On a chilly but sunny spring evening, an amazing 23 GG Yorkies came out to do one of our more bizarre tasks of the year so far. The initial excitement of heading to the Foss Fairy trail was soon diminished when Ed informed the group that we were actually going to a disused hockey pitch near the trail, rather than spending any time "away with the fairies" as Jamie put it! 🧚‍♂️

We welcomed Sanjay who was doing his first ever GoodGym task tonight 👋 and also gave a big cheer to the absent Rich who had completed the Fred Whitton round over the weekend, which I'm led to believe is a ridiculously long and arduous bike ride over a lot of passes in the Lake District. Rather him than me!

We warmed up by naming our favourite mythical creatures, although it's debatable whether the fraggles and the hobbit count in that category! When then set off with Ed leading the run and Jenna/Laura backmarking. We also managed to get a few step reps in at the front of the Premier Inn thanks to Kit's enthusiasm!

Tonight's task seemed to involve sweeping and scraping a lot of debris from an old astro turf hockey pitch. It's not entirely clear what the end goal is, but the team armed with brooms and shovels soon got to work and made good progress revealing some of the old lines on the pitch

Meanwhile another group tackled some brambles and nettles that were growing through the fence onto the pitch, whilst David and Amy went on a litter pick, which featured task owner Tracy running after some local youths that had previously pinched the litter pickers! 🏃‍♀️

We then stopped for a quick group photo before it was time for tonight's fitness session. After initially starting with Ed confusing the number of groups with the number of people in a group, we eventually got started with an excellent demonstration from Lucy, Martin and Laura. It was all very simple really, Jump, Lunge, Squat (or JLS for short) in a relay to the end of the pitch and back. Straightforward enough, until everyone arrived at the end of the pitch and weren't entirely sure how to turn around and continue the JLS routine. After a bit more clarification of the rules from Ed the group had a second stab at it, and despite some dubious squatting, everyone managed to get the hang of it to set up a tense finish at the end.

There was a slight change to the task tonight as the expected skip had not arrived at the allotments. Luckily there was a backup plan to get all the rubbish into a van so we were still able to help buy barrowing and carrying it to the car park. It looked like there had been some serious fly tipping at the allotments as a lot of the rubbish was not the kind of stuff you would usually find on an allotment site.

With six of us we made light work of the task. Unfortunately the van did not arrive in time for us to help with the loading.

A big shout out to Lisa for completing her first GoodGym task after signing up more than a year ago! To be fair to Lisa, she is also a run leader with Community Fit in Harrogate and has done more than a hundred good deeds with them over the last few years.

For some people a Bank Holiday Monday is a time to kick back and relax but Team GG never sleeps!

Some ran, some biked, some ran a bit and walked a bit, some meeting at the usual spot and others arriving from far and wide to rendezvous at the task. Either way 26 folk met at Not Fishponds Wood near Fishponds Wood.

We had some heroes to celebrate

• Hannah who was excited to wear the cape of Good Deeds now that she has completed over 50 tasks
• Neil who is our GoodGymer of the month for being an awesome gent, doing 7 Good Deeds in the month as well as being personal chauffer to Vicky The Hip Hearson!

We also welcomed Jake to his very first GoodGym task! Jake is Alex's mate. Whatever Alex is selling it's working as last week he brought along Dylan who was back again despite endangering his bright white new running shoes last week and now we have Jake too!

Who will Alex bring next time?

It was straight to work in Not Fishponds Wood Near Fishponds Wood pulling the ivy which was choking the trees and plants.

We tugged and pulled and scraped and snipped and hacked and sawed and yanked and plucked and picked and ripped and jerked and wrenched and heaved and hauled and slashed at the ivy and pretty soon had cleared a good section of the wood and had filled a huge collection of tonne bags with ivy!

Then we were off running and biking back for some fitness activity running up and down Windmill Hill!

On a Bank Holiday Monday!

I know!

Now that's just daft so the sensible ones discovered they really needed to go straight home instead!