History was made as GoodGym York reached a total of 500 good deeds today for the month of January - which still has a week left to go! How many more can we do??

Wheelbarrows full of lovely tools awaited us including some shiny new mattocks. We love new tools! Our tasks tonight included ripping up the last of the wetpour from our previous visit then mattocking out the hardcore underneath; digging out the turf from under some picnic benches; laying a weed membrane and then putting the mattocked-out hardcore on top.

Team wetpour got stuck in, knowing that this time they didn't have to worry about cutting it into manageable sized pieces as it was going straight in the skip. They dug out such a huge piece that it took about 10 bodies to transport it over to the skip. It looked like a piece of Tarmac road had grown lycra-clad legs and was walking across the field. The turf digging team weren't sure they would be able to dig the frozen ground but found it wasn't too solid and at least the bits of turf stayed in nice big clumps which were much easier for chucking into the wheelbarrows which were then trundled into the darkness where the turf was tossed over a fence. Once the ground had been dug out and stomped down Lizzie got to work cutting the ghostly white membrane roughly to size (although it turned out to be a bit too "roughly" so we had to cut an extra piece to fill the gap). There was only one pair of scissors so we thought Lizzie's surgeon hands would be the safest and she made a good job of cutting the membrane to shape around the picnic bench which was fixed to the ground, making things a lot harder.

Once Lizzie and I had very carefully folded the remaining membrane into a lovely neat square we moved over to help the mattock crew who were furiously swinging their tools and hitting the ground making some wonderful sparks, to the sounds of "oooh" and "aaaah" as if it was 5th November again. Good job they were all equipped with safety goggles as the stones were flying in all directions (some even into Nick's mouth). During pauses when the mattocking crew had a rest, myself, Lizzie, Vicky and a few others quickly shovelled up the hardcore into wheelbarrows which was then put onto the membrane around the picnic bench. We had some interesting conversations about dating whilst we were working and learnt some interesting facts about Ed! It's amazing what you learn about your fellow GoodGymers whilst you are working away. Another team started work digging out the turf from around the next picnic bench whilst Nikki and Becky finished off digging the turf from around one of the benches.

We didn't get to finish the whole job, as there's a lot more mattocking to be done to get all that lovely hardcore up - preferably when the ground is a bit less frozen. We will be back soon!