We may have got drenched en route but the job was done super quick :), and everything tidy!

Despite the pouring rain all day and the original task being cancelled, we still had 19 hardy goodgymers turn out for the last group run of 2025!

We are very grateful to Laura for stepping in last minute and finding us a wide array of jobs at Holgate Community Garden. We had budlea cutters, compost shifters, leaf sweepers and woodchip weeders.

We soon rattled through the jobs then ended with some Christmas themed tag, where you had to sing a line from a Christmas song to release the tagged reindeer/snowman/holly/santa.

It was then back to base led by Pete and thats it for this year... except the party on Friday!

A beautiful sunny winters day for litter picking in Germany Beck... though my recruitment for GoodGym volunteers was a bit of a failure! Come join us next month and add some points to the January challenge 😁

As in previous years, we joined Rotary York Ainsty's Santa sleigh to provide some elves to go door-to-door collecting donations for York Mind. We were lucky that the temperature was a balmy 11 degrees this evening - much better than previous years' rain and very cold temperatures. The sleigh made its way through the streets of Woodthorpe, stopping regularly so that Santa (aka GG-er James) could have a chat and give out sweets to some of the local children. Lots of people had their cash ready for us and one chap gave us a small bag full of coins that he had collected. A lack of cash was not a barrier as, for the first time, one of our elves (Nick) had the York Mind card reader app on his phone so he could take card payments without people needing to go to the card reader with the sleigh. It was great fun to shout "Nick" and see him come running! We had a pleasant 2½ hours of collecting before returning to our start point, tired but feeling more in the Christmas spirit. We will find out later exactly how much we have collected - can we beat last year's total?

T'was our last Hartrigg evening of 2025

Where four goodgymers met outside on the drive

We bundled inside with new games to play

But where were the residents? Only two had arrived to have their say!

Nevermind, Lucy beckoned, “We can still have some fun!”

We grabbed a drainpipe each—oh, this game had begun.

We passed them around with a wobble and cheer,

Soon more folks joined once the laughter drew near.

The ball started rocking, it rolled with delight,

Soon we had mastered, it was time to move on

To bowling and bingo, what a fun festive night!

We were having so much fun, we could have continued 'til dawn.

But the clock had struck 7pm, Claire had to leave for her ball...

Alas, the bingo wasn't finished, the cards were not full!

So we decked and we donned, we sung the christmas songs

'Til finally we claimed team the winners - team Ding Dong!

Santa needs all the help he can get at this time of year, and there was a Salvation army of hands helping out. Our task was to sort donated new toys into age groups and gender. Then we filled each named red sack with a selection of toys, books, craft activities and a selection box from the huge pile, according to age. It was fun to imagine the child, and choose the goodies that would make a good sackful for them. We were soon reminiscing about our favourite toys at different ages. This is a huge operation, but nothing's too big for Santa!