How lucky we were to be back at The Lighthouse Centre this evening.

Before setting to work with the lovely Dalton, we set off for a brisk walk around the local area. It was a quiet night this evening with the lovely Gill and Maurice. But as we always say, small, number, mighty, in effort.

Back at The Lighthouse Centre, we were greeted by the lovely Dalton who always gives us a gorgeous, welcome. Gill and Maurice set to work with the task of cleaning and sorting the kitchen. It was a rewarding job, and the shelves looked much cleaner and tidier once they’d worked their magic.

It’s always a pleasure to support this amazing church and organisation and tonight was no exception.

Thanks for having us once again, Dalton, we always appreciate you taking the time to meet us and allow us to do these jobs for you.

Well done, Gill and Maurice, another amazing task completed. You are awesome.

Have a great week. Lots of love. Nicola Xxx

Super small in numbers this evening but not super small in enthusiasm or effort! Maurice & I met outside the Lighthouse Centre for our walk just as the rain started! But…. it didn’t last long and within less than a few minutes of setting off, it had stopped! (Goodgym luck for you!). We had a lovely, brisk 2-mile walk, talking a different route than we have in the past when setting off from the Lighthouse Centre. It was a nice change. As always, we chatted the whole time and never ran out of things to talk about! And there wasn’t actually that much parkrun talk tonight, lol!

Back at the Lighthouse Centre, we were greeted by the lovely Dalton who never fails to greet us with a super warm welcome and big smile! He set us to work with some cleaning of the church. This is usually Dalton’s job, so we were happy to save him from his chores this week. We set to work with our dusters, multi surface spray and a couple of hoovers (one of which took all 3 of us to figure out how the attachments went back together!). Despite there only being the two of us, we were soon done (it did help that the place wasn’t exactly dirty 😉).

We had a lovely chat with Dalton before we left and even managed to secure another task for next week, which is ace!

Thanks for tonight Maurice and for being one of our amazing stalwarts!

Have a great week,

Lots of love Nicola xx

It was a rainy Wednesday evening as we all gathered for our weekly Goodgym fix. Rain and Goodgym generally don’t go hand in hand but tonight, the weather had other ideas. However, it didn’t deter us diehards from doing our pre-task workout (and besides, the rain wasn’t actually that bad to be fair!!). We headed out and did a brisk circular route – chatting and catching up on how each other’s weeks had been. It was lovely as always.

Back at the task, we were greeted by the lovely Dalton who gave us a warm welcome as always. The Lighthouse Centre does a lot of work to support the homeless and vulnerable people in our community. The work they do is invaluable. Adele, Karen, Kat, Maurice, Nigel & Nicola got stuck into the task of sorting out clothes donations. There must have been around 10 big bags of clothes, and it was our job to sort them into piles of men’s, women’s, bedding & accessories. As always, we had a good laugh as we sorted, with the obligatory modelling of clothes (by those brave enough, lol!). The underwear finds never fail to amuse us, lol!

It was lovely to be indoors on a bit of miserable night and it was lovely to be back at the Lighthouse Centre again, having not been there for a while.

Well done to all our amazing diehards for your continuous support and commitment to Goodgym, but most of all, your commitment to your local community. You’re truly wonderful.

Have a great week everyone.

Lots of love. Nicola xxx

I really do love these summer evenings…. Light nights and the smell of freshly cut grass. It’s even better when you’re enjoying it while out on a run with your lovely Goodgym buddies.

Tonight, we were small in numbers but what we lacked in quantity, we made up for in effort… didn’t we Maurice?. We were at the Lighthouse Centre tonight, helping to clean the kitchen. The Lighthouse serves many people in the local community, in various capacities and the kitchen plays an integral part in the work they do. They are due an inspection from public health (I think that’s the name) anytime now, so they just wanted us to give the kitchen a bit of TLC.

