We were back tonight helping Shieldfield Art Works to spread the word about their upcoming Oceans of Kindness free exhibition. This was the perfect Bank Holiday task as we could crack on at leisure without needing to have someone let us in (or out!) of anywhere.

Fresh from a brilliant performance at yesterday’s Gateshead Half Marathon, Louise was resting her running legs along with Michael and I who had chosen to walk, so in the end Aimee and Damu also chose to stroll rather than run! On that note, let’s start with a huge cheer for Damu, clocking up his third good deed in three days. Well done!!

We were planning to get approx 120 leaflets out tonight in the Shieldfield area, ready to return next week to finish the job with another hundred.

It’s well documented that I have zero skills in the way of navigation or map reading so I explained a rough route before we even set off tonight, but the plan to stay together definitely helped. We set off up the hill towards Shieldfield and got cracking.

I had a vague memory tonight that there was something historically interesting about Shieldfield and used Google to unlock the memory- incidentally Damu has a different method to remember stuff that you must make a note to ask him about- and it started what became a list of facts about the area, including that King Charles the 1st once played golf on the green here. Louise then shared some facts about Queen Victoria and we discussed the origin of the term "Alderman". The time flew by, my historical knowledge increased, the leaflets were posted, and amazingly nobody got lost.

Finishing off with a circuit style fitness session that did not involve golf, and we were all wrapped up with a big chunk of the evening still ahead (plus enchiladas in Michael’s case) to enjoy. Our walk back had lots of chat about Aimee’s recent West Highland Way adventures and a cool group photo taken by a friendly member of public passing by. We will be back with more dodgy map plans and the rest of the leaflets to get out next week. See you then!

Today we saw the return of not one, not two, but three goodgym alumni. Welcome back Martin, Chris & Martha.

In the surroundings of a damp, but very green and lush Jesmond Dene, we had a straight forward task of edging in some garden beds; all to the back drop of some lovely brass band music coming from the Jesmond food market and festival.

Even though the job at hand was straight forward, it was still a great work out, especially with some tough and rooty roots! We finished the day, by wrestling with parts of a blown day tree, before saying our goodbyes.

Due to the Easter holidays our sessions have been a bit all over the place for a few weeks so it didn’t feel too weird doing a Tuesday session to help our friends at Ouseburn Trust. This fab charity maintains loads of green spaces around our Stepney Bank Stables space and it’s always a great workout. We’ve done so many sessions with these guys and they are always varied, everything from path clearing to litter picking and tree planting. It was lovely to join them for an evening task in daylight, and an added bonus of missing the rain by minutes!

This session had been billed as a Beginners session but alas no beginners were anywhere to be found. Instead, three regulars rocked up for this one, Damu starting early ahead of the pack to allow him to leave early without feeling guilty. What a superstar.

Tonight we were path edging on the steps to the Cumberland Arms, a popular thoroughfare through the network of paths connecting Ouseburn and the wider city. Path edging makes paths safer, clearer and has the added bonus of needing a lot of physical action to make a difference. We also learned the difference between Dutch hoes and British ones (one has a curved edge and one is flat) tonight which might come in handy one day. We unearthed and rendered temporarily homeless a number of worms tonight, but I’m sure the later rain helped them to find somewhere new pretty quickly! Hopefully you can see the difference we made in the before and after pictures.

We received an urgent referral today for some help at the Tiny Forest site in Bensham that needs some muscle and a few pairs of hands on it. Keep an eye out for that, it will be listed tomorrow for this weekend.

It was one of those deceptively sunny days where as soon as you step out of the sun you step into a fridge for our visit to help at North Marine Junior parkrun in South Shields.

Let's get a huge round of applause for Aimee who completed her 50th parkrun volunteer today and earned herself the red V50 tshirt. The bulk of Aimee's volunteer points are at junior events so it was fitting that she earned this today.

We covered three roles at North Marine Juniors today: Paul and I timekeeping and Aimee marshalling. 52 brilliant kids ran, walked, skipped and hopped to the finish today and the finish line was the happiest place to be as always. A lovely blue sky start to Sunday all round.

It was a massive turnout today morning, as we all headed down to Leazes Park to help out Urban Green. Today's task was to clear the top of the bushes at the edges of the park boundary. Some of the bushes and ivy was encroaching on the adjacent pavement and we needed to clear it out. Mike was there with his hedge trimmer. With so many of us there, we got so much done! It was definitely an eventful morning!