It was a bit touch and go through the day as to how many we'd have at tonight's task with people signing in and out. Thankfully Max signed up at the last minute and legendary Leanne has the energy of two people so we managed to get most of the way through nearly a tonne of woodchip. We barrowed it across a boggy school field to protect some new fruit trees and to make the story circle in the forest school area less muddy. We also had a fox come to see what we were up too and a very beautiful starry night which (almost) made up for the wet and cold feet!

Fresh from volunteering (and running) at York Knavesmire parkrun, several GG Yorkies hot-footed it across to Woodthorpe Primary School to meet Christine (who works at various local schools) to help dig some holes. These are going to be used to plant trees which the schoolchildren will monitor and look after.

Christine was organised as always with various tools and the position of each hole marked with a cane. We were soon digging away, some round holes, some (controversially) square, some a little deep, some not quite deep enough. After Christine's inspection of our work we all managed to dig to the required size and depth and moved on to some slightly smaller holes needed nearer to the trees. A few moved over to the "dangerous garden" - so called as it has water, to start digging another 4 holes and were soon joined by the rest of us to help finish off.

It was just time for some photos of us posing in our holes (of which we were all suitably proud) before most of us headed off to a local café for some breakfast, before some hardy souls then went off to their next mission.

🎉 What a lovely group of excellent folk turned out for our first group run of 2023. We were thrilled to welcome Martin for his first session who we’d recruited at the pub after one of our previous sessions 👋

🎭 After some minor drama with Rowntree Park being closed for possible flooding, we had a last-minute change of task 🌊

🦸‍♀️Fortunately, some superheroes were about to arrange not one but two tasks at very short notice 🙌

🍁 Laura had arranged for some of us to go to Holgate Community Garden whilst Christine from Rowntree got us a task at Woodthorpe Primary School 🚸

👍 Here's what Ed had to say about the Woodthorpe task...

🏃‍♀️🏃We arrived at Woodthorpe Primary School to be greeted by Christine with a selection of spades and loppers, before splitting into two sub groups.

🌱 Team digging got to grips with some pretty epic roots which Rich, or possibly Michael, made light work of accompanied by some very loud grunting. Nikki and Lucy went about their work much more subtly but equally as impressively 👏

🦊 Team Lop tackled the brambles on a hill which apparently is home to several foxes. Unfortunately none were spotted this time, but George may have possibly seen a vole. Amy scaled the top of the hill and tackled some particularly ouchy prickles which even penetrated her double glove combo, but that didn't deter her from cracking on with the bramble clearing 🧤

A 4k jog back meant we sadly missed out on the fitness session (and cake 😞)

📆 Meanwhile, for the Holgate Community Garden task, we had time to warm up while saying what pledge we’d like to make for GoodGym in January.

🚶🏃‍♀️ Our walking crew set off and the runners followed swiftly behind, making a detour down a back alley to collect the tools that Laura had kindly gathered for us. The detour also gave us the chance to sample David’s Strava segment and wowed at the very little ginnel he completed an incredibly impressive half marathon on during lockdown 🤯

🍂 On arriving at the garden, we discovered that the leaves were a tad too firmly stuck/ frozen to the ground for easy removal with brushes. Jenna and Martin gave ita good go though and got a surprising number swept off the basketball court.

🍃 Meanwhile, Paul Kelly, Debs and Martin we’re also tackling leaves, using rakes as their tool of choice.

🚂 The rest of the group were weeding and removing overgrown grass from the train circle. Speaking of trains, being next to the railway gave us a chance to hear a few, and we couldn’t miss the opportunity to pose for our group photo on and around the train 📸

❄️ It was pretty chilly so soon time to finish up and head back to base to warm up with a fitness session. Not hugely original but as it’s all technically within the 12 days of Christmas, we did the 12 squats again, mixing up the exercises. (Debs helpfully pointed out that our leg gates needed closing so as not to let any sheep out.) Oh, and we had the bonus of hopefully getting a couple of extra km for the January Challenge with that extra running 🐏

🍰 After that, it was time for that winning combination of cake and pub 🍻

😄 Thank you for tonight everyone, looking forward to more of the same (with hopefully fewer last-minute task changes) next week when we’ll be painting at Get Cycling 🎨

7 brilliant GoodGymmers headed to Woodthorpe Primary School (many post-parkrun and breakfast) to help develop their outdoor learning area.

Some pesky (and frustratingly hardy) nettles had returned since the last GoodGym visit so we focussed on deep digging of roots (where possible). For some (mostly David and Leanne), this involved some impressive mattock-wielding that yielded some equally impressive (and sometimes huge) roots.

The rest of used spades and forks and spent a happy hour digging weeds.

There's more to be done so I'm sure we'll be back!