But, before getting stuck in, Maurice and I headed out for our evening run. We covered 2.25 miles (3.6km) in total. We headed down Alton Street to the park, did a reverse sort of a parkrun and then headed back. Maurice put me to shame as usual…. I looked like a beetroot upon our return!

Back at the Lighthouse and we got stuck in with our cleaning duties. We cleared all the shelving and gave it a good clean. With plenty of elbow grease, some water, cloths, and a couple of scourers, we set to work and soon had the job done. On first inspection, the shelves didn’t look too bad but when we emptied them of all the utensils, we found that they would definitely benefit from some Goodgym TLC.

We soon had them sparkling again and everywhere looked much brighter and nicer when we’d finished!

It was a lovely evening and Maurice and Dalton were great company. I enjoyed our chats… we covered everything from bitcoins, to Netflix!

Have a great week and look forward to seeing you very soon!

Lots of love Nicola xxx

It was a somewhat unusual evening. For the first time in 3.5 years, I (Nicola that is!) was the only one signed up for the task. We were due to be supporting the Lighthouse Centre this evening but given that I was only one pair of hands, I had a chat with Dalton and we agreed to postpone it until a later date, when hopefully we will have a few more sets of hands, lol!

So instead, I decided to do a litter pick and headed off to the gorgeous Queen’s Park. It was such a lovely evening. The weather was lovely; the sun was out and there was no wind. The park wasn’t busy, so it felt really peaceful. As I wandered around with my picker and my bag, I enjoyed the watching the geese, ducks, swans, and squirrels. There were dozens of squirrels, all very tame and on the hunt for food I suspect. Unfortunately, I hadn’t gone prepared, so they were disappointed and I was totally guilt tripped…... So, I vowed to myself that I’d go back on another evening with some nuts and give them a feast!!

I covered 2 miles in total as I wandered through the park and although it’s very well maintained, I still managed to fill a full bag of rubbish. Sad that it’s necessary, but I’m not sure how we can change people’s attitudes around looking after their own surroundings…

I really missed my Goodgym buddies this evening, but the park was beautiful and went some way to making up for not having my lovely Goodgym friends there.

Thanks for reading! Have a great week!

Nicola xx

Lighter nights are back!!!!

Tonight we were back at the amazing Lighthouse Centre to have fun sorting through bags of clothes donations. But before we got to work, we set to our weekly pre-task exercise session. We started with a brief roadside warmup (nothing too embarrassing in front of the passers-by I hope!).

Adele & Alison took a walk (is it mean of me to mention that they completely missed their turning because they were too busy nattering, lol!). It did tickle us when we passed them going the wrong way – delighted that they had a great chat though and they probably ended up getting a few extra steps in too! Annaliza, Maurice & I did a run – a circular route which took us around the park – we can’t wait for the park to be open later again so that we can include it in some of our runs. It was wonderful to complete our entire run in daylight – it feels like it’s been a long time coming! Hope your knee has stopped being twingey by the way Annaliza!

Back at the task we were, as always, warmly greeted by the lovely Dalton who welcomed us in and set us to work on the evening’s task. Tonight we had bags of donations to sort through. There were probably about 10-12 bags in total and we soon whittled our way through them (what’s the old adage…. ‘many hands make light work’. So true – Dalton said it would have taken him ages to sort through all those on his own.

There was a good selection of clothing, some really good donations and some that we had to send for rag. There was of course the usual giggles along the way when Annaliza came across some oddballs underpants (unworn and still in their packaging - thank goodness for small mercies!) and Adele a lacy red bra! My own haul didn’t present anything nearly as interesting, but we did spot some nice high heels along the way tonight – which led us to tonight’s pun – courtesy of Adele! Thank you Adele, you’ve saved me no end of time again this week! Genius!

Well done everyone – another amazing night’s work and lovely, as always, to spend the evening with you again.

Have a great week everyone! See you all next time!!

Lots of love Nicola xxx