Tonight we welcomed new comers Liv and Mia to goodgym! Hope you had fun!

We then celebrated our goodgymer of the month for July which was awarded to the fabulous Nick. Nick is always one if the first to volunteer to go that extra mile. He took on the run leader duties when Ed and I were away and has been a great ambassador for goodgym from tje very beginning. He's basically a true goodgym hero!

We then congratulated the 10k runners and triathletes and in honour of international cat day this week named our first pets.

We were then off to Scarcroft allotments to help clear a plot. The main task was yo cut down and remove willow. Within minutes Nick was wedged in a tree wielding a saw and others were lopping, sawing and stripping willow. A team made several journeys taking the cuttings to the chippings pile (not chickens Jenna!).

Before we knew it time was up and the only injury was leanne's 'saw' hand. Everyone grabbed a pile of willow and we headed down the hill to drop off before fun fitness.

Following the cat theme we played a game of cat and mouse, which brought out the competitive side folk!

Back to base for a quick stretch and round up. See you next week!

With less than an hour to go before the start of tonight's session the rain was still absolutely hammering it down, but the clouds parted and the sun shone on the 21 GG Yorkies who ignored the threat of rain and turned up to help support their local community. Phenomenal stuff!

We started tonight's session by giving a big round of applause to Steve who was attending his frist session since completing the Race to the Stones 100km ultra-marathon. What an incredible achievement. Make sure you give him some big cheers. We then numbered off by naming our favourite junk food courtesy of National Junk Food Day (only in the US, obviously!). As expected our group of runners like their sweet treats including toblerone, cake and chocolates. Amy then led our a walking group making the short journey to the task, whilst Ed led the running group, backmarked by Vicky

Tonight's task was at the Arts Barge. A floating venue and exhibition space which has been a big part of the York arts scene for a fair few years now, but only something that we've recently got involved in having completed a couple of community missions there earlier in the year. At the task we were greeted by Hannah from the Arts Barge team who explained gave us the various nautical names of the parts of the barge that we would be sanding. One was definitely the Gunwale/Gunnel =, but i've completely forgotten the rest! Then we got to work armed with wire brushes, scrapers and sanding blocks and got rid of as much of the flaky paint and dust we could

Whilst the majority of the crew cracked on with the sanding, a few people stayed on dry land and tackled some of the weeds that had re-emerged on the moorings since we last visited. Unfortunately we didn't quite have the array of tools that we had last time, so the guys made do with a broom, a hoe and their hands in order to dig out as many weeds as possible

Despite a few dicey moments, everyone did a remarkable job of not falling into the water and the only distractions were a few cygnets who wondered what all the fuss was, and Cara's half-joking threat of doing a balancing act along the mooring line

After packing our tools away and getting a cracking group photo on the deck, it was then over to Amy for tonight's nautical themed fitness session! We headed round the corner to St George's Field car park and boarded our imaginary boat across 3 vacant coach parking spaces. Amy then proceeded to call out boating terms such as 'Port', 'Stern' and 'Climb the rigging' with each having an appropriate exercise attached. After a few trial rounds it soon became an elimination event with the last person to perform each exercise dropping out each time. Micheal and Issy proving to be tonight's Sea Dogs being the last 2 standing!

We then headed back to port (CVS) with the walking group growing considerably after Ed mentioned taking a slightly longer route back for the run!

On a warm but windy summer's evening, an impressive 29 GG Yorkies turned out for an epic weeding session at Acomb Primary School. We started off by welcoming 2 newcomers Ruth and Kit who were both completing their first ever good deeds with us tonight. Give them a big cheer 🥳

We also crowned the GoodGym Yorkie of the month for June, with the award going to a slightly surprised Jane who completed a fantastic 8 good deeds last month and has also now done well over 25 since joining us in January. Well done Jane!

There was also a cape of good deeds to dish out, with Nikki completing her 400th good deed last week. Fantastic stuff Nikki!! What an absolute legend of GG York

Before we set off to the task we warmed up with a quick game of stuck in the mud. Max, Matt and Mitch being the chasers and everyone else running around like loons to try and avoid them. Abigail led a walking group and so managed to avoid the mayhem back at base, before being followed by the main group with Ed leading the way and Rich and Lucy backmarking.

At the task we were joined by Tristan, Martin and also Jan who was joining us for the first time this evening (Welcome Jan! 👋). The task was a classic clearing task with a bit of destruction thrown in for good measure. No need for too many instructions tonight, just pull up some weeds and cut back some trees.

A small side group were task with shifting a small pile of bricks whilst everyone else got to work on the weeds. Rich seemed particularly delighted when he found out he had the honour of removing and entire bush/tree that had grown as tall as the building. He promptly got the bulk of the bush nicely trimmed before setting to work on the trunk. Meanwhile Steve and Babs tackled a couple of hedges that were obscuring the windows (Babs giving hers a particularly close shave!)

Everyone else found there own space in the courtyard and pulled up a variety of overgrown weeds and even a few herbs, which made for a very nice minty smell lingering around the task. Mitch and Lyndsey focused their efforts on the things growing out of the drains whilst Kit and Lucy made excellent progress on a sycamore that had started to obscure the plant beds. Whilst all the while, Rich was still beavering away at the tree and had now been joined by Nikki in what had truly become a Gover-ish sized task!

With time running out we stopped for a group photo before handing over to Abigail who was leading tonight's fitness sesh. Rich and Nikki remained in the courtyard to continue their tree removal task!

Tonight's fitness had a name which I've completely forgotten but involved people choosing an exercise for everyone to complete before naming something that they have or have done (e.g. wearing a black shirt) and then attempting to swap spaces in the circle with someone else who had also done that thing. It was great fun although probably less so for Babs and Max who both ended up in the middle of the circle on mote than one occasion. Rich and Nikki also finally managed to remove the tree stump and joined the fitness sesh just in time to get the gist of what was going on

It was then time to venture back to base, with a few people continuing on to the pub

After a rewarding help out at the fair. several of us stayed on to help with the tidy up. As with many GG tasks several cheerful GGers can quickly pull gazebos down, move chairs and tables whilst simultaneously pick up litter.

Glad to help out the fair and at least at the end of the fair the queue had disappeared and Abigail got her ice cream....

Thankyou to the GGers who turned up to represent GG at the popular annual fair at West Bank Park. It was nice to see so many people enjoying the fair and be able to show off GoodGym and tell passers by who and what we do.

The gazebo was ready and Leanne arrived armed with a bag of rubbish. This was a clever idea to woo in the public with a prize (thankyou for the donated cinema tickets) of the 4 fastest litter pickers to pick up a collection of litter with a trusted litter picker.

All ages took part from small kids, adults and even the MP for York. Congrats to all those who won a prize but just nice to add to the whole community feel that other volunteers such as the Friends of West Bank go so much to trying to spread around the good people of York

An enjoyable day out and proud to tell others what we do