group run as next week I finish as the Area Activator next week.

Did you see the sky tonight? And the beautiful full moon? Experts say its another Northern Lights experience tonight and I think they might be right!

Tonights task was to deliver leaflets for the Food Cycle group who are offering hot meals every Monday lunchtime at the Salvation Army on Stoke Rd. Our task owner Natalie asked if we could highlight the service to locals living nearby.

So that's exactly what we did.

It was so lovely to meet Merlyn on her first ever task with us. And what a lovely gentle first task it was. We met at the Salt Hill Activity Centre at 6:30 and by 6:45 we headed off on a nice gentle walk to Stoke Rd where we met Devajani.

Soon we divided off into smaller groups and started working our way around Grays Rd, Littledown Rd, Belgrave Rd, delivering all the leaflets we had.

Within 45 minutes we had delivered them all.

Thank you all for getting involved in this task.

We had to change the task this evening from a group run to a community mission as the allotments have no lighting and with it getting darker earlier (what's up with that!!!!! So not ready for the darker nights)... we needed the extra day time hours to do the task safely...

So we all made our own way to Cherry Orchard Allotments and got to work on plot 5 bed 4. Thankfully the soil was soft this time (last month is was rock hard!).

It was great to see the progress the task owner Home Start Slough have made on the plots..

We spent an hour chatting, digging, pulling the weeds and just catching up on life.

As the light faded we stopped and got ready to leave.

Next week we have a new task owner (Food Cycle Slough) who would like their new food service promotion so we will be delivering their flyers for them around Salt hill and Baylis area.

Nice to have a few goodgymers out on a bank holiday Monday for a bit of doing good and getting fit.

It all started as a nice evening task. Our run part today was actually a strength based fitness session which we did at the end of our session.

The park itself was pretty eventuful this evening. The play areas were full of children enjoying themselves, the main park was full of people playing football and cricket, the families were out having picnics and then there was us... litter picking up behind everyone.

Tonights hoard found us a ready salted crisp packet with a use by date of 2019! It was hidden away in the deep dark depths of the bushes.

Cutting hedge technology?

Speaking of bushes... Abdul found a kitchen knife in the ones adjacent to Bath Rd. Luckily no signs of blood! We reported it to the police but were told to just dispose of it!

So we did our best to cover up the sharp end with cardboard then double wrap it in bags before 'safely' disposing of it.

As we continued our litter pick we found a gun!!!!

But don't worry... the only thing shooting out of this one was water...

We disposed of that safely too! Some serious trouble shooting going on tonight!

On a lighter note, there was a lovely wedding ceremony taking place on the green outside the Karahi restaurant.

Cant resist a good slam

After collecting 5 bags of rubbish we ended the session with some resistance band exercises followed by kettlebell and slam ball sets.

Thank you to everyone for coming along this evening.

Next Monday we will be helping Raggy Rd Allotments. Hope to see you there.

OG's to Newbies and everyone else in between

It's our 6th birthday ... I don't feel 6 years older than when I first started doing GoodGym! Maybe it's the GG vibe that keeps us young?!! But what keeps us young is all the love we get from being in this group. And OMG I am blown away that sooooo many of you came this evening to help celebrate our 6th birthday! I really was only expecting the 10 that signed up to be there so when I saw another 10 mysteriously appear behind the church doors...it was like a devine intervention! Thank you to you all for making the effort to come along tonight.

Five going on Six

This past year we have as always achieved so much. We won an award at the Slough CSV #OneSlough Awards for our Innovative Ways for helping the community. We celebrated Jean's 90th birthday. We've had new task owners like Global Education Trust and Raggy Rd Allotments as well as our usuals. We've formed new friendships. We've had new members from the refugee community join us and sadly we've lost a few too. We battled the Bibby (and won!). Ricky finally got his 100th!. Jen hit 450 plus!; Ruth served her century (tonight); Sut soared to 400; Pam ploughed to over 370 and Sara smashed out over 260, Sandy succeeded with nearly 230 and Helen hacked out 77 heading towards her 100th! We karaoked at Christmas; have been frequent flyers and litter heroes and had allot of fun digging around. We've networked and insta-lly promoted GG as soon as the task has been done. We Beat-the Boat but still have The Big Half, Berlin and Vitality to smash!

There is always so much going on in the small yet compacted town that is Slough. And we've collected over 100 bags of rubbish around Slough since our last birthday!

We started the evening doing our usual. Meeting up Upton Court Park and making our way down to our task location of St Mary's Church (with the little surprise at the Church). Our task was to do a bit inside and a bit outside. Inside we had Sandy, Abdul, Roisin, Ruth and Pam sweeping, dusting and wiping whilst everyone else were outside either litter picking or cutting back overgrowth. With our usual grace we got through the tasks fairly swiftly, leaving enough time for cake....

