It was a gorgeous day in the park today for the first leg of our Bank Holiday Bonanza! And what’s more it’s our 4th birthday today! Happy birthday GoodGym Newcastle! Paddy Freeman Park is a new venue for us, but as my local park it brought back happy memories of pushing Dan Laws on the swings! (Sorry Dan!) And indeed the children’s play area beside the pond was the location of our first task of the day. As the children play, the bark chips tend to escape through the railings onto the path and then into the pond - and that’s not good for the ducks who were basking in the sun! New member Shumi (welcome Shumi - it was great to meet you!) got stuck into raking the bark chips away from the edge inside the play area with Lucy joining in. Aimee and Andrew decided the tools weren’t very helpful and used their hands to re-home some bark chips while I swept the chips closest to the pond into piles, ready for Urban Green Ranger Maddie to shovel back into the play area. It seemed to be a much harder task than it looked at first sight and a few of us certainly regretted our decision to wear long sleeves! One little boy playing in the park was very curious about what we were doing - strange to think he’s probably about the same age as GoodGym Newcastle!

Seb arrived just in time for coffee and biscuits and after a break we moved to a more shady area of the park for our second task. Having just been discussing how much we like this time of year when the blossom is out, it was initially a bit sad to hear Ranger Mike tell us that we were going to be cutting down baby blossom trees! However, some of the saplings grow too close to the paths round the edge of the path and if left unchecked would make the paths impassable (impathable?) So another hour’s physical effort made a big difference! You can see from the photos the difference we made, as well as wondering about the suppressed thoughts that are unmasked when some people get a pair of loppers in their hands!

A big cheer again to Shumi for her first task - we hope to see you again soon! We’re back with Urban Green tomorrow at St Lawrence Park for part two of the Bank Holiday Bonanza!

Look out for a double century of good deeds tomorrow!