Ashley, Naomi, Mandy, Helen and Pete met on a beautiful Saturday morning to help out Ian of the Derbyshire Wildlife Trust with some little picking and collection of discarded items. Along our way we discovered two tents hidden in the trees. One of tent seemed to be still in use, possibly by someone fishing, the other was long since abandoned so needed to be collected and disposed of responsibly. Taking a long loop around we collected several bags full of litter, chopped down an overhanging branch and generally have a great time chatting and laughing. We are all looking forward to helping out the Wildlife Trust on a regular basis.

The group welcomed Ewan for their first volunteering session with GoodGym Derby along with David from St Matthew's Church and Iris and Ian from the local community. It was great to have such a large number litter picking and helping to keep Darley Park looking its best for visitors.

Ashley found time out from his head to head competition with Mandy to see who could collect the most litter to take some fantastic photos and Pete was pleased to find common ground with a fellow Mancunian in the group, until the revelation that they were in fact a Liverpool FC fan.

The rain that had been forecast held off for the group and it was great to see so many people enjoying the park, from cricket being played to rowers on the river, dog walkers, runners and pub goers enjoying a warm evening riverside. Sadly, nobody could watch a film on the dvd player that had been collected during the session as it was so damaged from river water and there was no accompanying screen to use with it, still a contender for 'pick of the night'.

Rubbish that had been collected was left by some bins and it had been agreed prior to the session that the City Council would collect these the following day. Thanks to David for organising this.

Thank you to everyone who came, hopefully some of the volunteers can make the social event ahead of Volunteers Week.

Grant also joined the group and will be added to the register by the central team so he can have a deed logged.

Ashley and Mandy met the regular volunteer group to do some pruning and tidying up of the trees. A new term was learned, "Crown Lifting" whereby the low handing branches are removed to raise the crowns base. It's a fancy way of saying we hacked at everything we could reach and stuffed it in a bag. Much fun was had while we worked, talking about running, training, falling off cliffs etc.

Mandy, Grant, Lewis and Pete returned for another session at St Matthew’s church. The mission was to bring a little TLC to the Garden of Rest. We cleaned the commemorative slates around the boarder - these being local people who had passed away in the 1800’s. We also cleaned the more recent stones in the central area. We also checked on the boarders we had created on a previous mission - the local schoolchildren have started to plant flowers and bushes, and the area is starting to come a live. Great to catch up on a lovely evening, and as ever thanks to David for the tea and biscuits.