9 litter picking fanatics met at Maidenhead Community Centre to embark on their evening's task.

After a swift briefing, and a reminder not to eat, drink or lick anything picked up, the team collected litter picks and bags and made their way into Kidwells Park.

The team spread out across the park, one group headed to the underpass and the car park opposite as Adam and Jen had keenly spotted litter in that area on their way to the meet point. The other group stayed in the park and beat the boundaries snaffling the litter up as they went. Jack also spent some time cleaning up some graffiti on benches and bins in the park.

After an hour the team migrated back to the community centre to compare hauls. Although we were pleased with the amount we had done, it was sad to see how much we could collect in a relatively short amount of time.

Juli even managed to collect another bag load on her walk home!

A lovely, relaxing evening spent with fabulous Goodgymmers - well done everyone!

Maidenhead Town volunteers came together to water flowers that had been planted previously, including some litter picking and grafiti clearing.

The task was to attend three locations with the flower beds and find a local business to ask for tap water access. Some of the team focussedon watering. Some of us started litter picking along the way.

We ended up at West Street Car Park and did some grafiti clearing in the underpath to the Kidwells Park.

We circled the town centre and return to the Library cafe for a cup of tea. Great Saturday morning well spent!

Angela, Sheila and Jack gathered at Nature's Haven, alongside other volunteers, to continue the creation of the new mini orchard. Sheila and Angela fancied some physical work, so set about digging up some Choisya roots to clear the ground ready for seeding with wild flower seeds. Meanwhile Jack helped Roger pull ivy off the building. We admired the bee hotel that had been made that afternoon by a volunteer team from Centrica. Nature's Haven is living up to its name! We took a break for a cup of tea, some cake and wished Jack a Happy Birthday 🎂

Sheila joined a volunteer session led by the Maidenhead Town Team to brighten up the town centre. The task was to fill up the planters in two locations. We started with the planters on West Street. Plants and compost were provided by Braywick Heath Nurseries, and with 15 of us, we soon had them planted up. We then moved on to Providence place, and again the planters were soon filled with colour. Lots of passersby stopped to express their thanks for making it look much more cheerful. It was great to meet all the other volunteers and also may have done a bit of Goodgym recruitment in the process!

We made a return visit to Nature's Haven to add some Goodgym enthusiasm and muscle to clearance work that is going on to make way for a new mini-orchard. We welcomed Aidan to his first ever Goodgym session, and what a welcome addition he was to the group. Nicola was sporting her new 100 Deeds Tshirt, and looked great! Our taskowners Claire and Aleks were on hand to give us instructions for the evening. One group tackled moving a huge pile of branches, which had been cut down from the old shrubbery, to an area at the other end of the site, where they can be picked up for disposal. As Jen commented It was a perfect demonstration of how many hands make light work. Just as they were congratulating themselves on clearing the area, Aleks found them another enormous pile to clear. But they weren't daunted by the task, and by the end of the session that pile had been cleared too. Great work! Meanwhile another group set to, digging the shrub roots out of the ground. Not an easy task, as they all seemed to be interconnected underground, and the roots were tough. Undeterred, the team battled on, and every so often there were little whoops of triumph as another root ball was lifted from the ground! As the light faded we called it a day, and were treated to hot drinks and toasted marshmallows round the firepit. We love coming to Nature's Haven! A very satisfying task and we look forward to a return visit, perhaps to help plant the orchard?

10 Goodgymmers met at the Community Centre for tonight’s chair mending task.

We welcomed first timer Mark to the group by introducing ourselves and naming a film starting with the first letter of our name.

The group then headed into the park for 3 rounds of meet and retreat. Runners set off clockwise and the walkers anticlockwise, when they met they did a different exercise each time (jumping jacks, squats and lunges) and then retreated back the way they came. When they met again they confused themselves and went the opposite way to the last time and repeated!

Once all 3 rounds were completed the team headed back into the community centre to tackle the task. There have been multiple chair mending tasks this year but for Adam, Anne-Laure and Mark it was their first time and so Jack, our chairperson for the night, gave a demonstration and the team set to work.

Mark, Gillian, Rachel, Adam and Anne-Laure tackled fixing the screws onto the seats, whilst Scarlett, Matthew, Amy and Jess worked on attaching the seats to the bases. Jack and Amy then caused confusion on which way to turn the screwdriver – clockwise or anticlockwise? And was it a different direction depending on how you were looking at it??! I’m not sure this ever got resolved!

Lots of screwing, poking, pushing and pulling later the team had fixed 10 chairs, saving the community centre another whopping £2250 on purchasing new ones!

Just in case we weren’t dizzy enough by this point we then played a round of musical chairs where the chairless person came up with a chair based exercise for everyone to complete. Of course we completed the rounds both clockwise and anticlockwise and were serenaded with a series of ‘chair’ based songs such as ‘I’ll be chair for you’ , ‘Reach out (I'll be Chair)' and of course music from Cher herself!

Jack and Sheila helped out at the wonderful Nature's Haven. After Goodgym did such a great job removing shrubs, work continues to prepare the ground ready for planting the new fruit trees. We dug over the ground, removing all the bramble roots we could find, and there were many to be found! Jack's triumph was to dig out a shrub stump, with a little help from Claire. There is plenty more to do before the trees arrive!