Six of us returned to Danesmead Wood for some woodchip barrowing in the autumn sun.

With woodchip mounds at either end of the path we split into two teams. Team one was made up of the people who arrived on time and team two those of us who either couldn't find the meeting or misjudged the Wednesday night traffic. Jude from the friends of the wood was marshalling our work to ensure the woodchip lasted long enough for the whole path.

We made light work of the task, finishing just over the planned hour. New member Douglas was barrowing like a pro by the end of the task.

Sadly Jude had not had chance to make the usual traybake but she did provide us with some excellent rocky road from the local M&S so no one went away disappointed.

It was time for celebrations at tonight's group run with so much awesomeness happening recently. Firstly there was a big round of applause for Jenna who got a new PB at the Great North Run. There were also cheers for Vicky, Neil and Ed who all took part in the Tholthorpe 10k at the weekend, especially for Vicky who achieved a season's best time. We then handed out the GGer of the month award to the wonderful Lucy who is pretty much the ideal GoodGymer, always getting involved, always smiling and leading tasks when she can. Oh and it also happened to be AA Vicky's birthday, but more on that later 🥳 🏅 🏆 👏

After a brief warm up, Ed led out the run to Acomb Primary School where we were met by Amanda who gave us the lowdown on tonight's task. Basically continuing the work we'd done previously in clearing the wooded area in the playing field so that it can be used as a forest school. We were soon getting stuck in, armed with saws, loppers and sheers.

There were brambles, sticks and branches everywhere as the busy GGers made excellent progress clearing a path through the woods. The green bins were soon getting filled up and we weren't short of volunteers for people to climb in and jump on top of them to make more space. Although Steve had a helping hand from Rich in getting back out of the bin!

With the task drawing to a close and the woods getting darker we broke on through to the other side and cleared enough space to see some daylight at the end of path, which meant it was time to down tools and get ready for a bespoke fitness session courtesy of the birthday girl herself.

Now, GGers aren't always the greatest listeners and on this occasion there was certainly a little bit of confusion about what type of animal walk we were supposed to be doing and who was supposed to be doing it. So a bit of a reset was needed, but we were soon back underway demonstrating some perfect bear walks in the correct order. I'm not entirely sure if there was a winner but we certainly enjoyed ourselves.

We then gathered in the cones and sung 'Happy Birthday' for Vicky before making our way back to the Priory Centre where some delicious cookies and cake courtesy of Vicky and Jenna were waiting for us 😋

we met

we ran in three groups

we got wet

we ate food in the pub

see photos for more details!

Tonight we started by naming and numbering up and stating our favourite exercise, then doing it. Pete demonstrated pilates beautifully (see photo) and no Amy, sleeping lions is not an exercise!

We then welcomed Nate to the group and headed off along the river to Leeman Road. When we arrived we were asked to spread some compacted soil around the grassy area. It looked simple enough but it was pretty solid so took a lot of physical labour to break up!

After 45 minutes we'd flattened one pile and made good headway in the others.

We then headed off to a grassy area for some fitness fun where everyone had to keep collecting tickets with exercises on until they were all gone. We then headed back to base where we celebrated Ed's parkrun PB and some folk headed to the pub.