The weather was awful, raining and grey and a lot of the usual suspects were busy but the hardcore group of three goodgymers (me, Miranda and Paul) were still happy to help out in St Lawrence Park. Todays tasks were cleaning up the cuttings from the overgrowth and cutting down some dead tree branches and loading them in the back of the truck.

We started off with some light work, moving the cuttings of vegetation that task owner Mike had cut from the path edges. We then swept and raked the path getting rid of any little bits of leaves and mud.

One of the old friends of the park appeared with his dogs. We enjoyed getting down to their level and giving them a good stroke (the dogs). He also brought us some left-over cake from a children’s birthday party as an appreciation of our hard work in the parks! “It might not fit in with your fitness thing” he joked! We were very grateful.

As Miranda and Paul finished raking and brushing up, me and Mike got kitted up with fancy protective head gear (like a helmet with ear protectors and a face guard and made a start cutting some dead tree branches off a white hornbeam which was coming to the end of its natural life.

We stopped for a tea break about half away though and munched through the party cakes. Considering the low numbers of goodgymers the amount of cake consumed was very high! We had a nice chat about the different parks in Newcastle.

Fed and watered we got into more physical jobs. Paul and Miranda took over the protective headgear and the pole saw to cut down the majority of another tree which was completely dead. Meanwhile I hacked up the felled hornbeam branches into smaller pieces so we could fit them on the truck. We also used some loppers to cut off the smaller branches so they weren’t sticking out all over the place.

Once all the chopping, lopping and sawing was done we filled the back of the truck with the dead wood (which is going to be used as fire wood). Mike showed us some fancy rope work and impressive knots to secure the wood on the back on the truck.

Well done everyone for braving the weather to help improve St Lawrence park! Many thanks to Miranda who took most of the photos and let us use her phone as I am smashed mine on Thursday and the screen is becoming harder to use each day! If you want to help next month we are back in St Lawrence park in August!