Wood staining a pergola, some stumps, seats and a rather grand throne was on GoodGym’s job list last night. It can never be said we don’t get variety in our work!

Once again we were running out to Berry Brow Infant School to help preserve their impressive array of playground furniture. A sunny but chilly evening saw just 4 GoodGymmers set off from Lockwood Park for the run up to Berry Brow. The light evening and currently deliciously dry trail conditions allowed us to squeeze in some off-road running, arriving to meet our task master Katrina Whale at the school shortly after 7pm.

Katrina already had wood stain, paint and buckets waiting, so with little delay we were on with the job. The playground at the school is absolutely packed with all manner of wooden items and structures for the pupils to play on. Although I suspect this does represent something of a “Forth Bridge” challenge for the Goodgym crew, once we finally get to the end it will be time to start painting the first items all over again!

Anyway Kati Law, Louise Galvin, Ben Godfrey and myself have never been deterred by a little hard work and commitment, so were soon on with painting the playground pergola chatting away and catching up with one another’s news as we did so. This was followed by a coat on some stumps and then our biggest challenge of the night. In the centre of the playground is an impressive “Once Upon a Time” wooden throne, surrounded by 9 smaller seats. Our final task of the night was to paint them all with preservative to help ensure they would remain functional for many years of pupils to come.

They say that “team work makes the dream work” so the GoodGym team, along with Katrina set about the task in the final few minutes of our timeslot. Working on together through the increasingly chilly conditions, amazingly we got all 10 seats sorted and looking much better than they had before we started.

Leaving Katrina, who kindly offered to do the clearing up we set forth or the 2K run back to Lockwood enjoying the mainly downhill route as the dusk started to fall. Thanks to all last night’s GoodGymmers, we may have been short of numbers this week, but we were (as ever) long on enthusiasm and industry. Another good job done!