A Golden Trowel Sort of Night

On a drizzly autumnal evening, 35 GG Yorkies pitched up to complete a whole load of tasks at Westbank Park.

There were no big milestones this week so we gave a cheer to everyone who had completed the Great North Run at the weekend and we mostly celebrated being in possession of the Golden Trowel. For anyone who doesn't know, the Golden Trowel is a mystical item awarded to the winner of the January Challenge, and we only just recently retrieved it from the 2018 winners, GoodGym Bristol. There are many, many photos of us enjoying the trowel, take your time to peruse them all!

With (his full title is getting longer) Amazing GG Yorkie Original and GG Leeds Trainer Aron supporting tonight and Pete as our back marker, we headed over to Westbank Park where we had all of 50 minutes to complete the following:

• raking up all the arisings from the wildflower meadow
• piling said arisings onto giant tarps to drag to compost heap
• clearing overgrown nettles from in front of compost area
• taking all good compost out of four small compost bins into the one big one
• taking all woody and non-compostables out of four small into giant non-compostable pile
• removing dodgy graffiti from picnic bench area
• cutting back overgrown brambles/nettles from picnic area
• cutting back overgrown ivy from the paved tunnel

Phew! Luckily we had a LOT of tools and Debs even blagged using a battery powered strimmer (with mandatory eye protection).

The rakers made swift work of the arisings and were waiting for the nettle slashers to create a clear path for tarps full of piles of wet grass to be dragged through. Everyone took one giant step back for Debs to go large with the strimmer and clear a space for the first tarp.

It was an impressive sight, seeing a carpet of grass being hoisted onto a giant compost bin, and with most of the nettles slashed or strimmed it was now a hive of activity as the newly accessible compost bins could have all the compost shifted out into the one giant compost bin.

Ellie and Paul and had taken on the graffiti removal challenge. Unfortunately we couldn't take any photos of the graffti.

It was sweary, crude and had possible GDPR implications - Ellie

With five minutes to go, the compost crew had finished and were gathering tools, whilst all the other task teams were just finishing up. A huge amount had been achieved in 50 minutes and after a group piccie, we marked our achievement with a sprinty fitness session.

It's flying 30s, but uphill and longer!

The goal was to take a very easy downhill recovery, accelerate along the flat, sprint up the gentle hill, decelerate into the final corner and recover again.... as many times as possible in five minutes. Ellie and Paul were an excellent cheer squad and kept everyone very motivated for this short but tough fitness sesh.

Next week, Aron is in charge of fitness and it's going to be brilliant, so don't miss it!