One beach at Norden Farm, 2 employees, 3 GoodGymers, several shovels and lots of dumpy bags that needed filling. Sadly it was time for the beach to be put away for the winter. It proved to be the ultimate workout for Louis, Sol and Sheila, working legs, arms, shoulders and glutes. Gradually we filled the bags and helped Matt and Jim move the full bags with the aid of a pallet truck. We found several lost toys and a spade buried in the sand. By the end, we had helped them break the back of the task, leaving them with a little more to do tomorrow. An exhausting task!

Angela, Yvonne, Mohamud and myself answered the call to help at the Norden Farm Kite Festival this afternoon with the pack up. It was a very successful event, lots,of families attended, there was entertainment, food, ice-cream and the weather was perfect for kite flying! We joined at the end of the event and helped with dismantling the tents and litter picking. Many hands make light work, and this was the case here! A warm welcome and congratulations go to Mohamud,who's done his very first GoodGym task! We hope to see you again soon!

Christine, Jess and Jen met at Norden Farm Centre for the Arts and collected the leaflets to be delivered to three local roads.

We made a collective decision to head to the furthest point of our deliver route and work our way back...down the hill.

Such great team workers are we, we also took it in turns to be a solo deliverer on one side of a street with the other 2 pairing up tackle alternate houses.

The pair were then able to cross over and work back down the solo side of the street to catch up with and help out the solo deliverer.

We encountered a few cute cats, some snappy, barking dogs, drive ways, porches, gardens, steps, sticky gates and a variety of letter boxes. All in a nights leafletting.

Nine keen good gymers arrived at Norden Farm on a mission to create a local beach for the summer holidays. Tonnes of sand were emptied using shovels, spades and hands. Teamwork made light work of the task and bags were emptied in record time! After some efficient raking the beach was covered by large plastic sheets to protect it from a cat's playground. Hopefully the giant sandpit will provide hours of digging fun for the summer play-scheme.

Shift 3 of the Lantern Parade felt like a breeze! Angela and Jess stayed back from the previous shift to help (thank you!).

The seven of us working alongside the Norden Farm staff and other volunteers, made light work of the post-event clean up. After reclaiming lantern sticks from the public, we grouped them into batches of 10 per their colour. These were efficiently taped together and transferred to the library side of the road where a van was parked to load 'em up. We also helped gather discarded lanterns, remove signs from lampposts and Anne-Laure even did some heavy lifting to help the Stage crew.

Everyone - including task owner Kayleigh - was surprised at how fast things got done. The new high-vis vests courtesy Viv, got a good outing (and photographing) and we all walked away satisfied and happy to have been part of this joyful annual event once again!

One of our favourite events in the GoodGym calendar, and the turnout of GoodGymers did not disappoint. Sheila and Georgeta stayed on after the set-up shift, joined by Frances who so enjoyed her first GoodGym mission that she returned 2 seconds later for her second! We were also joined by Jess, Angela, Roberta and Diya, and after a briefing by our taskowner we went to our assigned spots. We handed out lanterns to the excited children, switching on their lights, and handing out the spares to anyone else who wanted them And then the parade was off to the sounds of the Beatroot Drummers at the front and the Bollywood Brass Band at the back. We were dazzled by the ladies on stilts and the hundreds of animal lanterns. Its such a joyous event, put on by Norden Farm for the community. They are so grateful for the support from GoodGym, and we are grateful to them for putting it on for us!