It was a wild and windy night outdoors, but 5 Goodgymers soon warmed up playing some lively games with the residents of Hartrigg Oaks!

After our usual warm-up with the parachute, Amy organised a competitive game of tic-tac-toe, with the grey team taking on the pink team in a battle that saw balls flying everywhere and the players getting increasingly ambitious with their shots. We suspect some residents were hiding a secret past as fast bowlers!

We're looking forward to our next tournament in December, which might have a certain Christmassy theme...

The main task was to clear the leaves from the basketball court and paths to stop them getting slippery. We started by lifting up a couple of the leaf bins to see if there was any leaf mulch that could be dug onto the beds. There was a small amount of older matter but it was mostly very dry. Becca dug a wheelbarrow full of the best bits into the beds. Amy and Laura started by emptying and resetting two of the leaf bins. Sam and Barbara swept the basketball court and David swept and cleared around the drains and attempted to unblock them of soil. Whilst all this was going on Jane pruned the two large apple trees, the blackcurrant bush and the Jasmine. Once the basketball court was mostly clear we managed to clear most of the leaves from the paths and start clearing some of the beds before the end of the hour.

Some fresh meat (aka Amy and Jan ) joined for our monthly session at the Oaks. We started off with some easy parachute games to warm up the arms, and the competition.

It wasn’t long before we had multiple balls, of all sizes, thrown in all directions with the parachute and we were ready to test ourselves with a target game.

Ed blew up the inflatable target board and we began practising our ball throwing. Mrs Z got out there early with a high score of 6, whilst many of us struggled to even get 1. Different tactics were thrown about and soon we were ready to start the (now official) GoodGym vs. Hartrigg Oaks championships.

Round One - balls: a hopeful start for GG with 14 points on the board. However, our dreams were swiftly shattered when the Oaks scored 9 with their first 3 goes! The Oaks took the lead with 17-14.

Round Two - beanbags: it’s probably best to skip past this one as the Oaks won by an astounding amount. No one is really sure of just how much because there was some questionable maths happening in judges corner.

Round Three - football: we learnt that the Oaks can kick! We had the giant football flying in all directions and ended with a satisfying draw.

Final score: Oaks 3-1 GG.

We’ll be back next month after we’ve recovered our dignity and brushed up on our skills.