❄️26 excellent GoodGymmers met on a rather chilly Monday evening for our group run.

🙌We were thrilled to welcome Katie for her first group run, after meeting her a few times at recent community missions.

💪We spent some time congratulating people on some incredible getting fit and doing good over the weekend and last week. There were slabs laid, nature areas developed and half marathons run (including some very impressive PBs) 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♂️

🎂We discussed the plenty more opportunities to get involved this week, including GoodGym York's 5th birthday celebrations this weekend. With the choice of 5 tasks over the weekend (and any number of 5k runs you fancy doing), the world is your oyster 🌍

😁Tonight, our naming and numbering was accompanied by the perfect antidote to Blue Monday - a discussion of what makes us happy. From kittens to cake to the pub to Paul Kelly, the variety was impressive 🐈

🌳After waving goodbye to our walking friends and doing a quick warm up, we headed to our task.

🌱There to meet us at Clarence Gardens was Iain who gave us our instructions. There were two parts to tonight's task: digging and composting.

🌺Team Dig used a variety of tools (including hoes) to dig over two large flowerbeds. Weeds were pulled out and bulbs rescued in this important task. The council hope to get some funding to transform these at some point but in the meantime, they're grateful for a hand with maintaining them ready for the spring flowers 🌷

⛏️Team Compost were mining for gold (aka decent compost, carefully crafted by GoodGym York over the last few years. There was much digging through the layers of variously composted leaves/mulch to find said gold. The first wheelbarrow was (very politely) declined by Iain who has appropriately high standards when it comes to compost. Once through that layer to the real thing though, there was plenty to be found, dug out, wheelbarrowed and spread on the newly turned over beds. So much compost in fact that there was then a slight panic about what to do with the remaining compost and leaves with the time available. Cue frantic borrowing of tools and people from Team Dig and the compost area was left nice and tidy with a potential future task to finish off the job 🍂

🐍After that, we did some fitness fun involving running snakes (need to come up with a better name) and British Bulldog. With that, we jogged back to base where we stretched off and looked forward to warming up at home/the pub 🍻

👍Thank you everyone, it was really great to see you and hopefully see you sometime soon!

Team 2 started to assemble at 12 after various teetering arrivals on bike and foot through the freezing fog. We found Team 1 had done a sterling job clearing the area for the shed, flattening the ground as much as possible, measuring up, and mixing a mahoosive amount of concrete! They had also laid down the first 4 slabs already (super speedy!) but unfortunately Beki realised at that point that we were going to run out of materials for the concrete with the current thickness, so step 1 for us was to undo part of their good work and spread the concrete layer out further before re-laying the slabs, and then moving on to new slabs and more concrete mixing. Rich and I joined Katie and Louise on this (who had both already done the full first session! Big props to them both!), quickly joined by Debs (who can't resist a big hammer).

Meanwhile the rest of the group, Cara, Max, Helen and Amy, who couldn't really squeeze in around the shed, kept nice and warm with clearing all around the car park - lopping branches and brambles, sweeping up dead leaves and muck, and generally making it all beautiful and tidy again. Max also entertained us with some comedy dramatic throws of muck into the bushes (sadly not fully captured on camera).

As our concreting and laying skills improved, we got a bit cocky about how good we were and started re-writing the lyrics to Bootylicious.

Something along the lines of: Debs, can you handle this? Louise, can you handle this? Katie can you handle this? I do think you can handle this...

I don't think you're ready for this jelly(like consistency concrete) 'Cause my concrete too slabbylicious for ya, babe

We were quickly brought back down to earth by the realisation that despite the re-spreading of the concrete we were still running out of sand. "Please sir, I want some more!" Just after sending Beki to the shops for more sand, we realised we were also running low on water. After discussing several options (including "pee in it", thanks Rich), we dispatched the most presentable of us (Debs) to knock on doors to find someone with an outdoor tap. Luckily she struck gold on the first try and found an ex-builder, who was very interested and impressed to hear all about GoodGym, and more than happy to help. He also offered us a concrete mixer (damn that would have made life easier!).

With ample sand and water now available we set to finishing off the last two slabs, only to discover we were now getting quite low on cement.. with a little bit of bodging (wouldn't be GoodGym without a bit of bodging) and bulking with more sand, we just about had enough to finish and level the last 2 slabs ("make the noise!" obscure reference for Binky fans). Team Clean meanwhile had finished their super sweeping and we all admired their sparkling carpark. They in turn got to heckle us to hurry up and finish before they froze to death before the final photo could be taken.

Finally done, we all gathered around the Beautiful Slabs for the photo, to many shouts of "don't touch it!" and with a final touch of GG graffiti from Debs, we all set off home to warm up!