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!

Last night 3 GoodGymera braved the British winter weather and helped Anita at Raggy Rd allotments with a wood chip spreading task and making a plot ready for harvesting

This evening we were helping a new task owner, Usman, from College Rd Allotments with a path clearance task.

We met directly on site after a much deliberated afternoon of 'is it on? is it off?' due to the horrendous weather we had. Luckily it was an all systems go type of evening.

Usman showed us the area that needed doing and off we went.... boy do stinging nettles sting!

With a bit of effort and back bone we soon had cleared the path. Next, we layed some cardboard down and covered it with woodchip.

We managed to get a good chunk of the path done before it got too dark.

Thank you all for coming this evening to help.

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.

This evening we helped Raggy Rd allotments.

Sandy and I met at our central meet up point of Salt Hill park whilst Agni and Peter met us directly at the task.

Anita our task owner was on hand to give us the task brief. She needed a basil tree cut back as it was creating too much shade for the plot underneath it; a rosemary bush needed digging out and two planters needed filling with new top soil.

Sandy and I got to work on the basil tree. We were quite surprised at how easy it was the cut back.

Peter got to work on the planters and filling them up whilst Agni helped in all three areas.

This is a great task which we all enjoy doing.

Each time we visit we see such amazing progress to the plots.