Hill Sprint Coach Celine provided running focus as we ran up the park, multiple times, in the dark :)

We finished off our training session with a good old litter pick in the local area.

Here's to more training and tasks to help Sheffield this January :)

What a glorious spring day - I just had to be outside! First I spent a morning with Sheffield and Rotherham wildlife Trust in one of Sheffield's smallest nature reserves, Sunnybank. This morning's main task was to clear some tree cuttings that had been dumped. It looked quite pretty, covered in yellow blossom. We trimmed them and wove them into some "dead hedging" that has been created to deter people cutting through certain areas. By the time we'd finished, we managed to clear it all and had quite a substantial, yet festively colourful hedge!

After a quick outdoor swim in the sunshine and a pitstop for lunch, I headed to join the community forestry team for some tree planting. We were creating a "tiny forest" of water loving Willow, Birch and Hazel to help drink up the water that collects as the area is used "sustainable urban drainage" preventing flooding.

A full and satisfying day with lots achieved!

Well the day started out covering the hills, streets and pavements of Sheffield with snow once more. And the evening brought freezing temperatures …. n-ice!

So, just as we were off to remove compacted leaf mulch, which was making local pavements dangerously slippery, the weather was throwing in some additional slipperiness for us. To quote Blackadder - what we were dealing with was as slippery as an eel, on a slippery slope, wearing a slipper ….

Thankfully we were all COVID vaccinated so weren’t having to ice-olate.

Credit to Celine for organising this mission and to all who braved the Arctic conditions to attend - especially those who b-ice-ycled there.

At the end of our work, as we surveyed what we’d achieved, I said to Celine: “snow matter how difficult the conditions, Good Gym will always get the job done”.

‘Icy what you did there” she replied ….

Goodgymers Charly, Lan & Celine met up on the gennel that links Manchester Road to Fulwood Road and bagged up leaves from the steepest section before they get slippery.

GoodGym super team - Claire, James, Max & Celine - split in the two areas that were allocated for the day: Claire joined the friends of Parkwood Spring volunteers and cleared back ivy and brambles in the Little Pear Tree Field near the top of PWS, which is shaping up nicely. Meanwhile, Max was introduced to the forest garden and joined James and Celine in the couch grass uprooting in the former pond area. Neither rain nor hail deterred us!

The sun shone on GGrs and Friends of Parkwood Springs volunteers while they took on 2 areas of Parkwood Springs

Meadow garden activities: Linda joined Friends of Parkwood Springs volunteers to create a new area of wildflower meadow by ....making hay. Who knew? Well I didn't. You can make a hay meadow by spreading wild flower rich hay onto a new area. Our job was to rake up the boring cut grass and pile it up out of the way. And then gather the special hay, which is full of wildflower seeds, and spread it to start to make new areas of wildflower meadow for wildlife and visitors to enjoy.

Forest garden activities included: - Weeding wonder and soil distributor Cat working with FoPS volunteer Alex, taking out the weeds from the newly created bed (previously filled with pond liner and carpet ggrs tackled in a recent community mission) - Bramble breaker James, removing brambles from the garden hedgerows - Gooseberry growth protectors, Celine and Kat weeding around the gooseberry bushes to give them more space to grow

Treemendous Tim popped along and gave the GG crew an educational lesson on mulberry trees while the GG mulberry munchers tasted the lovely ripe berries :)