Zoom, rake, rake, shake the broom!

Firstly, it was fantastic to welcome three new members tonight. Congratulations to Ally, Amy and Will on your first GoodGym task! It was great to meet you tonight and we hope to see you again soon!

There was no run tonight as our task was at our base at Stepney Bank Stables, a fantastic charity enabling young people to develop important life skills such as confidence, self-esteem, resilience, listening, cooperation and team-work through learning to ride and care for the ponies and the stables.

We never quite know what will be in store for us when we arrive and tonight was no exception. Super Sara our host and task owner was ready for us with two regular tasks and a new one. I'm afraid I'm not a horsey person so I don't know the correct terms for what we were doing (sorry Sara!) but we went round the edge of the arena, raking and clearing the stuff on the ground (what is that stuff - a bit sandy, a bit fluffy like cotton or mashed paper?!) away from the boards where the ploughing type thingy can't quite reach! We zoomed through the task and admired Michael's show jumping skills as he easily cleared the bar (did I mention it was on the ground?!) We stopped for a quick photo opportunity before moving onto tasks two and three. (Thanks to Charlotte for tonight's photos.)

I'm more at home in describing these tasks and I feel we're quite expert now at sweeping and litter picking. The car park and the ramp where the horses come and go were gleaming by the time we finished. We ventured up the hill with our brooms, litter pickers and bin bags, working as we went, and showed our new friends the oldest working stable yard in the city, proudly reflecting on some previous tasks. Aimee in particular recalling some technical measuring! Discussions while we worked tonight included, is it better to use a pushing or pulling action with the broom while sweeping (thanks to Michael's dad for the answer to this one), do you have your dominant or non-dominant hand at the top of the broom and do animals have a preferred left or right side? Beth reckons they do! Anyone? Always good to come to GoodGym for a cerebral as well as a physical workout!

Our next task is a leaflet delivery for Food Cycle in Benwell on Wednesday at the slightly earlier time of 6pm. We have around 400 leaflets to deliver so it'd be great to have a few more pairs of hands. It's looking like another warm evening for a nice walk. Leaflet delivery for FoodCycle - Inform people of FoodCycle's new centre in Benwell See you soon!