Tonight we were off once again to meet Karen and her Pitsmoor Pickers crew. A new member had decided to come along for the ride too, make sure to giveYoseph a cheer!

We headed out from the Showroom on a relatively short run up to the meeting spot from where the evening's litter picking was to commence. Waiting for us and raring to go were Karen's team of 5 litterpickers. There were some new faces and some familiar to us. Bags, litter-pickers and hoops were distributed amongst us and then a plan of action was quickly devised. We would walk to the top of the Rock Street where there was a rubbish hot-spot, then make our way back down the road, picking on the wing. Annie kindly offered to keep an extra bag on her so that we could all put any cans that we found in it to later be recycled by Karen for cash to go into the litterpicking kitty. The area, thankfully, was not as bad as we were expecting; maybe lots of the rubbish that was on the hill has been washed down the road into the river? Hopefully people have just been keeping the place clean!

After a solid 45 minutes of refuse relocation we gathered up all of the filled bags and posed with them for the obligatory group picture with full bags. Following this we said our goodbyes to the Pitsmoor people and trundled off back down the hill to the Showroom. There we stretched off the key muscles used in the evening's efforts and popped inside for a refreshing (if expensive) drink.

On a rainy stormy night, I was grateful for an indoor task! The Team at Common Thread opened their doors and we busied ourselves sorting through the latest clothes donations in readiness for the next clothes swap.

There were some true gems and of course we couldn't help but sporting the latest autumn/winter 25-26 trends! You saw them here first!

Come and pick yourself a bargain at the clothes swap on Saturday 4 October (1-4pm, Union street)!

It is the fruity season! after picking 200 kilos of Worcester Pearmain apples with the lovely folks at Abundance on Sunday, we joined forces with Abundance again and moved on to a pear tree which was cropping one month earlier than usual!

We first picked the windfalls before grabbing the pickers to collect the fruit higher up the tree, a "fruitstrating" task as the pears were eluding our efforts.

But resistance is "fruitile" and we managed to save a total of 12kg, with a crate of the best being donated to Broomhall community centre who host a community meal every Wednesday.

A "pearfect" way to use the produce!

Goodgymmers Annie, Ines, Tim and Celine met up with national cycke network champions Sustrans Craig, Gerry, William and John to attack super hot grot spot at the corner of maltreated Maltravers road and Cricket Inn.

We bagged up an incredible amount of rubbish in no time at all - many hands holding litterpickers make light work!

Rachel, Annie and I joined 11 members of the Abundance project to help harvest 4 apple trees from a public orchard near the Millennium gallery so that they can be distributed to good causes and saved from waste.

We picked apples and separated the best (“first”) which are given to local community group from the virtually good (“second”) which are virtually perfect and third which are not donated but saved by some volunteers for cooking. Volunteers also get to take seconds home!

It was a superb turnout of volunteers on a gorgeous day. Many hands make light work and together we picked 151kg of first, 43kg of seconds and 13kg of 3rd - over 200kg in under 2 hours is an incredible harvest!