The summer holiday clothes swap meant an incredible amount of clothing to put out and a special rail of holiday clothes for people to choose from.

Lots of fun and lots of customers 😁

Everything all tidy and put away ;)

Mike tiene qué apprender Espanol por la semans qué viene!

With time for coffee!

So this week the big bosses Vicky and Ed were away on holiday but GoodGym York keep on running and not only did we have 23 returning GG folk but we welcomed Andrea & Nicola who both joined our group run for the first time.

We saluted David's weekend parkrun PB and celebrated Stefan who had hit a fab milestone of 300 good deeds completed.

Then in honour of the Lionesses victory in the European Cup yesterday we named and numbered with whichever animal we would like to be - mostly cats it turns out although we had a Crane, a Wolf and a Honey Badger!

Captain Pete led off the walking group and the rest of the crew ran a mammoth 900m to meet Charlotte from the York River Art Market at Dame Judy Dench Walk to do a bit of light weeding and litter picking to tidy up the riverside ahead of the next 3 weekends events.

We met Jan at the task and not only had she had arrived armed with her own trowel but she conjured up a wheely bin from somewhere for the rubbish.

Not content with weeding around the trees Becca instigated some weeding of the very steep bank - no one fell in so all good and we even managed to enlist a kindly random passing tourist who joined despite not seeming to know what we were up to or being able to speak much English!

We were soon all done and away for a double dose of fitness at Memorial Gardens - first we had 'serious' fitness followed by a couple of rounds of Amoeba Tag in which those tagged joined hands to capture the other players splitting into pairs once they got to a chain of 4. I think Charlotte & Mitch were the last players not caught by an Amoeba.

The runners took the 'long' way round managing to make it a full 1.5km back to base before we rounded off at the pub

Normal service will be restored next week!

After a jolly Heslington Parkrun together we made our way up the hill to the not so Tiny Forest. Exclamations were made at how much it has grown despite the drought. All those bags of compost hauled & mulch strewn were evidently beneficial. Way to go all you York GGers. We quickly set to our tasks. Nick performed the key duty of setting up the picnic area. David rescued smaller trees from beneath the vigorous dog roses. Babs, Laura & Leanne got straight into the thick of it, crouching & tunnelling between the trees & thorns to weed. Nick spotted a woodpecker & beautiful blue butterfly before planting a honeysuckle to ramble over & disguise the compost area. Our tiny forest is looking verdant and coping with the dry spell, some areas are getting so dense that the trees are now suppressing the weeds. This type of forest usually takes about 3 years to become self sufficient - we are 18 months since planting & it's looking fantastic thanks to all our efforts. We ended with the obligatory coffee, picnic & catch up before heading our separate ways.

Tonight we welcomed new member Jen 👋🏼 who had heard about us on the grapevine. We also met a new task owner, the lovely Gayle of Hempland Haven - a great community allotment space. Ed made a good first impression by getting lost on the way!

Tonight our task was to weed between the cracks in the paving, to tidy up the site and make it less of a trip hazard. We also shifted some bags of sharp sand (always wondered how sand can be sharp?) ready to fill in the freshly cleaned cracks.

A very satisfying time was had by all, most weeds being easily pulled up by hand (although we also got some excellent brand new weeding tools), while we put the world to rights and strengthened our legs (probably) with lots of squatting. After a quick sweep and a final sprinkle of sand, we were done and on our respective ways home for tea.