History was made as GoodGym York reached a total of 500 good deeds today for the month of January - which still has a week left to go! How many more can we do??

Wheelbarrows full of lovely tools awaited us including some shiny new mattocks. We love new tools! Our tasks tonight included ripping up the last of the wetpour from our previous visit then mattocking out the hardcore underneath; digging out the turf from under some picnic benches; laying a weed membrane and then putting the mattocked-out hardcore on top.

Team wetpour got stuck in, knowing that this time they didn't have to worry about cutting it into manageable sized pieces as it was going straight in the skip. They dug out such a huge piece that it took about 10 bodies to transport it over to the skip. It looked like a piece of Tarmac road had grown lycra-clad legs and was walking across the field. The turf digging team weren't sure they would be able to dig the frozen ground but found it wasn't too solid and at least the bits of turf stayed in nice big clumps which were much easier for chucking into the wheelbarrows which were then trundled into the darkness where the turf was tossed over a fence. Once the ground had been dug out and stomped down Lizzie got to work cutting the ghostly white membrane roughly to size (although it turned out to be a bit too "roughly" so we had to cut an extra piece to fill the gap). There was only one pair of scissors so we thought Lizzie's surgeon hands would be the safest and she made a good job of cutting the membrane to shape around the picnic bench which was fixed to the ground, making things a lot harder.

Once Lizzie and I had very carefully folded the remaining membrane into a lovely neat square we moved over to help the mattock crew who were furiously swinging their tools and hitting the ground making some wonderful sparks, to the sounds of "oooh" and "aaaah" as if it was 5th November again. Good job they were all equipped with safety goggles as the stones were flying in all directions (some even into Nick's mouth). During pauses when the mattocking crew had a rest, myself, Lizzie, Vicky and a few others quickly shovelled up the hardcore into wheelbarrows which was then put onto the membrane around the picnic bench. We had some interesting conversations about dating whilst we were working and learnt some interesting facts about Ed! It's amazing what you learn about your fellow GoodGymers whilst you are working away. Another team started work digging out the turf from around the next picnic bench whilst Nikki and Becky finished off digging the turf from around one of the benches.

We didn't get to finish the whole job, as there's a lot more mattocking to be done to get all that lovely hardcore up - preferably when the ground is a bit less frozen. We will be back soon!

19 Goodgym Yorkies, including newbies Amy and Dylan, ventured to Rowntree Park to cut back the wooded area towards the back of the park.

The instructions were very simple, 'cut everything down to ground level'. Exactly the kind of direction we like to hear, and before long we were lopping and sawing everything in sight.

Do you want me to trim your spikey bush

The trees seemed to be a mixture of hazel and the spikiest thing known to man, but that didn't deter Nick from offering to lend a hand to wife Barbara!

Latecomer Debs was quick to get down to work and showed Ed and Mitch how to saw a tree properly (and faster than the two of them could manage together). The pile of branches and trunks was soon building up and started to be gathered into bags by those brave enough to confront the spikey things hands on!

Pete kept up the pace dragging the bigger branches down to the play area, whilst Debs and Craig persisted to the bitter end on the many stumps of stumpiness! A quick tidy and a round up of tools and we were good to go. Although I'm sure we'll be back for more lopping and sawing another day.

17 amazing GG Yorkies got very dirty whilst removing wetpour from a playground.

Wetpour is "a blended mix of rubber granules bound together, having been manufactured on site and laid on an existing suitable, or specially prepared base to provide a continuous surfacing free of seams or joints". Well that's the technical definition anyway. In reality, it's that green, rubbery tarmac that you find lining children's playgrounds so they bounce when they fall off the play equipment. It's very heavy.

Our task owner, Jenny provided us with wheelbarrows full of spades, shovels, loppers, saws and floodlights. She recommended lifting the edge of the wetpour so that we could then cut it with the saws to lift out in sections.

We immediately go to work. Soon there were cries of:

If you cut it a bit, then you can rip it!

Lizzie and Leanne had a go at tearing their bit to no avail. Max thought they were doing it wrong, so went over to help... only to find that our bit didn't tear quite as easily!

Soon, Team Tall (Max, Ed and Huw) were applying brute force to roll back, and tear out huge sections of the green stuff for others to cut into pieces that would fit into a wheelbarrow. Meanwhile, the rest of us (the ones without superhuman strength) went with technique and teamwork to neatly saw out smaller pieces at a time.

{WARNING! Technical jargon alert!} We soon found that underneath the green stuff, there was a thicker, but less dense layer of black stuff. We found that we could peel the green stuff away from the black stuff (making that easier to rip out) and the black stuff itself was then easier to break into small pieces and collect into bin bags. {/technical jargon finished}

Once half of the wetpour was out of the way, some of the gang got wheelbarrowing our spoils to the dumping point, and others started levering out the wooden border around the playground. Meanwhile, Bad Jim Max made himself a comfortable wetpour bed and had a nap.

After an hour of hard labour, we gave ourselves another 15 minutes to move all the waste to our dumping point which involved lifting many heavy bin bags and wheeling many heavy wheelbarrows a few hundred metres.

At the end of our time, there was still a tiny bit more wetpour to remove - After all, we wanted to give some of the other Yorkies a chance to have a go at this super fun task on another day...

8 Goodgym Yorkies headed out to a little known park area off Grange Lane to help cut back the edge of a wooded area which had become a bit of a hot-spot for fly-tipping and poo bag-abandoning. Spurred on by brand new loppers, the team soon got to work and made great progress in clearing back the trees and brambles in order to be able to reach the rubbish underneath.

Undeterred by an inordinate amount of cheap cider cans and poo bags the brave GG'ers managed to fill 7 huge bags of rubbish, as well as clear enough of the overgrowth to allow for more litter picking another time. Tyres, children's slippers and energy drink cans were no match for our team, although Barbara did seem a bit more cautious about picking up a fire extinguisher which had been left in amongst the detritus

Once the piles of branches were cleared from the path, the team grabbed the rubbish bags and headed back across the park, but not before receiving a huge thank you from a local dog walker who could already see the vast improvement