Tonight saw 9 fabulous members back at The Lighthouse Centre. We always love being there with Pastor David and Paul.

We had an important job to do tonight and that was setting the room up ready for the Christmas Meal for the homeless members of our community. It’s a big occasion as it’s the first indoor meal since lockdown #1. The Lighthouse Centre have been serving all their meals in a takeaway style outdoors during the pandemic, so it means such a lot to be able to offer a warm sit down meal indoors (albeit in a reduced capacity to comply with covid guidelines).

We cleared the room by moving sofas, tables, chairs, boxes and bags etc to make space for the tables and seating. We covered the chairs and tables with nice cloths and decorated around the edges with tinsel to make it look festive. We hoovered and we mopped to give the room it’s final bit of sprucing up before the big event.

As the saying goes - many hands make light work - and that is always the case where GoodGym is concerned! We had a lovely night in fabulous company as always but most importantly, we have done something good to help serve our local community this evening.

Fun, fitness, friendship and feeling good!

Thanks so much for having us tonight ‘The Lighthouse Centre’. We hope everyone that comes to enjoy a meal has a lovely time ❤️❤️

Our first week back after lockdown #2 and our second task of the week! We also welcomed lovely new member, Sheila who is 80 years young! ❤️

It was brilliant to be back with the gang again as we all made our way to local charity, My CWA. My CWA supports victims of domestic violence and we’ve been working with them recently to help with sorting and organising their donations.

Tonight we did more organising of the Christmas gift donations in preparation for families coming in tomorrow. Families come to select gifts to help make Christmas that little bit brighter.

We sorted gifts, we sorted chocolates and we sorted Christmas Eve boxes. It was a lovely evening, in great company as always. It was also very touching to see the generosity of our local community.

Thanks for having us My CWA and thanks to our wonderful GoodGym members for being so fabulous as always ❤️

On Thursday, 4 members made their way down to Motherwell to help complete the task of sorting school uniform for the uniform exchange.

Motherwell has collected huge amounts of uniform for schools across the area and they needed sorting into the appropriate pile for each separate school

It was a fun and productive morning spent in great company. Motherwell are all set to start distributing to families now that the sorting is complete!

Great work guys. What a team! ❤️

This morning, 2 awesome Goodgymer's made their way to the food bank at St.Paul's in Crewe to help move some items of furniture.

In addition to the food bank, St. Paul's sell used furniture to help bring vital income into the charity.

Furniture sales have been suspended due to coronavirus, but now that restrictions have been eased, this is something the centre can now start to focus on once again.

John & Maurice did a sterling job of helping to move and organise the furniture. St. Paul's were delighted and thankful for the help. Well done John & Maurice. You Rock!

9 Runners made their way to the new Wishing Well/Goodgym veggie plot to make a start on the exciting community project.

The sun shone all night! Right up to 6pm the rain was lashing down with really strong winds, then right on time the sun came out! That's the luck of the GoodGymer's for you!

We decided that we are going to build 4 raised beds, no digging needed, just placing the beds on top of the grass. We were lucky to have a visit from Helen at Incredible Edible to help us with the planning. Helen is going to mark out the beds for us and the awesome Nigel will work out what materials we need.

In addition to the allotment planning, we did other tidying again tonight. Those cheeky weeds had come back again, so we

• tidied the path again
• weeded the paving at the entrance
• tidied up the allotment area and restored the ‘original features’ - found the raised bed of the old herb garden and around the fruit trees
• litter picking around the centre - collecting 2 big bags of rubbish!!

It was a really productive evening and as always, great fun in great company!

Lovely words from John about tonight's task:

'Most physically demanding and most impactful mission to date!! Loved it. Excellent turnout and great community involvement. We must all do our best to help our communities'.

15 Runners made their way to the task either by running, walking or cycling (one or two of us may have sneaked in the car but that was either due to injury or bringing our own tools).

This evening's task was an awesome one! It saw the residents and the runners come together to improve the outdoor space of Mavor Court, a local residential block looked after by Guinness Housing. We pruned, we raked, we dug, we cut, we chopped, we bagged, we dragged and we swept. This task really did epitomize the saying 'many hands make light work'. What we achieved in an hour and a half was amazing!!

Our evening was made all the more enjoyable by Kenny, the amazing Guinness Representative. What a breath of fresh air! He encouraged us, made us laugh and couldn't thank us enough for all our hard work. And not forgetting the wonderful residents who came and also got stuck in. It was lovely to meet new people and all pull together to do something good for the community. Once the area has been completely cleared, grass seed will be planted, new garden benches are going in and the area is generally having a bit of a face lift to make it a space that can be better utilized by the residents. We can't wait to see the end result and we can't wait to be back with you again next week.

Also, a huge welcome to our newest member, the lovely Karen! It was great to see you come and join in on your first task last night. We hope you had a great night and we hope you'll be back for more!

And on a final note, a huge thank you once again to Jazz for all the amazing fitness sessions during lockdown. You really have been our saviour - not just physically but mentally too! You've kept us all connected and sane!!

10 GoodGymmers ran, walked and cycled to come together to spread a bit more GoodGym magic in Crewe. Our mission was to make Crewe a cleaner place to live for local residents and make the arrival into town more welcoming for visitors.

Starting from Crewe Alex FC to cover local streets, car parks and around the railway station, we picked at pavements and burrowed in bushes to collect 10 big bags of litter. Just amazing what a difference many hands can make to the area in a short time.

Highlights of the evening: Being together and working together as a group again (a ‘loveliness’ of GoodGymers), and a lovely surprise of piping hot chips courtesy of Benny’s, the local chippy. Very kind gesture and very delicious!