Six of us met, appropriately at a bench, to carry out this benchmarking exercise. Part of a massive commitment by Goodgym to run every street of York. We were so keen that 4 of us were half an hour early. Great opportunity to catch up with Nick and Babbs and to meet Katherine. Nick was our Knight on shining bike by joining the task last minute but only had cycle shoes as a result. So Nick and Babbs cycled around Clifton Backies and discovered some lovely ornate benches. It is said amongst the locals that there was a carved wooden bench called the witches corner but it has mysteriously disappeared (well, vandalised unfortunately). Michael and Louise did one set of streets and found plenty of unmarked benches while Katherine and myself decided to clock up some additional distance by having our map upside down and going in the wrong direction (I take all the credit for that one).

The space where the church community hall used to be is being transformed into an open community garden and we were called to help make it happen.

Katie, a local artist who uses the space at the church for her studio had three tasks laid out for us this morning.

Leanne, Kathryn, Michal and Paul went to dig over section of the garden by the brick wall, remove any weeds and stones and add fresh compost to raise the ground level and make it more nutritious for new plants. Meanwhile Katie picked up a brush and some paint and applied her skill to make the wooden fence beautiful. We were also asked to move a metal cabinet within the church, from the first floor to a room on the ground floor, however after a thorough assesment Michal and Paul decided that it wasn't save, due to it's weight and very narrow staircase. Gill from the church found our assesment very useful and will look at potentially dismantling the cabinet into smaller sections to make it possible to carry.

We were offered some tea and coffee and it was nice to be able to work alongside volunteers from the church, get to know them a little bit and let them know about GoodGym.

After just one hour of honest work Katie painted a large section of the fence and the rest of us dug over the entire flower bed, transported and raked in two bulk bags of steaming compost.

Happy with our efforts we posed for a team photo before heading off for a well deserved lunch.

I'm gonna keep this short and sweet as I'm * yawn * quite tired.

It was a sunny but chilly evening on the community garden where 8 Goodgym-ers assembled to tackle the jobs that task owner Louise had got lined up for us.

Michal, Sally, Katherine and Kara were unleashed upon the compost bins with the aim of removing the compost to create decorative mounds for seeding at a later date around the community garden, but also so that the compost bins would be able to be rebuilt bigger and better.

Team two consisting of Paul, Steve and Katie set about rolling back the sheeting on a flower bed (put down to suppress the weeds) and turning over the soil while removing any pasty looking weeds that had foolishly tried to grow In the wrong place. This soon turned into a game of toss things into the wheel barrow with possibly the widest margin of error ever seen in sport. However the H&S nightmare game of grounders was invented at the same time.

After an 75 minutes both teams had reached a satisfying end point for their respective tasks. And team two tucked their hard work back under the covers, See if you can spot the difference in the before and after photos.

Then with the tantalising smells of takeaways on the wind we scuttled off home.

Big thank you to Michal who stepped up to be photographer as Task leader Katie's phone was out of juice!

On a beautiful sunny bank holiday, 5 of us went to St Nicks to help with their wildflower meadow restoration. The main aim was to dig out and flip over squares of grass to expose better soil (I think, I had an admittedly hazy head due to yesterdays celebrations...). We then scarified the ground and planted some wildflower seeds. The aim was to dig out squares and connect them together to make a large area for wildflowers.

Of course the first task is to actually get to St Nicks, which proved a challenge for some people.

"I ended up in a field!" - Amy

However we all eventually made it to the task and were straight on it. Big welcome to Katherine who came on her first task today; give her a cheer! We also caught up with Jonathon, who we haven't seen in ages!

Whilst it was slightly challenging to connect our plots due to social distancing, we eventually managed to dig up a large enough area to start planting seeds. After an hours graft, we finished the task and can enjoy the rest of todays sunshine.