A solid turnout for the latest parkrun takeover, with at least three GoodGymers getting the subconscious memo to wear their black t-shirts in honour of the latest album from The Cure - everyone’s favourite frothy sunshine-merchant band.

A wide range of roles undertaken: set-up, marshal, parkwalker and run report, so from end to end. Never mind Friday, it’s Saturday we’re in love!

It was a misty, drizzly night for a group run but that didn't stop some of Luton's finest coming out for a mid-week good deed in the middle of a 5km run around town. We had five runners and three walkers taking it easy up one of Luton's many hills.

This week's task was litter picking a trashy hotspot in a green space on a residential road, Saywell Road to be precise. We were acting on a tip-off from area PCSO Caroline Lawson who had noticed this evidence of antisocial behaviour on her patrols, and called us in to assist.

We set to work on what at first seemed like a quick and easy job, but under the scattering of leaves, layer upon layer of rubbish was revealed and the task started to become a bit epic. We started off with beer cans and food packets but soon found some random household items in the leafy mix including drawers, kids toys, a hula hoop and even a TV. Keeping on going we found many plastic car body panels and a wheel clamp.

Fortunately we had Kevin Poulton on hand from ABCD Luton to help with the logistics, providing the bags and the pickers and a whole lot of clean-up experience. Early on we started finding big canisters of nitrous oxide and they just kept on coming. We pulled out boxes full of them, in the end we got over 50! Digging a little deeper we uncovered a buried stash of prescription drugs, enough to fill a bucket, which we also found in the bushes! All in all we counted 53 bags of rubbish collected and that doesn't even include all the oversized bits we gathered. Not bad for 40 minutes of picking!

With the epic pile stacked neatly by the roadside for collection by the council, we bid it and its dodgy smells goodbye to complete our 5km journey for the evening.

But that wasn't all the epicness for the day, because by completing this task Martin completed an epic haul of 400 good deeds, and all in a little over three years, now that's dedication!

7 Goodgymers joined abcd-in-luton and the FoLP for the monthly litterpick at Leagrave Park. The team were out enjoying what was a relatively mild autumn 🍂 day as we all did our best to help keep the park clear of rubbish 🗑. After an hour collecting litter, we'd all collected 15 bags in total, a children's bike and several parts to what we think was a quad bike. Great effort by the team and definitely really appreciated by the community. Well done 👏 ✔️ 👍🏻