Last year we cut back some very overgrown elders, leaving a row of stumps. In the last 8 months they'd sprouted back all over the place and we had been set a challenge to try to get them up by their roots!

First of all we had to lop everything back and once we'd done that, we could see the enormity of the task ahead. Nobody was deterred though and people started digging trenches around the stumps to attempt to get them up.

Newbie Kate threw herself into it and remained optimistic even when her and Lindsay appeared to hit a concrete floor a few feet beneath the surface.

We tried a strategy of mattocking the actual stumps but - despite being really fun - it was not a very effective strategy so that was soon canned. John and Vicky were still going strong with their stump but the rest of us focused on sawing the trees as low as possible.

As John and Vicky got closer to victory, Kate, Leanne and Freya all came to help lever the roots from the ground and everyone cheered as one giant stump was extracted!

All that was left was for 'Lumberjack Kate' to finish her almighty sawing challenge that she's set herself: basically sawing through a huge stump with a slightly-too-small saw.

An incredible 46 people turned up for tonight’s double task! Among them were the Considerate Craig and Brilliant Becki who had completed the Yorkshire Wolds Half Marathon on the weekend and Excellent Ed who achieved a 5k PB at Parkrun! As well as this, the Delightful Debs completed her 50th good deed today; make sure to give her a cheer. We also welcomed new starters Superb Sarah, Spectacular Sonja and Courageous Caron to the team!

We had two tasks to do today. I led out a group to Poppy Road to help with St Nicks meadow project whilst Tim led a longer group to St Oswalds Church to help dig up plants.

Tim’s group set to task trying to get some pesky roots up so St Oswalds can re-grass the boundary of their garden. Avoiding the beautiful fuchsia and a carefully cordoned off bees nest they got to task. Tristan had to call for hacksaw assistance when he came against a particularly tree-like root. Jeff however opted for the “yank till it comes out” strategy, dutifully watched by Stef’s best “if I stand here watching I don’t have to do work. Nicky and Jackie did their best work hyping up the difficult fern to dig up. Katie set to a more forensic approach of meticulously investigating every weed. The naughty GoodGymers digging up weeds round the back of the church managed to break a fork in the final minutes…it is unknown how as they apparently didn’t have much to do!

Meanwhile, my group went to Poppy Road to help local volunteers and Jonathon maintain the meadows. In our eagerness we arrived as John was setting up the tools, so we had to wait a few minutes. I started to explain the meadows, to which John was there to correct me…multiple times! The task was a GoodGym classic; scythe, rake, scrape, tidy. After a quick demonstration and safety briefing, we were on it and making quick work of the meadow. After half an hour, everyone already cleared a massive patch of meadow showing more people make quick work!

We are like locusts…I mean that in a good way! - Maddie

Aside from Laura finding a flying ant’s nest, the task went as smooth as can be! After forty minutes we bid farewell and made our way to Scarcroft Green for our fitness session.

We did a slightly modified version of 'Cones of Happiness'; everyone split off into 8 groups and further split into pairs (or threes) and were designated an exercise written on cones. As one person does the exercise, the other ran to a nearby tree and upon returning they swapped, after which they moved on to the next cone. Despite the heat, everybody gave it their all, especially on the dance where Laid-back Laurence casually did an amazing moon walk!

After the session we all congregated to Brigantes as per usual. Delightful Debs even brought flap jacks for us…she is a proper GoodGymer!!

GG Yorkies walked and ran not a very long way at all to do two extremely local tasks!

'Fresh' from running the Race to the Stones 100k at the weekend, Mitch, Leanne, Tristan and Becky all made it and showed us their bling, they also all very sensibly joined the walking crew.

We had two tasks tonight, one was over at The Nose which is a community garden based at St Clement's Church. Nick led his running crew all of about 850m with Ellie and Laura as joint walking leaders.

The task was to weed and edge the beds and borders, pick any fruit and veg and deadhead the roses. Freya and first-time runner Immy were busy digging up loads of potatoes from the raised bed. Amy was tasked with clearing the weeds surrounding the raised beds, but mostly was digging up hundreds and thousands of woodlouse! The team quickly cleared all the weeds and tidied the edges of the flowerbed, creating lovely straight lines as far as the eye could see. As with any task involving fruit picking, there was also a lot of fruit eating with raspberries, gooseberries and blackcurrants on offer, mostly sampled by Ellie and Becky.

The blackcurrants are smokey? Ed

After deciding the blackcurrants seemed to be gently infused with the aroma of diesel, the 'Nose Team' headed round the corner to Scarcroft Green, Freya and Immy swinging the massive bucket of potato loot between them (kudos to Immy for carrying a huge bucket of potatoes all the way back on her first ever group run!)

My team, with Leanne as the walk leader and Debs as back marker, almost missed the school completely with everyone very enthusiastically running onto Scarcroft Green. Our task owner was our very own Tom FitzP. Tom had originally told me there would be around 4 tonnes of soil to shift, then a few days ago it was 6 tonnes and moving some logs... today there were lots of logs to move and create a log seating area with and around 8 tonnes of soil to barrow across and fill three giant raised beds.

The massive sacks didn't worry anyone and everyone got stuck in shovelling soil into wheelbarrows. It took all of about ten minutes to move the logs into a very specific shape.

Not a log circle, more like a log ellipse - Tom

We filled the large raised beds with 5 minutes to spare and even had time for a quick bonus litter pick on Scarcroft Green before the other team joined us for fitness.

It's like Cones of Joy, but in teams and with optional running!

We need to come up with a better name for tonight's fitness game but basically teams of four tackled ten stations with a whole bunch of exercises to choose from, and in transition between each station you could choose to be a sleeping lion or to go for a sprint to an inanimate object on the Green.

Being a sleeping lion is a trick, getting up is so hard - Leanne

Pretty much everyone's favourite exercises was resistance running with bands, apart from probably Ed who was subjected to a serious band slap by Nick - so loud that everyone heard it above the music.

On our return, Huw surprised the 100km runners with an amazing commemorative cake with little stones on it and everything.

Next week Mitch is the boss, have fun!