After agreeing to be the Taskowner for the Friends of Rowntree Park due to his role as a Trustee of the Charity, Ed managed to get the time completely wrong and arrived with Amy and Arthur almost 30mins late. Fortunately Jan, one of the garden volunteers, was on hand to get the rest of the GG crew started on the task which involved removing a hedge that hadn't survived the 10 weeks it had spent underwater due to the regular flooding in the park

We were also joined by Jacqui from the Friends of Rowntree Park who was getting stuck in along with her husband and David at one end, whilst Leanne, Cara, Amy, Debs and the 3 latecomers tackled the other.

Leanne soon turned her attention to lopping back a bush that also needed removing, and whilst she tackled the trimming just fine, the removal part proved a lot harder. Ed and David were called in as reinforcements but soon realised it was too big a challenge to tackle today

But the failing hedge was successfully removed and we managed to turnover a fair chunk of the area that was covered with invasive species. Not for an hours worth of work for most of the group, and 45mins for those who can't keep track of the time

Another session helping Tang Hall Library raise some funds! While setting up the book sale, Amy appreciated some wise advice on How to Get your Teacher Ready for School, while Joanna found some Sweet treats and Jenna fell Hook, Line and Singer for a tuneful tome. Not sure what Lucy was thinking though...

The January challenge is officially over and despite the monumental efforts of everyone at GG York, we still had an impressive 20 legends turn up for tonight's session, inverting soil at Millennium Field.

Before we set off we awarded the prestigious January GoodGymer of the month award to the super-human Michael who ran a ridiculous amount of KMs whilst also completing a remarkable 23 good deeds. Top effort Michael, give that man plenty of cheers 🍻

We then set off to Millennium Field with Ed leading the run out and Jenna, Laura and Abigail as our backmarkers. Those at the front got a bit too far ahead so did some very questionable wall sits whilst they waited for the rest of the gang to catch up! And then we arrived at the task to be greeted by Maeve and Nicola from St Nicks.

Nicola stole Mitch, Michael, Martin and Stef (the Mmms for short) to do some forking compost work, whilst everyone else joined Maeve at the South end of the field to start digging out clumps of soil and then flipping it over, ready for wildflower seed to be spread on top.

You can tell a lot about someone by how they invert soil - Vicky

The instruction was to dig out random areas but that didn't stop some GoodGymers from getting quite artistic with their inverting. Ben created two very neat connecting squares, whilst James went for quantity over quality and had dug out the biggest patch by far, if not the neatest!

The task was soon complete and the final ask was to spread the seed around on top of the patches we had just dug out, before trampling them down. We then set off and picked up the Mmms en route to a fitness session on the other side of the bridge

We used the seating area next to Rowntree Park to do a series of exercises followed by a quick dash up the stairs and a sprint round to do it all over again. Mitch was like a man possessed, completing 6 full sets, with Jane not too far behind as our leading lady

It was then time for the brief jog back to CVS complete with a few nore wall sits along the way!

We picked litter

see photos for more info!