It was our last “normal” Monday session for a couple of weeks due to the Easter holidays bringing a bit of disruption and yet this wasn’t exactly a normal one in the truest sense. First of all it was a short one- partly due to only having 50 leaflets left to deliver and partly due to utterly awful weather conditions. (Come on, Spring, hurry along now, there’s a good season!). It rained relentlessly and was freezing tonight leading to my Heaton/temperature related pun.

In the absence of a run leader we gathered for a walking session tonight and caught up on the weekend’s community missions. I was dying to know whether Lucy’s Mum was available to commission birthday cakes for the upcoming GG Newcastle sixth birthday next month as her cake creations at yesterday’s big Urban Green Century celebration looked divine! The answer was, thankfully, yes. Woop.

Thankfully the first part of this route is all up hill which helped to get the blood pumping and keep us warm as we headed into Heaton for the final part of the leaflet drive we’ve done for our friends at East End Women.

I’m not joking when I say this was one of the quickest tasks ever with leaflets completed in about 4 minutes, leaving us plenty of time to have a proper life catch up and forget about the rain, a great start to the week.

If leaflets are your thing, or if dogs are your thing, or if combining both is your thing, then get involved with another flyer session this Thursday where so far only Louise is spreading the word for Guide Dogs in Benton. Please help if you can!

Keep an eye on session listings over the next few weeks and read them carefully, there’s lots going on but sometimes with unusual days and meeting points! Hope to see you soon.

It’s been a glorious day in Newcastle today with the feeling that spring has finally sprung, and with a sprung spring in our steps, four of us headed out this evening on a group session to support our friends at East End Women. While most of the work we’ve done with this amazing charity is to support their foodbank, they also host a variety of brilliant classes and sessions at their Walker base, and tonight we were flyering to let Heaton residents know about what’s on offer. It was also FINALLY a chance to see Lucy sporting the golden wings after hitting her 100th good deed a few sessions back- and my subsequent regular forgetting to bring the wings along. We salute you (again) on your 100th time of being awesome.

While I’m suffering with an ongoing dodgy ankle, Louise and Aimee ran up the hill to Heaton and Lucy and I met at our frequent meeting point Heaton Perk. Side note: I’d love to actually go there when it’s open! We’d made light work of this task a few months back so I also brought along some litter pickers so we could get tidying at the same time. We caught up on life lately (and the new Pepsi logo) and I thought about how good leafleting sessions are for not only step counts but also the opportunity to keep in touch with each other in this way. Before long we’d posted all 100 leaflets and got cracking with the litter picking.

As it was a small group tonight there was no opportunity for a huge game so we did a quick round of Copy Cats and practised some fancy (and not so fancy) footwork in a short drills and strides fitness session.

Big thanks again to Louise for stepping in to run lead this evening.

There’s a daytime session on Thursday this week as we help to launch the Tiny Forest in Bensham if you’re around to help it looks like a lovely session! If not, there are loads of other opportunities to do good stuff coming. Hope to see you soon.

Tonight was part two of our leaflet delivery task for East End Women - a fantastic charity which is part of the bigger Building Futures East Charity. East End Women provide an amazing range of activities, workshops and seminars, designed to empower women in the East End of Newcastle. Our task was to help spread the word about what's on offer.

Aimee and Adam chose to run the mile from our Stepney Bank Stables base to Byker while Anna and I chose to walk, having already got our running in! The leaflet delivery was speedy and uneventful. We did spy, though, the bright lights of a funfair with a Big Wheel lighting up the quayside! Maybe go and check it out!

It’s the first Monday evening session in absolutely ages where I’ve left my house in daylight.. whisper it… Spring is coming!

Six GoodGymers and only 100 leaflets - the reverse of last week’s session where we felt we had too many leaflets for people attending and we ran out of time! Confident we’d smash this task very quickly I added an extra ask to it- could we also fill two bags of litter, one before the start of flyering and one after? Spoiler alert- of course we could!

Our brilliant friends at Building Futures East which many GoodGymers will know is the home of East End Women Foodbank, had asked us to do some leaflet dropping in two areas: Heaton tonight and Byker next week. The organisation is struggling to spread the word of the amazing work they do via daily workshops at the BFE base in Newcastle. With so much on offer we want to help them to boost the numbers and we are always happy to help.

The majority of the group were running tonight, Seb leading the way and back-marked by brilliant Zoe who we were happy to see back for her second GoodGym session with us tonight. It’s all uphill to Heaton but we all arrived at exactly the same time - and yes, a bag of litter had been collected along the way.

We made very quick work of the flyer distribution, leaving time for another bag of litter to be collected and Adam to receive high praise from some passing locals. Always nice getting real- life kudos! Everyone then joined in with a cardio-blasting fitness session which combined a relay of sprints and a highly competitive pairs game of the game I call leg-tappies. This was a great, fun, high energy way to end a satisfying task and a brilliant way to start the week.

I’d love to get some more names on the register for our Tiny Forest planting session this Wednesday as we start a love story with EarthWatch this Valentine’s Day! Pop along if you can.

What a lovely morning at East End Women foodbank at Building Futures East! Krishti and I battled through some very dicey roads to get there in the snow and it was totally worth it.

We have only ever done one task together in all this time so the time flew over today while we chatted about life and how GoodGym has enhanced so many connections for us- very wholesome.

We completed two tasks this morning, packing food parcels for families in need of support this Christmas, and organising toy donations (including a big pile of presents from GoodGymers!) into age categories. These tasks were much appreciated by the foodbank staff who work hard to improve the lives of people in the east end of Newcastle.

I think Krishti and I can safely say we are on the Nice List now.

For our second festive task of the week I visited our old friends East End Women’s Food Bank at Building Futures East. This was the first of two tasks we have there this week. Today I spent some time with one of the regular volunteers, Gary, sorting donated children’s books, stickers and activity packs into age groups. Later in the week these will be added to toys that Gary has already sorted to make Christmas presents for local children. It’s bittersweet to be able to contribute to such fantastic work making sure lots of children receive gifts at Christmas, while reflecting on the thought that such a service is needed.

Once the books were sorted I began to pack some food parcels. The East End Women’s food bank delivers LOTS of food parcels each week and GoodGym Newcastle members were proud to help out during the peak pandemic months. It didn’t take long for me to get back into the swing of it and it was nice to be able to include some Christmas treats!

I finished off with a quick hoover (difficult to get a hoovering selfie!) and task owner Dawn seemed happy with the progress. Personally, I’m a bit concerned that with festive tasks two days in a row I’m in danger of feeling the Christmas spirit before it’s even December!

If you’d like to join in part two of this task on Friday you can sign up here. Grinch warning: Christmas wrapping paper may be involved! Packing toy and food hampers for Building Futures East foodbank - Improve a family's Christmas