Five GoodGymers leafleted for FoodCycle in the westend of Newcastle. Scott, Lucy and I walked from our one strawberry lane base and met Louise and Damu outside Westgate Baptist Church, one of FoodCycles locations.

FoodCycle is a charity that works to reduce food poverty and social isolation by serving free, community meals made from surplus food, they have a number of locations locally.

We all agreed the streets near by were the perfect place to leaflet with long streets of terraces allowing us to post over 200 leaflets in half an hour! The weather was also on our side with some glorious evening sunshine.

A number of the houses had bricked up doors where I am assuming two Tyneside flats have been converted into one house, thus no longer needing the second front door. It was giving Edgar Allen Poe vibes and I couldn't help but imagine a person being bricked in behind the bricked up door. We didn't see any ravens just some magpies and a couple of Cats!

If you want to get involved we have two community missions this week some ivy cutting on Wednesday lunchtime and helping in an allotment on Saturday morning!

Pun disclaimer: Not original material.

I love reading other Goodgym reports, however whenever I sit down to write one it doesn’t always flow how I want it to.

The Goodgym mission of today involved helping Newcastle parks to litter pick in Nunsmoor park. Adam, Aimee, Sam, Tom, and I helped Newcastle parks rangers and local volunteers in their mission to tidy up the park. A lot of bin bags were collected. The most common item I found were plastic straw wrappers. We were in various locations in the park, all doing our role of litter picking. Amongst the litter a guitar was discovered. It has been gifted to a new owner. One volunteer sang and played Jolene by Dolly Parton which was very wholesome. Aimee and I paired up and encouraged each other to retrieve water bottles from the tennis courts mesh. I always feel I have more confidence at Goodgym and cheering on runners at parkrun. I call it the Goodgym and parkrun enthusiasm.

Conversations included a range of topics, including tying shoelaces, happiness, and words. My favourite word in German is Übermorgen which means the day after tomorrow. In old English we used to have the word overmorrow. One of Aimee’s favourite words is Pandemonium. Aimee’s alternative definition is panda’s having a party.

As Sam and Tom mentioned FAB, I thought that I would venture there. FAB is a bakery in the West End of Newcastle. (Other bakeries are available). It used to be home to a butchers/sort of bakery. They sold six bread buns for £1.20. They were soft and doughy. I recently discovered some similar ones from the Grainger market. They are not quite the same, however they are similar. Today, I picked up some hot cross buns. Do you have yours toasted or not? With cheese or not?

The next Goodgym mission is on Monday at 18:15 meeting at One Strawberry Lane. https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/deliver-leaflets-for-foodcycle

Enjoy your weekend everyone.