Heworth Holme is a little slice of countryside right in the middle of York. It might look wild but without maintenance it would all turn into impassable scrubby woodland. St Nicks manage the land to provide a range of habitats and today we were helping to scythe part of the meadow to encourage wild flowers by removing cut grass and so lowering the nitrogen levels in the soil to give the flowers a chance.

As usual, Jonathan from St Nicks made it look easy and had already done a chunk before we arrived. However despite our collectively less advanced skills we still cleared a large area of grassland and no frogs were chopped in half in the process (that I noticed anyway). Good to be back to some semi-skilled, destructive manual labour: what GoodGym does best.

6 GG Yorkies and 2 touristing from Lovely Leeds (nice to see you Aron and Rachel!) joined forces with the St Nick's regular volunteers for their session at Heworth Holme.

Our tasks today included:

• Digging up as much as possible of a ground spreading plant, the name of which I forget. All that's important is that it is NOT NATIVE and therefore must DIE (I'm fairly sure this rule only applies to plants). We quickly finished this ("would've taken us a couple of weeks without GoodGym!") and also removed a whole pile of random bits of metal and wire. Katie: "I found a wire!"... "It's ok it's not connected..anymore.."

• Removing brambles, nettles and roots from an area where trees will be planted. Whilst trying not to stand in the boggy bit. Louise: "Is this rhubarb? I've only ever seen it on the telly" (cue shock from the rest of the group)

• Coppicing some willow trees. "Anyone want to use a saw to.." "yes please" say Mitch and Katie without waiting to hear the end of the sentence. Agree first, ask later is our policy when fun tools are involved. An impromptu bridge was also made out of the coppiced wood which impressed St Nick's!

After a quick wash of the tools in the previously GoodGym-produced scrape pools we all disappeared off into the sunshine.

Photo credits to Katie and Mitch

A whopping 9 GG Yorkies turned out on a Thursday night join the volunteers of St Nicks in bashing some balsam.

Maria from St Nick's wasn't sure how much balsam there would be on the banks of Tang Hall beck, so she had brought along some plug plants (several different types of wort) that we could plant too.

Carl immediately got stuck in to clearing some ground on the bank to plant the plugs. Meanwhile the experienced balsam bashers confidently led the balsam virgins around the other side of the bank for a lesson in how to recognise Himalayan Balsam. It was there that we met our first hurdle... we couldn't see any balsam! Fortunately, it was Maria to the rescue, whose experienced eye picked the only sprig for metres around. It looked like we were on for a game of hunt the balsam before it could get bashed!

Across the other side of the bank, Tom arrived, clasping a paper map to his handlebars - he'd failed to read the event details and turned up at St Nick's ready for action. Let that be a lesson to you all! Fortunately Jonathan was on hand to mark out our location on an old fashioned map and sent him in the right direction. He joined Carl in the mission to plant all the plugs.

While the rest of the gang picked their way through nettles along the bank, Debs and I moved closer to the water's edge to see if we could spot our prize there. We quickly decided that the best strategy was to get in the beck, so we donned a pair of oversized waders each and took the plunge. Just as we entered the water, Emily arrived to join us for her 50th good deed! Make sure you give her a big cheer and look out for her wearing a black t-shirt and the celebratory Cape of Good Deeds, soon, on a group run near you.

By the time we'd walked through the beck as far as the rest of the group, not finding very much balsam on the way, everyone was holding a modest bunch of the invasive stuff. There was some there after all, but most of it was still baby balsam so we had to part the nettles and look really hard to find it all.

We spent a happy hour hunting, chatting and listening to Huw and Mitch mock each others' heights (which are at opposite ends of the spectrum). I was particularly pleased to find an almost fully grown balsam to pull up.

I've found a big one! (Leanne)

Size doesn't matter (Mitch)

Job done, we went our separate ways and are looking forward to doing it all again (in a different location) next week.If you want to join in, sign up here

On a beautiful cold sunny morning 5 GG Yorkies joined forces with the good people of St Nick's to do some clearing and improvement works at Heworth Holme. Most of us started with extensive bramble clearing, the brambles getting progressively longer and more tree-like as we went. As always the brambles fought back, twice stealing my hat and getting Ed in the eye! Meanwhile Richard had volunteered enthusiastically for coppicing and tree-removal duties (after careful instructions on which ones to kill).

We all converged in the epicentre of the Bramble Zone to fight off the Boss brambles, and remove some dead trees, playing a little game of who can get the biggest one, and then finally the battle was won (not before one free fought back and hit Rich on the head on the way down).

Rich and I then started a new task to clear part of the Bramble zone and dig a wildlife scrape, while the others continued with coppicing and clearing tasks. Not only did we find a wing mirror and an old cobble, we also struck scrape gold in the form of clay, and made a good sized pile to kick off Monday's group task (and get me some much-needed brownie points :-))

Two GoodGym Yorkies ran to help finish off the never ending footpath at Heworth Holme.

We arrived with our limestone lugging muscles ready, looking forward to basking in the glory of getting the path finished.

The first thing we noticed was that there weren't wheelbarrows full of shovels and mattocks waiting for us today. Instead there were forks, rakes and scythes... It turned out that today's task wasn't footpath building at all. Today we were tidying up the meadows around the footpath by cutting back silverweed and thistles, and raking the cuttings into habitat piles. We secretly breathed a scythe of relief that it was slightly lighter work than expected!

While some of the regular St Nick's volunteers set about scything, I raked up some pre-scythed cuttings from earlier in the week, and Paul gathered them up onto his fork and piled them up behind a forest of nettles and brambles.

A few hours later, it was much easier to see the footpath (which will probably be finished one day), what with all the pesky meadow cut back.

Breakin' rocks in the hot sun, We fought the footpath and the footpath won, We needed limestone 'cause we had none, We fought the footpath and the footpath won

We left Egg behind and it feels so bad, Guess our race is run, She's the best trainer that we ever had, We fought the footpath and the footpath won

So ten hardcore GoodGymers gathered once again for a spot of SPAD-O-MATTOCK-ISM near Bad Bargain Lane (hmm the location was trying to tell us something methinks!) to 'finish' the footpath for the fourth time this year. Debs had convinced her poor sister Becky (who had come all the way from Nottingham for a night in York) that she was going for a 'little run' - boy did she have a surprise.

So we dug and we mattocked and we shovelled and barrowed the rocks. Babs and Ellie got busy stapling the lining and putting in stakes for the edging with the enormous whacker sledgehammer thingummy and Becky got raking. The rest of us took turns running barrowloads of rock before switching to digging while 'No switch' Mitch ran like a great eejit back and forth without ever putting his barrow down!. We exhausted pile 1 and switched to pile 2 at the other end of the path.

It's actually further from this end

said Mel and unfortunately she was right, at which point even 'No switch' Mitch started walking.

Two hours later we had one half of the path complete leaving just a short 8 metres or so to finish up - perhaps next time we will actually complete the neverending footpath, but I'm not betting on it?

Just time for a quick lungy photo and we were off - until the next time....