Nice late September evening for a run and a pint. No rain, mild, and little wind giving a nice backdrop to a run from Longsight before a loop via Hulme, University of Manchester, and Canal St to converge on Wetherspoons near St Peter's Square.

Good to catch up with Sam chatting about blood donations, the Labour Party conference, and Octopus energy before making our way home.

Hoping for more autumn/winter friendly tasks over the coming months, so keep an eye out.

Saturday September scorcher with bright blue skies and sunshine welcoming Fanette and Ben to Albermarle Allotments for their community allotment muck-in.

🪵 Fanette was on wood chip delivery duty with 5 or 6 barrow runs to cover some of the ground around the new shed base, with some help from the local cats 🐈‍⬛️. The new shed is due to be put together later next week.

🍎 Meanwhile Ben was picking up windfall apples from the community orchard before a thorough strim and cut of the overgrown grass. There was time for filling up a bed with manure and compost to cover for the winter too.

Good cake and coffee as usual ☕️🍰

Hamza went along to help Withington Civic Society with a village litter pick. Plenty of bags collected!

Nice power hour with the neighbourhood group in Northern Quarter, known as Smithfield Garden Club 🌱

We tackled a nearby set of beds where rubbish and weeds had taken over a bit. With gloves, rakes, a handy leaf blower, and lots of bags, we managed to collate the debris into piles, doing well not to get too badly stung by the nettles.

We managed to weed around the cars and along the perimeter too, resulting in 8 sacks of mixed rubbish and leaves to be reported for collection.

Nice small local group, with a few regular people plus new faces.

Great to meet Hamza for your first GoodGym Manchester session 👏

This evening, we met up outside the Whitworth Art Gallery for a light jog towards Longsight - the 422 Community Hub - with a rucksack full of food donations to give to their community pantry. This included UHT milk 🥛 tins of beans 🫘 tinned fish 🐟 tinned meat 🍖 rice pudding, coffee ☕️ and tinned fruit.

After passing onto reception, we used a couple of the litter pickers from the CleanUp UK box to do a litterpick of the surrounding streets. After a loop of the building, we headed down Birch Lane, only to discover a fly tipping litter grotspot that took most of our attention. We collected 8 refuse sacks plus 2 sacks containing 18 laughing gas canisters! 🚮

All rubbish was collated and reported to the council and Keep MCR Tidy for collection.

Welcome to Haimish for your first GoodGym Manchester session 👏

Change of plan this evening with Ella from Heaton Park not available last minute for animal centre painting, so instead the fab 4 had an evening stroll and litterpick around Heaton Park.

Nice evening jaunt from the Stables Cafe across the fields, past the Highland Cows, and through the undergrowth to unearth lots of discarded bottles, plastic cups, and crisp packets.

3 bags of rubbish in total, with a few challenges of "guess the litter" and "find something purple" thrown in for good measure.

Lights drawing in with lots of animals (squirrels, rabbits, cows, and the odd donkey) in the park. Hoping to rearrange the painting soon, so watch this space.

Hectic morning as RD for Ben with local cancellations and parkrun tourists from Ireland giving big numbers and a busy set up and pack down.

We had bumper numbers! 560 participants this morning, with 156 visiting us for the first time including 20 people completing their first ever parkrun 💪

Big THANK YOU to the 30 hi-vis heroes who volunteered to help the event go ahead! Very much appreciated and hope you all had a wonderful morning 🦺