But as with any special event we did have a twist.

Goodlympics

I don't know about you but I love the Olympics and watch as many events as I can. So whilst I was watching the ladies Rugby last night I came up with the idea of doing our very own Olympic events. Luckily I have 3 very eager helpers in my household who designed some of the games, drew out the signs and even made us an Olympic flame

It's never good to be too prepared

At home, I had prepped a sheet of paper outlining each person signed up (the good ones who signed up!) with a partner and a little Olympic style game. But when you get 10 others turn up (the bad ones for not signing up..but oh so good to see them!), I had to throw my paper away and improvise..

So in the end we had:

• Runners Beans We had Sara, Pam, Gauri and Meera on bean bags races. Pam showed so much grace as she eloquently balanced the bean bag on her head whilst walking round the war memorial without it falling off her head even once! Gold standard right there;

• N'Sync were Jenny ,Sandy, Ruth and Roisin on a synchronized swim routine. And wow how good were they! They could (just maybe) give Tom and Noah a few tips??;

• The Happy Hoppers were Harsha,Keira ,Chrissy, Agnija, Jen and Devajani. They gave us an entertaining minute of their show jumping skills using litter pickers! What style; what class!;

• Bean Poles were Abdulaziz, Peter, Ricky and Jean on bean bag throws. Ricky took an early lead closely followed by Abdul, but Jean stole the show with her sideways throw!

Each team displayed excellent execution, flare and skill. Team GB doesn't know it's missing some key players from Slough over in Paris

Flaming 'ell

We ended the night with the Goodlympic flame being passed from member to member as it makes it's way (slowy...might take it 4 years) to LA. Great solo efforts by all!

Ruth's 100th

Huge well done to Ruth on achieving her 100th Good Deed tonight! Ruth has been a founder member and supporter of ours since we started and we love having her along whenever she is free. Well done Ruth.

And then there was cake! Thank you to Helen for baking such delicious cup cakes and to everyone for being such good sports in all my mad games.

Thank you all so much for making another birthday event an enjoyable one.

This evening we were at Salthill park doing a litter pick task. It never fails to amaze us on how much litter this one park alone generates! Even though we collected 4 bags on Sunday there was still so much to do tonight.

Whilst we waited for everyone to get to the meet up point outside the activity centre, we started on the car park with our named session.

Whats my name!

So the task was to see if we could find litter that spelt out our names..

Agnija found actimel; gum and nails

Jen - using her full name found - Juice; exciting things; novelty toy; napkins; ice lolly; Fanta; exotic things; ribena

Pam aka Parmjit found Plenty of plastic, rubber balloons; ice cream wrapper, juice cartons

Peter found Paper, plates, playing cards, tickets, rappers (lots of pees; no e's and a phonetic way for spelling wrapper!)

I found a mayo wrapper and a napkin!

But the overall winner was Jean who managed to spell out her first name and surname!

Juice; Egg shell in egg cup, Air freshener packet, Napkins

Water; Apple core , Tissues; Toys; Spoon

Well done Jean!

All these items filled 6 bags! and we only covered the car park and play area.

Next week is our 6th birthday which means there will be cake. Please do come along

It's July! yet we battled with a heavy heavy downpour this evening just as Jean and I were driving to our meet up point.

We were discussing if we were going to walk or run the 1.5km to the task when suddenly out of nowhere the sky turned grey and it started pletting it down!

With messages rolling in from the rest of the team who had signed up asking if we were aborting!

Abort abort abort!

We turned to plan B which was for Jean and I to drive to the allotments and wait for a break in the weather and hopefully get a bit of the task done...

Plan C it is

With no break in the weather... we resulted in having a lovely chatty catchup before calling it a day! Plan D is to reschedule for another day!

This evening we were helping Jillian at The Global Trust Bookstore to sort through the piles of donated books.

Before setting off from Salt Hill Park we welcomed Urmila on her first GoodGym session - a very warm welcome!

With Pam, Keith and Urmila walking the 1 mile distance, they set off whilst Jean and I carried on with the warm up.

Soon we had set off too. Jean was on fire tonight! I told her to set the pace and run at her pace then walk whenever she wanted to... we ran nearly all the way! Great to have running Jean back

Not all books are created sequel

Our tasks were to just sort out the books. But the books were everywhere so we were bound to get a little confused.

I helped to work out the sub tasks with task owner Jillian and we set Jean and Keith the naughty corner to sort out the fact from the fictions!

They did a remarkable job clearing out the corner into some kind of order!

Once upon a time

Kam and Pam had the job of sorting out the kiddies corner. Kam was on all the reference books whilst Pam had the pre schoolers!

Urmila and I came down to help after an aborted clothes sorting task!

We soon had crates of books in the correct piles

Great job all round everyone!