Last night a group of intrepid GoodGymers set off on an expedition to the frozen North of Oxfordshire desperately seeking their fortune in apples. Scrumping poles, litter picks and tarpaulins at the ready, they were a veritable trail of Dick Whittingtons.

Alighting in Lower Heyford to a warm welcome from the hardy locals they set to work filling their boots (crates) with apples from the heavily laden trees. With plenty to go around competition was not fierce, and team work prevailed between the ground crews and climbers. Various iterations of 'shake the branches of the tree and catch the apples in a tarpaulin' yielded 580kg of apples in a mixture of cookers and eaters. In a win for the Health and Safety executive (but a loss for science?) no-one got hit on the head by a falling apple Newton-style. Shona the unicorn-esque horse seemed happy to have company for the evening, and while the possibility of a ladder-based disaster was ever-present it never actually materialised.

The Cherwell Collective will be giving half of the apple haul to the Oxford Food Hub for distribution to various local food banks and larders. Some of the rest of the apple harvest will be turned into chutney by the Wonky Food Company and sold to raise funds for Cherwell Larder. A load of the remaining apples will be cooked up into delicious crumble to serve in the Cherwell Collective's Climatarian Kitchen, which is a food surplus cafe operating on Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays at Exeter Hall, Kidlington. They also provide culinary courses, meal kits, and flexible recipes to help the community reduce food waste and promote well being. They feed between 150 and 300 people per week. Finally, the Cherwell Larder will take the rest of the apples to distribute to users of the larder. The Larder operates very similarly to a food bank, providing food and other essentials to the community.

Noted for future apple picking: hard hats or bike helmets would be useful apple picking kit!

Thanks for the title pun Henry!