A great festive time at Stratford House, where we helped Age UK prepare hampers for elderly people that will be on their own this Christmas. We packed 70 boxes full of chocolates, biscuits, and gifts - and matching handwritten cards to go with them. Now they just need to be delivered!

This week we ventured into new territory with a brand new task, helping out Josie from the JQ Development Trust. Although it was a new task, we started in familiar territory, at our old home of 1000 Trades!

Today we welcomed Ahindra to his first involvement with GoodGym, thanks for coming and it was great to meet you, hope you caught the bug and manage to get involved again in the future!

We were joined by Josie who gave us a quick introduction to the project she is involved with and the types of things we can help out with in the future. From there we plodded down to Warstone Lane Cemetery, where we were joined by Adam who quickly got started in clearing the leaves for us to plant some Forget me Nots in a slightly sorry looking area of the cemetery following Japanese Knotweed extraction a few years before.

Once the tidying and planting was done, Josie gave us a quick history lesson of the cemeteries in the JQ and we helped to restore some graves to something closer to their former glory!

Another great project for GG to get involved with and hopefully there's plenty more to come!

Thanks!

Jonny, Adam and I joined the Canal and River Trust on Saturday to continue the job of removing trees, bushes and weeds from the canal towpath. When I was walking down to meet Beth and the Canal and River Trust, I noticed that a large part of our section of the canal had already been removed by the guys on Friday who had clearly done a great job, so well done guys!

After a short health and safety brief warning us about the dangers of needles (of which we found plenty) and leptospirosis, amongst other things, we got to continuing the job from friday.

We had an abundance of tools to use to make what seemed like a daunting task that little bit easier. By the time we had finished, we had made a massive dent in the job at hand, by clearing away a lot of bushes and even chopping down a couple of trees.

Well done to everyone and by continuing our good work alongside the Canal and River Trust, our section of canal will be looking lovely in no time at all.