Happy Christmas! 🎄🎅🎉

Welcome to Michael for your first GoodGym Manchester outing, and good to see Stefanie, Sam, Sanjeev, and Ben for a ~4.5 km jog around the city centre.

Setting off from St Peter's Square, we made our way down to Grosvenor Street before circling back up Oxford Road to Manchester Central Convention Complex, through St John's Road to the gardens (unfortunately the Garden of Hope from The Christie had finished) before skirting past the Opera House, up Deansgate past the lights before ending near the Cathedral, with bells ringing.

We went for a drink at Sinclairs Oyster Bar, a Samuel Smith pub so no phones allowed out. Chit chat ranged from the theatre, restaurants, cricket, basketball, lawn tennis and sports injuries to Christmas plans and the mild winter so far.

Good to see you all, and wishing you the best over the Christmas period, however you plan to spend it! See you in 2026 💫

Stefanie and Ben went along to the big Tesco Extra on Chester Road to encourage people to add a few items to their shopping basket to donate to the local foodbank.

With fetching green overalls and a stash of shopping lists to hand out, we did our bit to ask those doing their shop to provide anything from deodorant, nappies, UHT milk, to tinned fruit, veg or meat, and cereal.

During our shift, we saw over 35 big crates of food go into the foodbank van to be sorted and added to food parcels.

Kudos to Stefanie for getting out despite feeling a bit under the weather (hope you're feeling better soon!)

Stefanie (plus Greg) and Ben dropped into the Shakespearean Garden in Platt Fields Park to help set up for their National Open Garden Scheme open day and Fallowfest 🌳🍃🌱

Aided by the garden volunteers, we successfully managed to clean and dust down 49 chairs for the seating in the human sun dial square, where a harpist was playing for part of the day.

We managed to set up some of the plant stall, borrow several tables and benches from MUD for use on the cake 🎂 stall and the sketchbook stall, put up 3 gazebos plus a big marquee along with Gavin from the council, and generally help out to ensure the site was ready for a flurry of visitors at 11am 🎪

There was also a mobile piano 🎹 shed that needed moving into place that was played throughout the day.

At the end of the day, while England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 were playing in the Euro final against Spain 🇪🇸, there was also some clear up to put gazebos away, benches and tables folded and stored, and the chairs put back under cover for another day.

Sounded like a popular and successful event from Kattie with the cake stall sold out and a busy event. Happy to help out for a local, community-run group 😀

Good session with Smithfield Garden Club, clearing lots of litter from an area near The Wheatsheaf in Northern Quarter 🚮

Welcome to Tyla for the first time, joining a bumper group for a rare Wednesday night task.

Louise and Phil were in charge with Robert, landlord at the Wheatsheaf, also lending an able hand. We got bag rings, gloves, bin bags, a makeshift sharps bin, and brooms with dustpan to do a loop of the area.

Some notable collections:

• battery 🔋
• mattress 🛏
• hoover
• various clothing 👖
• lots of broken bottles, glass, cans

We also trimmed one of the communal beds and had an introduction to the amazing work the local group had done to develop the area, including some of the planted areas that were looking good 🌳🌱🍃