The weather gods were kind to GoodGym Newcastle tonight as the wind and rain that came before and after subsided as we cleared the litter after the Ouseburn Festival.

There were five bags full tonight, with probably the most unusual item picked up being a half full baby bottle.

If there's one thing about Geordie GoodGymers it's that they love a challenge

This week the challenge was on. 1200 envelopes to pack with newsletters and magazines for CVS Newcastle and avoid paper cuts!

It was overcast in Toon for our first ever fully-indoor task as we welcomed newbies Hazelle and Rebecca to the GoodGym family. We piled up the stairs in to CVS Newcastle offices and got straight into packing teams, the majority of the group choosing, suspiciously, the room where the biscuits had been laid on. Every envelope had to be packed with a magazine, a leaflet and a letter before being addressed with a sticky label. Easy work for this group of legends Much packing and sticking started, with Paul in charge of the Franking machine with his day, week and life made.

Happy Days

1200 envelopes were packed and piled in just 35 minutes much to the delight of Martin and Sally from the CVS who tried to work out a mathematical equation of the time we had saved them... this job usually takes two members of their staff two whole days!

We completed an epic paired session of agility ladder drills and 200m laps around Higham House where Louise also gave us all a handy German lesson (paarlauf is NOT Polish, it would appear) before heading back to base at Hotel Indigo

Thanks everyone for proving that many hands do make light work. Again.

See you next week for our cycle path clear up with Sustrans. Keep an eye on the details as the distance may be subject to change. Sign up here

Happy Running! Anji

It was a pretty cold Monday night task, setting out from Stepney Bank Stables to deliver our own GoodGym Newcastle leaflets around the Shieldfield area of Newcastle. It's been quite a while since we've done this sort of self-promotion!

Onyinye joined us for the very first time! Welcome to GoodGym and well done on your first good deed. Old hands Scott and Richard revisited some familiar streets to help spread the word about GoodGym.

The forecast rain didn't arrive and hopefully we have helped recruit some GoodGymers, so it was a successful evening!

I was the run director at whitley bay junior parkrun on a very windy mother's day! The young runner weren't put of my the strong winds with a quarter of the young runners achieved a person best! A great time was had by all!

On a pleasant Monday evening, three GoodGym litter pickers headed out up Stepney Bank towards New Bridge Street. It's not an area we have litter picked in often and it was certainly needed. The main road into the city centre from Byker, New Bridge Street had mountains of litter, particularly around its bus stops. It's hard to understand how it ends up like this as there are numerous bins around the bus stops.

We had several people stopping to thank us and asking what GoodGym was. We did our best to explain and told people to look us up. If you were one of those people and are reading this, please sign up and come join us on a Monday night soon!

It was a new community mission for us today on a very foggy Sunday morning. The weather didn’t put off six excellent GoodGymers from showing up and busting some grease!

The kitchen definitely wasn’t the worst we’ve ever seen but there was still some TLC needed. The biggest improvement we made today was the fryer – see the pics for the before and after. Louise shifted a serious amount of grease out of that fryer!

Charlotte and Liz paired up to tackle the oven while Katy and Ross tag teamed washing up and hot water distributing. I celebrated my 50th good deed today by Marie Kondo-ing the utensil drawers – everything needs a home. We wrapped up with a quick break for tea, which Liz kindly made for us, before all grabbing a mop and making the floor sparkle!

Thank you to everyone for coming, you make the world a better place! The next community mission is on Tuesday where Katy will be leading a library tidy, sign up here!