Welcome back! As we start 2019 with a bang and extra weekend sessions to help you with some of those targets we have all set ourselves on 31st December…to get fit, to do more to help others, to volunteer more, to help our older generation…one place covers all of these – Goodgym!

With a change in base location (just for this session), we knew we couldn’t start at Upton Court Park without doing what hundreds of runners do every Saturday….parkrun... Well done to Ashu and Emily on completing their first ever parkrun!

So 11 of us decided to add in extra kilometres to our group run today and parkrun before we met the addition 2 runners for the welcome brief.

A very warm welcome back to all our runners and a special welcome to Louise who was doing a bit of tourism parkrunning today. We got chatting and discovered that she also is part of the Goodgym team in Hudderfield.. she then decided to do two tourisms today and join us for our session! Also a really warm welcome back to Emma and Ashu

Our task today was to help Ryvers Primary School with their Forest Learning Garden. Our task was to weed, rake, cut back trees and bash some nettles.

With a few tired legs already, we slow-leaf left Upton Court Park and made our way to school.

On arrival, we met with Ranjit who gave us our task brief and safety brief (mainly not to fall in the pond and special note to Darren not to cut all the vegetation)

We then divided into 3 teams:

• The Raking Bad Team
• The Bruce Tree Team
• The Pond Squad team

Keira and the Raking Bad team had to rake over and spread the soil so the area was ready to have the plants seeded. Well done to you guys... star team work with Pete being well managed by the team leader! Your good seed done for the day

Chrissy and The Bruce Tree team’s job was to give the Buddleai tree a short back and sides. Which with Ruth in the team was done in an amazingly quick time!

And last bud not least, Nisha and The Pond Squad team had the job of cutting back the willow and bashing back the nettles.

This team were having too much of a good sting today. They were so determined to finish off this area that they refused to listen to the countdown timer!

A family of foxes frequent this forestry area but unfortunately for us they were visiting their distant cousins – The Wolves (Did you know that a fox can run 30 miles per hour? Well now you do! I think we need a fox for our Goodgym January Challenge..we’d be done in no thyme)

With our time up, we had given the area a face-leaft so we got ready to run back to Upton Court Park.

Always great to see the results of our hard work (in the daylight). We can all be rest assured that today, we’ve helped this lovely school maintain their Forest Learning Garden, so on Monday, the children will have the opportunity to enhance their learning in this natural area

Ranjit was happy from her head to her tomatoes with all our efforts.

Next week’s run on Monday is back at Salt Hill Activity Centre starting at 18:30. It’s a starter session so ideal for anyone wishing to try Goodgym for the first time.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend and see you on Monday