It's our Birthday!

To celebrate GoodGym Oxford being 6 years old a bevy of GoodGymers got together at County Hall. Of course we had to include a Good Deed in our birthday celebrations (no Wednesday is complete without one), so we packaged up 3 boxes of old trainers to send to JogOn for repurposing and recycling. These had been collected up from friends, family and colleagues over the previous few weeks, saving them from going to landfill.

With 26 GoodGymers in attendance that task was complete in record time, leaving us the rest of the evening to chat over drinks and nibbles, reminiscing about the past 6 years and speculating about what the future might bring.

Our 6 year Good Deed count is 8038. Happy Birthday to Us!

The task: finishing painting the walls at Oxsrad.
The complication: all the blue paint had dried up, and the white paint had been speckled with blue, making it a delightful pale sky blue.
The next step: stand around eating birthday cake for Vicky's birthday while we see if there's a solution.
The solution: give up on the idea of painting, layer up, and go and do a litter pick instead.

Thank you everyone for being adaptable!

On Wednesday we rounded off a January full of Good Deeds with a litter pick in Headington. In an exciting development we were joined by a journalist from ITV, who was filming a piece on GoodGym which will show on the 6pm news in a few weeks' time. So, alongside our expert litter picking, this week we got to polish our public speaking/acting skills. Cue some 'fake' running (there was real running too!), performative litter picking, and expert handling of hecklers while being interviewed by Ben.

Filming complete, we picked up the pace on our litter picking and made sure we'd done a thorough clean up of Gipsy Lane before we had to call time on the session.

Welcome to GoodGym Stephen!

Our intrepid team of Quizzers ventured to the Dodo Pub's newest Oxford venue, the Slow and Steady. The quiz followed the usual word patterns, palindromic answers, a music round, and a picture round. The bonus challenge to create a campaign post for a new political party revealed some hidden artistic talents and a dab hands at the strategic use of glitter. Unfortunately the whole thing took over three hours to finish, and no amount of pizza and Ben's birthday cake could make a night bus look appealing. But, I am reliably informed by the hardy few who toughed it out that we finished in a very respectable 3rd place.

There is some interest in getting a team together to tackle Puzzled Pint (https://puzzledpint.org/city/oxford-uk/) but it isn't bookable so people will need to solve the riddle to find the location and chance it.

We usually try to get to West Oxford for a litter pick early in the year, and despite the ongoing challenges of accessing the Botley Road, we headed there last night for a clean up.

We split into 3 groups and allowed ourselves an hour to blitz the trash. Given the cold weather we found a surprising amount of discarded clothing (wouldn't you notice that you'd left your coat on the cemetery gate?!), as well as a bags full of the usual suspects (cans, bottles), and more unusual items (a whole block of cheese, part of a car bumper, MANY Christmas trees, a French dictionary).

All in all, a good amount of rubbish got picked and bagged, leaving the area looking a little more loved.

Welcome to GoodGym James!