This evening we returned to the Warneford Hospital site, this time to help with their orchard - and to spruce up a few shrubs too - a double task!

Once we had weeded around a few shrubs in the main body of the site we ventured over to the orchard - some of us feeling rather relived to have chosen wellies as footwear! We were tasked with de-mulching some young trees to avoid rot, and gathering and picking lots of apples to be sent off to make delicious fresh apple juice.

We soon discovered that the vast majority of apples were REALLY high up! Apple picking baskets and Shati and Georgia's climbing skills to the rescue!!

It was a bit of a race against time with the evening drawing in but we managed to gather a considerable amount of apples, and maybe even nibble a few!

Welcome to Goodgym Georgia - thank you gor bringing your tree climbing skills!!

Now we're in December it was the perfect time for some Christmas decoration spotting, all got off to a festive start with "what's your favourite Christmas song?" as the ice-breaker question.

Of course, we weren't only getting Christmas decoration inspiration/envy, we were also delivering leaflets for The Porch day centre's winter fundraiser. The Porch Day Centre provide day-long support for homeless and vulnerably housed people wanting to move away from street-life. They focus on housing, health, wellbeing, education and employment, providing healthy food, practical help (such as laundry andhot showers), companionship, learning skills, work related skills and opportunities for development. Roger, who had asked is to help get the leaflets delivered, explained to us that they have to raise 85% of their operational costs through grants and individual gifts, and each leaflet delivered is worth around £2 to the centre.

Tonight we delivered over 700 leaflets, and hope that will translate to over £1000 for The Porch.

Congratulations on your 100th Good Deed Henry!

Well done on reaching the 10 Good Deeds milestone Andy:-)

Thank you for the homemade mince pies Matty - they were much appreciated.

2 Good gymers took the lead in Crossing the Oxford Half finish line in record speed, only to linger on for a further 6 hrs (cheering on the actual athletes crossing the line!) Many happy tears and a few wobbly legs were observed and supported to safety, with only a few requiering further assistance ; and all projectile vomit missed! Well done to all the runners on an epic sunny, abeit chilly, Sunday morning!

Well Raleigh partnership launch task dawned without any of the Raleigh goodies, but the sun shone and we did manage to get the discount code from Amy at Windsor and Maidenhead GoodGym, so we're chalking it up as a success anyway!

The task:
Makespace had asked us to do a thorough tidy of their canal-side garden and car park. We mowed (without breaking the lawnmower!), scraped, weeded, tidied, litter picked, chopped brambles, pruned weeping willow, and generally gave it a really thorough spruce-up.

Many hands make light work!

Thanks to everyone who helped out from GG here is the Run Report <3

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University parks parkrun Event #57 was another big one!
👋 513 runners and walkers complete the course. 147 of you were first timers to University Parks and 33 were first ever parkrun! Welcome all of you, Lots of you got BPs too 🌳Jess Buttigieg completed her 52nd different parkrun in a row today, making a year of parkrun tourism! Jess started her parkrun journey at the age of 18 in Australia and has clocked up a total of 242 parkruns! Follow her on instagram @parkrunnerjess 🥕Hello also to our vegan runner friends, who regularly run parkruns but today had a meet up at University Parks we hope you enjoyed it here! Also a shout out to Magdalen college school who brought a big group of kids, teenagers and staff to run, well done 👋 Welcome Ellie, who started her volunteer role with Mind at Parkrun today. She’ll be there to welcome service users who’ve been referred by Mind and to help signpost park runners to Mind services and support in Oxfordshire! Do go and say hi to her next time. Find out more www.oxfordshiremind.org.uk 🤩Thanks to all our volunteers this week, including support from GoodGym you are all amazing! If you would like to volunteer next week or in the future we always need more people, and many roles like bar code scanning can be done if you are a speedy runner as well as running in the event!
🌳Double Funnel – Thank you to everyone who is getting used to our double funnel, now we regularly have so many runners this is our normal, so if you are lucky enough to get a letter A,B,C, etc please hold it with pride as you start a new row of people!
🦆Thanks to everyone who helped with funnel duckers! These are people who enter the funnel and duck out (no quacking idea why?! sometimes to collect something like a coat, and sometimes because they don’t understand the format, there is plenty of time after you exit the funnel).. its really important once you enter the funnel to stay in it and get a token at the other end otherwise the times go wrong (and not just yours!), so if you don’t want to finish then please don’t enter the funnel, if you do want to complete the run make sure you follow it through! Thank you!
🏃🏾‍♀️Speedy runners – A reminder that we do not have priority over other park users, so although we love your speed, PLEASE watch out you do not knock anyone when overtaking, or indeed people who are in the park anyway. We understand on the second lap you will want to overtake slower walkers and runners but please do this with as much care and space as you can.
🌳Tokens – we had a fair few of you take tokens home this week 😭 please don’t do that! They live in the bucket at the end. If you have taken one by mistake please do bring it back next week. I you haven’t got a bar code but take a token don’t worry just put it in the bucket at the end Hope you all have a great weekend and see you again soon Report written by Run Director Trev 🌳 #loveparkrun

This evening we ventured to Botley to blitz the inevitable litter hotspots that build up and hide under the autumn leaves

A slightly chaotic start due to gridlock traffic necessitated chats about the weather and crisp sandwiches (always a good idea).

Once all were present and correct the garland of joy was presented to our newest and most unofficial member Miss Penelope! Thank you Julia for bringing her to meet us all!

We set out lights and litter-pickers in hand to tackle a few grot spots and amassed a large mountain of bags before our time was up. Items found ranged from the depressing (sharps, dealt with safely) to joyous (£10 given to Ben to take to the Halloween quiz), and the inevitable pants!

You are all wonderful and apologies again for my late arrival and stressful witterings!

Welcome to Goodgym Anja and Steve, we hope to see you again soon!!