5 glorious goodgymers gathered gleefully to garden at the YMCA allotment. Unfortunately, the folks from the YMCA were unable to join us as our visit coincided with their monthly meeting, but we were left instructions on what was to be done along with a handy map.

There were two specified jobs on the cards for the evening:

1. Moving bricks from the side of the site where the old polytunnel used to be and stacking them near the fence at the far end of the site.
2. Chopping back the stalks of willow overhanging the pavement.

First off, we got to moving the bricks. As a chain-gang we formed a line to pass the bricks from Point A to Point B. This was a distance of around 3 meters which suited us dandily; the 5 of us fitted this space perfectly as a rock moving chain! Charly picked the rocks, passed them to James, who passed them to Kirsty, who passed them to Rosie, who passed them to Celine to restack.

It was wall to wall fun!

Relocation of bricks achieved; it was onto task 2: willow chopping. We gathered loppers, secateurs, and containers from the lock-up and hit the road(side). The stalks of willow border the pavement by the road and the overhanging ones were to be chopped back. Kirsty and Celine were chief wall-straddlers chopping at the top. Branching out in other roles Rosie and Charly were terrestrially chopping, gathering and bucketing up the lopped branches. Another task in the bag (bucket), and we still had a little time left... time for a spontaneous task 3: weeding a section of the woodchipped path in between the raised beds. With trowels and trugs, we uprooted the unwelcome weeds, getting to the root of the problem!

We got to the root of the problem!

No rest for the wicked though, we packed up tools, locked up and headed off up the road to Penny Pie Park for some fitness frolicking. We ran through the park to the exercise equipment, and everyone took up a place on the 4-person multigym (except coach/timekeeper Jim). Each person did 30 seconds on a piece before rotating round to the next until all folk had done all pieces of equipment. After this it was getting down to the wire, the evening getting ever darker, but we thought it only right to have a mess around on the zipwire adjacent before leaving for the all-downhill run to Sparrow Park stretching zone.

Once at the pocket park, all of the key muscles we used during the evening were stretched off, some announcements chatted about and then goodbyes for another week were said.

Until next time!