4 Goodgymers met with a small group of Friends of Ray Mill Island (including four mini Friends) for some family friendly Island TLC.

The main job of the day was to widen the main path running in front of the playground and cafe. This involved digging away the earth at the edge of the path and transferring it by wheelbarrow to the compost area. At the compost area a couple of volunteers sifted through the soil to remove roots. The mini friends enjoyed looking for the worms and transporting them in the wheel barrow to a safer place.

The path team then moved some logs and branches to mark out the new edge.

There were lots of squirrels taking an interest in our work with one particularly curious squirrel who befriended Jen and one of the mini friends.

Nivi and Sheila joined other volunteers at Ray Mill Island on the damp and cold afternoon. Our task was to plant up a couple of beds, one of which had been cleared and dug-over by Goodgym last week. We found plenty of fat, juicy earthworms, an excellent sign, and by the end of the session all the plants were in their places. Sheila quickly painted a couple of signs politely asking the public to keep off the newly-planted areas, and we were done!

I met with a small working party from Friends if Ray Mill Island (FoRMI) for a bit of Island TLC.

We cut back a hazel tree and rescued the branches to finish the dry hedging at a later date.

We moved onto cutting back other overgrown trees and doing some general tidying up. We took it in turns wheelbarrowing the branches to either the compost area, the dry hedge area or the children's play area for repurposing.

FoRMI meet from 1pm to 3pm every Saturday and would love to welcome more GG volunteers.

Sol, Melissa, Nivi and Sheila joined other volunteers at the Friends of Ray Mill Island session. We were continuing to work on the Nature Area. Sol and Sheila starting hacking back the box honeysuckle to create a through-route while Melissa loaded all the cuttings into a barrow and disposed of it in the compost area. Nivi worked with others , developing the stepping stone area. Sol moved on to cutting back ivy from the trees while Sheila dug up the shrub roots. The team was really pleased with the progress. As we left, Sol spotted a Robin harvesting some juicy worms from the disturbed ground. Glad to be of service!

Jess, Sheila and Nivi went to help other volunteers with the Friends of Ray Mill Island clearing a rockery of very well-established and deep-rooted winter heliotrope. The aim was to get every little bit of root out. Easier said than done! We dug, scraped and pulled, moving stones to find whole bundles of roots underneath. By the end of the session we had cleared a large area and revealed the feet of the 'Vintage Boys' sculpture

Thought I'd start this report with a tongue twister.

Wow! What an awesome task to celebrate my 500th Goodgym good deed.

My favourite type of task: outdoors, lots of digging, with the sound of water nearby and kneeling and sitting on earth. We moved tree stumps, cut back hedges, uprooted ivy, I even managed to use my secateurs as a trowel....although as I said on several occasions I was missing my trowel.

Once over the shock of Amy turning up with my favourite cake baked by the amazing Georgeta, I was absolutely delighted with my unique hand decorated trowel medal...it is the most apt, and best medal I have ever received.

There is so much work to do supporting Friends of Ray Mill Island in transforming this beautiful spot by the River Thames so keep an eye out for future listings.

Thank you to everyone involved in planning my 'surprise' celebration and in particular to Georgeta and Amy.

10 Goodgymmers ran, walked and cycled their way to the beautiful Ray Mill Island on the shores of the Thames to help the Friends of Ray Mill Island sand picnic benches.

This fantastic new community group have taken on the task of looking after Ray Mill Island to help provide a more welcoming area for visitors. Goodgym have previsouly helped to paint the toilet block so a new mural can be painted to cheer the area up. Tonight the group were tasked with sanding the picnic benches to prepare them for a coat of varnish. This will help to maintain them and ensure they last for longer for people to enjoy.

We met task owner Nivi and other members of the Friends of Ray Mill Island group including new Goodgym recruit Dionne! (Welcome!. We were handed sandpaper and blocks and set to work. Although this sounds a simple task, it was no picnic. A great arm workout was in store and the benches began to spring into life.

After and hour of sanding and chatting 9 benches were ready for a new coat of varnish.

A Goodgym task would not be complete without a little fitness session. Tara had joined us and led us through a standing yoga session. This was a calming end to the evening in a quiet corner of Maidenhead.

No man is an island…but Ray Mill is one! We were excited to head to an arty task for our Wednesday night session this week, supporting newly-formed community project Friends of Ray Mill Island.

Our mission was to help volunteers from the project to paint the back wall of the island’s toilet block white. This provides a blank canvas for artist Virginie Colin, who will be creating a beautiful mural celebrating the diverse wildlife in the surrounding area.

In the glorious evening sunshine we were soon on a roll-er, and we enjoyed hearing more about the Friends’ plans for the island. As well as the painters, Diya, Kanika and Sara got to work on sanding down some benches that were in need of a bit of TLC. And a big shout out to Adam and Nivi, who arrived early and did some hedge trimming too.

A warm welcome to Julie, who joined us for the first time this evening and did a great job as part of the painting team.

If you’d like to find out more about what the Friends have planned, there is a Community Open Day on the island from 3-7pm on Sunday 23 June.

We can’t wait to see Virginie’s amazing artwork unveiled and follow the progress of this project.

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!