Goodgym Barnsley came together to celebrate their 1st Birthday made up of an awesome team of 10 runners! Big Shoutout to the runners from GG Sheffield who came along to join in the fun! Great effort from GG newbie Catherine making her debut in Barnsley!

After some quick intros and a mish-mash warm up, the tremendous ten set off in the direction of Barnsley's carers garden, perched high upon a hill on the other side of town. Gordon was eagerly waiting for us at the gate, and had made a Birthday banner especially for us, how lovely!

Gordon had "a MEGA task" for us to complete tonight and after a quick show around, the team were ready to dig in!

Tooled up, the tremendous ten split into two teams, team tree and team topsoil.

Team Tree, made up of Tom, Sorcha, James and Catherine set about digging a huge hole to house Goodgym Barnsley's Tree that was planted over the other side of the garden on the first day last year! Tom and James began to hack away the ground with a shovel and a pick and a walking stick hi ho hi ho hi ho hi ho! Dry as a bone and full of bricks, they were stuck between a rock and a hard place at times! With the hole ready for filling, Catherine and Sorcha appeared holding the tree.

Any hole's a goal! - Sorcha proclaimed

And the tree was placed safely into it's new home!

Meanwhile, Team Topsoil, made up of Steve, Mairead, Helen, Sam and Sharon were working tirelessly to tackle a huge pile of 'topsoil' or crap, as Gordon so bluntly put it! Their mission was to break up the dry, concrete-like mound, transfer it into wheelbarrows and transport to a trench that needs filling it. This task was very physically demanding and a dirty one too, so hats off to Team Topsoil for all of their efforts!! With three spade-sters and two wheelbarrow-wizards they managed to shift a huge amount of the soil to the trench!

With pizza firmly on everyone's minds, we packed up, took some group shots and said our goodbyes. Gordon wasn't letting us go without providing us with our dessert, appearing with a plastic tub and telling us to collect some of the ripe, juicy blackberries from his bush!

As it was a special occasion, we headed to a new pizza place in town called Evoo to stuff our faces full of pizza and beer!

The was by far the best GoodGym Barnsley evening I have been to, thanks everyone for all the positive vibes and bags of effort!!