What Rubbish Weather!

5 runners braved the torrential rain to clear up rubbish on the Trans Pennine Trail!

One of these runners was Aron, a GoodGym run leader from York who was visiting for the evening. Unfortunately Aron was late; we had waited for a couple of minutes but had to get on with the run so we set off down the hill. We hit the bottom of Shaw Lane as he headed up to the car park. As it was raining heavily, Heather (his girlfriend) decided to text him a set of instructions so we could assess his orienteering ability.

Barnsley runner, Sharon, was my navigational chief for the run, which was extremely helpful and meant I didn't have to carry around a soggy bit of paper with the map on it.

We were met at the start of the trail by Carol, who provided the best litter pickers I have ever seen - imagine an enormously long pair of scissors with a lovely grippy green handle and excellent picky-up teeth, that's what she provided! With no sign of Aron yet, Carol waited at the path entrance with a spare picker whilst the rest of us started filling up black bags.

Moments later, he arrived.

That was like cryptic navigation! "Find Morrisons".. "Turn left"..

Either way. he had fully proven his credentials and jumped straight into the task like a pro.

We received a few thank-yous from dog walkers as we worked our way up the trail, which is always nice.

Among the usual cans, cigarette butts and crisp packets, the finds of the evening were:

• A very wet black sock
• A watch
• A piece of car
• A full bag of food and drink

Our only absolute rule was 'no hands', everything had to be picked up with the pickers. It was an excellent forearm workout and very good for practising manual dexterity. One bottle had been rammed onto an upward facing branch and it took the full might of Becky and Sharon with both pickers to remove it - brilliant teamwork.

This just got disgusting - Heather

The end of the trail was the worse bit, with bags of poo, nappies and all sorts of grim stuff. Luckily those were the last items in the bags so we left them for collection and ran back in the rain.

We finished up with two sets of hill reps with a focus on good technique; lifting the knees and keeping the body up.

Next week we're widening a footpath, it's going to be a great and really physical task so get signed up!