Six years of GoodGym Newcastle!

In some ways this birthday milestone feels like it should be much higher, I don’t know about you but I struggle to remember a time before GoodGym was in my life. In other ways six years has gone by in the blink of an eye. Prior to tonight’s group session we had done 5092 good deeds, which given the monumental pause we had in the middle of this is pretty remarkable. Pats on all of the backs for this - 397 backs to be precise, as that’s how many people have done a good deed with us now. No wonder I struggle to remember names at times!

It was fitting that we were back to base for the session tonight for the first time in a few months to help our friends and hooved heroes at Stepney Bank Stables. It may have been the promise of drinks at The Ship Inn afterwards, but we also had a great attendance tonight when we were joined by nine people including one for the first time. We did a quick catch up on the weekend’s session that was a very last minute mulch request from our friends at EarthWatch, and brought Tom back from honeymoon with a bang! We loved welcoming Rob to his first ever session with us tonight and while it wasn’t a standard group run we hope it was a suitable initiation to the group.

Stepney Bank stables is a charity and community out project that works with young people to improve wellbeing through working with horses, and we are really proud to be able to help them regularly including for tonight’s session. A banquet of jobs is always on order and tonight was no different as we were sweeping and clearing in the arena, vacuuming the entrance, sweeping the outdoor ramp, chopping back nettles and collecting sticky weeds as a special foodie treat for the horses- this one came complete with feeding! To finish off, Rob got the best ever job for a GoodGym debutant - riding the quad to sweep the arena floor! Lucky or what?!

It was a shorter task this evening as we were eager to head over to The Ship Inn for celebratory birthday drinks and a superb homemade cake from Anna. Big thanks also to GoodGym HQ for sending us a crate of Athletic Brewing Company beers for the session- Tom had cracked his open before we’d even left the stables! It was so great to see Tanya and Debbie at the pub too who had come across in time after work.

Pints were drank, cake was slapped into open palms (no, really), a great end to a good start to the week.

As yet we don’t have a task for next Monday (sob!) so please send one my way if you know of a charity that could use our help. To ensure a GoodGym fix, there is a junior parkrun opportunity at Mowbray Juniors this Sunday so do help out if you can.

Thanks once again to everyone who’s been part of GoodGym Newcastle especially those run leaders and task force who help me to keep the cogs turning. You’re all brilliant.

It may be my age but it doesn’t feel like five months since we last did a donation drive for our friends at East End Women at Building Futures East. Time flies I suppose! We met tonight at the Cycle Hub at the Quayside for a social walk combined with a donation collection for the foodbank. As we aren’t back at our Stepney Bank Stables base until next week it felt like great timing.

We have been helping the Foodbank for over four years now, with early tasks being during Covid, sessions which ran through all of the lockdowns and provided structure for us and support for the project. In fact, for some of us during that time it was the only place we ever went and had any human contact outside of our homes. We’ve also helped to pack Christmas food parcels, deliver leaflets, paint their project spaces and even helped to decorate a bus.

There was no such hands-on-ness for us tonight as instead we just met for a social walk and catch up. There had originally been four signed up for the session but it ended up being just me and Anna with some Mondayish circumstances getting in the way! We had a lovely walk up to the swing bridge, under the Tyne bridge and back over the millennium bridge (thats a lot of bridges) and chatted about all things work, marriage and life related- it sounds heavy when it’s written like that but it wasn’t! We made it back to the hub just in time for the rain to start again.

Post-Easter can be a challenging time for families and donations can be lower so I’ll keep the donation bag in my car for the next week or so, so you can bring donations along to the next few sessions and I’ll take them along when we have a few more.

There are three chances to do good stuff with us this weekend, including this big Urban Green Community mission on Saturday which looks like it’s going to be massive. Our Monday session moves to Tuesday next week as we join forces with the brilliant Ouseburn Trust. We’d love to see you at that as we take advantage of the light spring nights.

Have a great week!

What a fab GoodGym morning at Sandown Allotments today!

Four out of five of us had started the day with a parkrun, while Rae had run 5k to the task which definitely counts! Anna did a combo of both- running Jesmond Dene parkrun before running to the task. Kudos!

This cute community allotment first asked for our help a few months back with soil clearing as they work towards creating some planters for local people to look after and support their mental health. This was a perfect example of a super GoodGym task as we got stuck into a proper physical workout alongside a group of the allotments' regular volunteers. Forks and spades aplenty, countless wheelbarrow trips and a huge amount of satisfaction went into really giving this task some welly. Anna got so into this one that she managed to land bottom-first into some nettles- that girl doesn't know her own strength! With no dock leaves nearby she danced her way through the session like a trooper and handed us this perfect pun on a platter (Paul's work, not mine!).

Ninety minutes of digging were rewarded by the amazing task owners with a selection of homemade cakes, bakes, biscuits and hot drinks. Truly a morning well spent and one we would love to revisit again and again.

It was urbangreen's 100th task and we all showed up to Hodgkin park pretty excited and prepared with some surprises. Mike was there on a purely volunteer role but he shared lovely stories about the park as usual. Today's job was to take down the Ivy that had covered a massive section of the wall. It looked pretty satisfying at first. Taking down entire sections of Ivy. But we had to drag it uphill, so it was out of the way and we were all sweaty and out of breath in no time! Our tea/coffee break was extra special as Mike had brought in a chocolate cake and Lucy's mum baked us some lovely cupcakes to celebrate the occasion. We managed to clear off quite a lot of Ivy. All in all a very exciting task and I thoroughly enjoyed it!