First GoodGym Manchester mission perhaps...(?) Ran out to Wythenshawe after a long day in work to mow the lawn and aggressively weed the garden for Ms K.

With a good lawn mower, patio knife, rake, and a sturdy pair of gloves, the grass was swiftly clipped to size, sticky weed was removed, and the endless brambles were ripped out by their roots to leave the garden much more accessible and welcoming in time for the summer months.

Managed to fill in a hole under the fence where foxes had likely been digging, and cleared up at the end to fill up the garden waste bin.

The pet dog provided plenty of background music and entertainment! Successful session, and looking forward to more Manchester Missions! 💪

A solo paper round for Ben, similar to Hazel earlier in the week for GoodGym Stockport, for a free local community newspaper, the Manchester Post 🗞

300 newspapers delivered to neighbouring streets in Longsight in just over 2 hours, including the folding. A brief rain shower was no issue, with an array of canvas bags to store the newspapers, safely guarded by Juno, to carry out in two trips. Lots of curious people with filming going on at a local shop too!

Will repeat in June for now, but will re-evaluate in the summer if worth continuing. Lots of folding and heavy lifting to do it alone.

Welcome to Victor for your first GoodGym session! 👏

After clearing the space 2 weeks ago, we now needed to remove the old rotting raised beds to install new ones, allowing the school to use the space as an educational growing area.

Some wooden beds were very rotten and came apart easily, with Ben and Victor carrying the pieces to the waste disposal area a short walk away. Others were less rotten, making the pieces heavy and took a while to saw in half!

Fanette and Hazel saved the strawberries for future use, while the mattock, hammer, and saw got a good workout to pull apart the old beds.

As we were dismantling, Peter from the school started piecing together the pre-cut pieces to produce 1.2 m x 2.4 m beds. With fingers crossed the drill batteries would hold and a spirit level, the beds were made, stabilisers were used to stop bowing, and waterproof sheeting used to try and reduce the speed of the beds rotting down.

With as many shovels as we could fine and lots of elbow grease, we managed to build and fill 2 new raises beds, in the 2 h session, with all the deadwood taken for disposal - the wheelbarrow flat tyre didn't hold up for this and meant we only got a small layer of fresh top soil too.

Top effort to get it done this evening! 💪 Certainly earned some food and the water/biscuits after a heavy workout.

Ben joined the Withington Civic Society for a community litterpick in Withington village. Upwards of 10-15 refuse sacks of rubbish were collected with lots of takeaway trash discarded by passing drivers.

Several councillors in attendance locally. Others were involved in bits of weeding and gardening in the nearby beds.

Likely another litter pick in July.

Ben was Run Director this morning for event number 296.

Well done to all 542 finishers this morning!! Thank you for your patience with the extended finish funnel. Welcome to the 101 first timers at Fletcher Moss including 30 completing their first ever parkrun 👏

🦺 Special THANK YOU to the 19 hi-vis heroes helping out today, especially to Ian and Jackie who helped out post-run with barcode scanning and funnel managing, respectively, as the queues were growing. Kudos to those trying out new roles and stepping up for their first volunteer credit this morning too 👏

With potential rain clouds circling, Fanette, Hazel, and Ben met up in Cringle Park to tackle a slightly extended version of Route #1 of the Manchester Green Trail. A quick coffee from Grounded MCR and introductions for Juno provided some preparation time as we waited for other walkers to possibly join, with the walk advertised as part of the GM Walking Festival.

From Cringle Park, we took in the sights and smells of Levenshulme to reach Chapel St Park, next to the Blue Bell Inn, before entering Greenbank playing fields, with no cricket being played today. In Greenbank Park, we bumped into Maria from MCR Library of Things before circling through a side street to Nutsford Vale (note, not Knutsford...). We made a note for a potential litter pick here due to the volume of fly tipping before going through Annie Lees Park, and then towards Sunny Brow Park after crossing over the railway, again passing a few potential litter picking hotspots.

Juno was unable to resist the cooling stream in Sunny Brow Park and entered on several occasions, and as we approached the Waggon & Horses we encountered a surprise cemetery in the woodland, presumably associated with Brookfield Church. After crossing a busy Hyde Road, we skirted past another pub before finding a route through the Fallowfield Loop and found Gorton Lower Reservoir and Debdale Outdoor Centre, leading us past McDonald's (for a quick toilet stop) and Debdale Park. Debdale Park was surprisingly big, clean, tidy, and full of activities including community gardens, Men's Shed location, a cycling practice circuit for youngsters, tennis courts, bowling greens, a workout station, kids playground, and a Heroes Wood Memorial with trees and landscaping to remember locals from World War I and onwards.

We walked a path separating the lower and upper reservoirs before stumbling upon Gorton Reservoir Allotments, a large area of allotment plots with lots of plant sales and events advertised for the coming months, plus plenty of signs for selling horse manure. Following this, we joined the yellow brick road (previously the Stockport Canal) north past King George V playing fields before entering the 2 final parks in Lees Street Park and Delamere Park, the latter having a newly constructed bike park, Max Trax that has some story behind it!

In all, we encountered 11 parks and covered over 10 km while thankfully the rain generally stayed away. Juno had a blast and fell asleep as soon as we got home!