A lovely sunny Saturday morning saw several of us set off from Mud Dock at “Dave Pace”, allowing Liam to catch us up as we approached Novers Steps at the Northern Slopes where we met up with some other GoodGymers along with Julia and Les of the Northern Slopes Initiative to continue clearing the vegetation and litter from near to the steps to allow them more space to plant some trees.

Armed with an array of tools from loppers, shears, slashers, Austrian Scythes and a new tool - a tree popper which Chris (who else) made a bee line for - most of the gang spent an hour cutting back grass and brambles, whilst the remainder took up litter pickers to clear up lots of cans, bottles, packets and wrappers plus an old umbrella.

By the time our hour was up, Les reckoned we’d cleared enough space to plant a couple of trees and Chris had fallen in love with the tree popper!

After drinks and biscuits a larger group ran back to Mud Dock, satisfied with our work and enjoying the respite from the recent wind and rain.

it was great to have new runners Lexi and Jacob along for the first time who both got really stuck in to the task.

Popper job!

It was amazing to have such a large turnout today for our first run back of the year - 2020 is here! Big welcome to Louise, James, Daniel, Luke, Jess, Nida, Sian, Miriam, Rob, Robin, Caron and Alice - WOW. They were joined by a huge bunch of our regular faces. We got warmed up at Mud Dock and then split into two groups, The Labradors and The Greyhounds (casual ones though). [Alison] led the Labradors with [Alice] back-marking while Chris back-marked The Greyhounds. Thank you guys!

It was a 5km run to the task which included a hefty hill and a bit of muddy trail running to finish it off. We were welcomed by Andy and his crew of helpers who split us between three tasks: clearing the hedge for hedgelaying, digging a one metre pond and turning the compost to mulch the trees. As we had such a wonderfully huge group, we split into two teams and each lucky group got half of their time doing a fitness session of stair reps, sprints, squats and lunges then swapped in to finish the jobs. The Labradors even got FOUR actual labradors coming to witness their session! After 45 minutes, the jobs were done and tools were cleared up and we were ready to run (the thankfully downhill) 5km back.

It was great to see you all and we are looking forward to lots more 2020 good deeds!