Sunday June 22nd had been designated as Olympic day at junior parkrun. Four GoodGymers plus Aly Dixon, an Olympic marathoner from Sunderland, turned up to help at Mowbray Park junior parkrun.

A downpour just before the start didn't dampen spirits as the event had its second highest ever attendance!

This morning was our third visit to Greenhill allotments to help prep Magrets plot.

We continued to work our way down the plot pulling up weed and clearing grass.

The weeds had taken over this section, with deep and chunky roots. Digging them up was very satisfying!

There’s still plenty to do here and I’m sure we will be back again.

It was a gorgeous day for our second visit to Magret’s plot and our link up with Newcastle Parks and Allotments. We made a start on clearing the plot a couple of weeks ago. Sadly there were already some weeds flourishing in the area we had cleared so we spent some time clearing that area, before moving on to the next section.

It seems like our memo about axes from a different task this week has filtered through and Aimee in particular was delighted to see the presence of an axe today! Max put it to good use, breaking up the ground, which seemed harder this time than last time, probably due to the warm sunshine we’ve had lately! Tanya, on the other hand, was less successful with the tools, choosing a spade with the diggy bit (that’s a technical term!) coming off the handle as soon as she tried digging!

There was a spell during the task when we felt like we weren’t getting anywhere, but then it all came together. You can definitely see that we made progress today! And it was lovely to be joined by some local wildlife, although we’re not sure how healthy the bee was! The cat, however, seemed very content basking in the sunshine!

There’s still a way to go though. Fortunately, we’re back again next Saturday. There’s rain forecast for this week so the ground should be a bit softer. We’d love to see you there!