It’s the start of September so GoodGym Huddersfield went back to school last night. Back in fact to our old friends at Berry Brow Infant School for some more painting of fences and playground furniture. However painting wasn’t the only task, the school had some leafleting to do promoting their free nursery provision. It was just as well GoodGym friend and task provider Katrina Whale from the school had come up with two tasks as twelve GoodGymmers turned up last night, all eager to run do a good turn for our local community.

Meeting at our alternative rendezvous point of Lockwood Park it was good to see a total of three first time GoodGymmers as part the Huddersfield crew. Welcome to Jane McCrea, Jo Talbot-Patterson and Anna Kingston, joining old timers Kati Law, Ben Godfrey, David Bilton, Peter Phillips, Laura Merriman, Vicki Knight-Phillips, Zena Whalley and Richard Byrne. I made up the numbers completing the impressive total of a dozen GoodGymmers. I also had the dubious honour of sporting the GoodGym Huddersfield Superhero cape for the evening, this being the occasion of my 50th GoodGym run.

After a warm-up at the rugby club it was swiftly into the 3K run to the task at Berry Brow. Avoiding main road running, the footpath to Armitage Bridge provided a very pleasant alternative in the September sunshine. Less pleasant perhaps was the final pull up Waingate, but we all made it and arrived at the school ready for action.

Dividing into two teams the painters were swiftly dispatched into the playground to get on with painting a fence blue, whilst four leafletters grabbed a huge stack of flyers and made their way up the hill to Newsome posting as they progressed. A little local knowledge often goes a long way with these things and fortunately Laura and Anna, both of whom have lived in the area all their lives were able to plot the most effective route to get as many leaflets posted as possible within the time available. The fence painters certainly certainly seemed happy in their work too, chatting away as they gradually transformed an old picket fence from a worn woody brown into a new vibrant blue colour.

40 minutes hard labour later it was pretty much job done, the leafletters returned and the painters down brushes in preparation for the 2K run back to Lockwood Park. In the gathering gloom (looks like we’ll be back to working with headtorches pretty soon guys☹️!), there was just time for a group photo on the school climbing frame (and for me to do justice to the superhero cape by sliding down a fireman’s pole) before running off downhill back to our start point.

Thanks to all last night’s GoodGymmers, once again it was great to see us maintaining double figures for attendance following on from our busiest ever month in August. Let’s keep it going through September!

Thanksto Vicki Knight-Phillips for some of the photos.