Great turnout for our first 2024 Friday lunchtime litter pick! I was joined at Grenfell Park by Rachel, Juli, Sheila, Gurch, Jack, Jen, Anna, Steve, Jess, Tessa, Scarlett and Matthew. Great to see Gurch joining us for the first time. Meanwhile, Gillian, Georgeta, Celine, Sol and Diya tackled rubbish closer to their homes/work-places.

In and around Grenfell Park we found far more rubbish than we had expected. It was mostly bottles and cans, but we also found trousers, underwear, a drill, a bowl and spoon, a bicycle wheel, a shopping trolley, lots of old bank cards, a pound coin and even a twenty pound note!

We also had a lovely sociable time as we worked, catching up after the holidays, congratulating Sheila on her 500 (and two!?) good deeds, and planning the GoodGym water station at the Easter Ten race (put the 29th of March in your diary now).

Kudos to Jack, who wheeled the shopping trolley all the way back to the Maidenhead Community Centre and then onwards to Sainsbury's.

Georgeta, Gillian, Diya and Sol also found rich pickings in their neighbourhoods. Georgeta's most note-able finds were artificial flowers and a large broken plastic box, which she did well to carry to her bin. Gillian filled multiple bags and found a belt and pair of pants - possibly related? Diya was saddened by how much litter she found just a short distance from home - she was so sad that she didn't even take a selfie! Sol found a direct relationship between litter levels and closeness to the convenience store.

Well done team! Sad that there is so much litter out there, but we have made a big difference today.

Rain stopped play at Holyport FC and Wednesday’s task was speedily moved to Braywick nature reserve to continue building the stag beetle habitats.

Eight goodgymers met in the wind and rain outside Homebase, Georgeta, Amy, Louise, Rachel and Amy welcomed Anna, Mel and Steve. After a warm up and introductions, Amy, Steve and Mel ran to the task while the rest walked dodging the puddles along the “ long and winding path “ to Braywick.

We collected our tools and headed off to the location marked on the map. After a bit of discussion about where to start digging the spades went in....it was hard going especially when we hit a unexpected large slab of concrete. Not to be discouraged we dug deep and soldiered on.

At last we had a hole worthy of a beetle hotel. We rolled the extra large logs into place, filled the gaps with soil and hey presto a new beetle habitat was made.

It was time to log out, we returned the tools and heading back to our start point, happy, muddy and most of us were more than likely ready to sleep like logs!