Huge thanks to Tanya for holding the fort at a fab new mission with Urban Green Newcastle today at Kingston Park.

Tanya said, "Hannah and Ben were leading for Urban Green today. Mission: find the path. Phil’s hangover kept us entertained while digging up the grass into reusable sections. Once the path was uncovered, we used some of the turf to fill diverts in the goal posts in the park. The rest of the turf will be used in other parks to do the same thing.

Phil did his best bird stomping for worms impression. We finished off with Debbie on an impromptu litter pick for empty party cups!"

What a difference! Well done everyone.

It would be great to do a big return visit to this location as it has had much less attention than our other Urban Green parks. Watch this space!

…edged, shovelled, and cleared.

Five GoodGymers (and Andrew) set out to work their magic (ably assisted, of course, by Mike & Maddie from Urban Green 😊) to transform the Jesmond Dene parkrun route.

Two hours of back breaking work and a large stretch of the route was suddenly at least a couple of feet wider.

Impressed? You should be as 3 of us had done the “all uphill for the first half of the route” parkrun first. Kudos to Phil, Deb and Tanya - what a trio!

And hats off to Seb and myself for patiently listening to the retelling of every gruelling step 😊😊! (Only joking Phil, Deb & Tanya – we were both seriously impressed and somewhat in awe.)

Congrats to everyone for great team work this morning – we achieved more than Mike & Maddie thought possible – and any resemblance to a criminal chain gang (see the photos) was purely accidental!

Louise and Dan arrived first and did a litter pick while the rest of us arrived later from various possibly further away parkruns.

Me, Tanya, Debbie, Matty and Phil started shoveling gravel from the Urban Green truck on to parts of the path which were now big puddles to fill in the holes in improve the path surface for park users. The lads got really competitive and we're trying to beat each other which made it faster.

Louise and Dan after litter picking set up to work sawing up a tree fallen which was near the side of the path and was stopping the grass from being mowed.

When the gravel ran out we had a tea break which Dan and Louise worked through as they where leaving at half past. The rest of us started chopping the last of the the wood and moving the big pieces into the woods to make a bug hotel.

Keep an eye out for the next urban green task tomorrow and in three weeks.

Thanks Tanya for the excellent pun!

Standing ovation for this pun from Debbie first of all!

We had one of those timed-to-perfection nights at our group run last night as we finished up just as the rain started. I loved the mix of run/walk/cycle last night as we had goodgymers doing all three!

It was brilliant to meet new GoodGymers Eleanor and Andrew along for their first session, and to meet Anthony on his second good deed. They all slotted straight into GoodGym life and really got stuck in.

We linked up with NE1 last night for a Great British Spring Clean task at St Andrew's Church which we later found out is the oldest church in Newcastle, and the last remaining enclosed church yard in the city. If you've ever been to The Gate or headed up Newgate Street, you will have passed this place. Our job was to clear the grounds of as many leaves and fallen branches as we could.

Task owner Pam was super organised and met us ready to get started with bags, pickers, rakes, spades and a leaf blower which we commandeered to Andy in recognition of his first good deed! This was a proper physical workout as we worked in small groups to rake, sweep and stack leaves into bags. You can see the difference we made in just 45 minutes, and we were met by a member of the team from the church who came out to thank us for the efforts we had put in.

With huge thanks to NE1 for a great task!