To Spark and Backie Again

Two teams of GG Yorkies (and a special guest GG Bristolian) ran to two tasks and did a whole load of good!

We welcomed along Suzanne, a brand new runner to the crew and we also gave a hearty welcome to Matt who was touring all the way from Bristol, and had even offered to back mark for us - what a hero.

Next up we celebrated BRILLIANT BECKY who not only ran her 100th parkrun at the weekend but followed it with her* first ever* Marathon in Newport, boshing her goal time too. She'd also decided to run from work, and do the longer run.. bonkers.

Finally we gave a huge cheer to MARVELOUS MADDY who was running her 50th good deed and was knighted with the Cape of Good Deeds (see fabulous picture of Maddy being a goody superhero with err.. a trolley).

I led one team to a final Monday night task at Spark, which finally launched this week, whilst Nick led out the other team to Clifton Backies for some scything, raking and wildflower planting.

Now I could tell you a million funny stories from Spark because it was an all- action kinda night. We were on a massive clear up and move stuff mission and let me tell you, there was a lot of stuff to clear up and move.

• Move all the pallets and stack them neatly behind a container
• Move all the scaffolding bits and bobs to the secret door area
• Move all good bits of scrap wood to the secret door area and stack neatly under container
• Move all cardboard to the skip and condense as much as possible
• Spade rubble into rubble sacks
• Move all the bark to the little garden area
• Find anything that looks like it is rubbish and put in the skip (cue Aidan doing an excellent job of 'making space')
• Lift two enormous bags of rubble and move to the other end
• Shift 7 gigantic wooden sleepers
• Sweep up

Phew. It was a lot. There was excellent team work a-plenty as we moved heavy items and made human chains. Maddy pranced in her cape, Lizzie made a beautifully swept pile of rubbish only to see it blow away in a stiff northerly gust and John was enjoying a few bicep curls with scaffolding offcuts.

Ian was on superb form, firstly teaching Ellie the names of each individual bit of scaffold and then showing off amazing trumpeting skills with offcuts of plastic pipe to raucous applause. You'll also see from the pictures that we acquired a GoodGym Native American mascot. It was a truly epic 50 minutes!

Standby for Nick's Clifton Backies report...

To SPARK & Backies AGAIN #2

A team of 20 joined me to navigate 3.5 km across town to the Clifton Backies nature reserve. Matt bravely took on back marker despite visiting from Bristol (Thanks Matt), but it was York local Leanne who went rogue and arrived via a route of her own devising.

We met up with Jonathan and Becky from St Nicks and soon split into three teams. Five jumped onto the scythes to clear areas of tall vegetation supported by a large crew of rakers and the more creative folk got to work planting out plant plugs.

Paul almost scythed a frog (no harm done) and Jonathan had enough confidence to let us sharpen our scythes! Brave fellow! Very quickly the whole area was cleared and ahead of schedule too so it was time to clear up - which left more time for fitness!

Evil Egg had left nothing to chance and Nick and Leanne deciphered her instructions to lead a set of Lovely Lungey Pyramids followed by 4 sets of Super Squats - a grand total of 56 lunges and 72 squats of various types!

We weren't quite sure what a 'lunge to knee balance' was but made up something convincing before we all trotted back to base where Shelley weirdly got all excited when she found out she could do some press ups as part of the warm down - strange girl.