What a great night of silly fun we had last night at GoodGym Leeds!

It was the night of our summer social so 16 of us met at Heart & ran to Beckett's Park in Headingley. There, we met John who we met from Lighthouse Futures who'd volunteered to run a Dodgeball game for us. Firstly we did a warm up of scarecrow tag & then we had a dodgeball tournament. There was lots of drama with Jubz being targeted with balls, Leah being the last woman standing & Ben & Christian battling it out for the man of the match title! I think the picture of Ben hugging Helen gives you an idea of how competitive he got! It was a great workout & we all thanked John for running a really fun session.

We then finished off with a test of core & upper body strength by playing a game of human hungry hippos or hungry Goodgymers as we called it! This was a challenging game but it was hilarious to watch (maybe not as hilarious to actually be competing)! Well done all!

We finished off with a delicious picnic in the park where we ate a mix of savoury & sweet treats. Well done to Helen Noyes for bringing home made scones...yummy!

We also said a sad farewell to task force member Katie Lees who is leaving Leeds for a new life in Sheffield soon. We'll miss you Katie but thanks for all of your hard work for GoodGym Leeds. Don't forget to visit!

What a great night, thanks so much to everyone who came, we must do it again soon!

Tonight was our biggest Wednesday group since I started! 14 of us headed to help Homeless Hampers to sort through their donations.

We had many jobs between us; we helped unpack & sort donations in the van, we took many many shoes & found pairs for them & sorted them into sizes, we found donations of clothes to give out to homeless people in Leeds, we sorted bundles of towels & sheets into piles & most importantly we ate KitKats!

We nearly had a 15th member when we found traces of a mouse who had been living in a shoe! Fortunately, it decided not to make an appearance...phew! :)

Welcome to newcomers Jeremy & Hashim & welcome back Haimish & Leah to their second sessions. Kat completed her 60th good deed tonight & Uzair did his 10th! Well done & thanks for all you do for GoodGym Leeds.

Tonight, 10 GoodGymers headed down to St Stephen's Church Hall to clear their garden. We haven't visited here since last summer and couldn't believe how overgrown it was again! We thought that we'd pulled all the weeds up from the roots last year, but unfortunately they were back in full force! As it was a big group, we got to work & cleared more or less all of the front garden. We'll be back in a few weeks to do the back garden.

Thanks to Helen for leading a warm down at the end.

Welcome to Leah & Ting who came for their first session tonight!

Tonight 11 GoodGymers ran to the Ash Road Allotments where OWLS have taken over a new, rather overgrown & neglected allotment.
We made a good start with the weeding & tried to make it as accessible as possible so that the service users can start to use it. This is an ongoing project that we can get stuck into over summer. Moira, an OWLS volunteer gave us all a strawberry plant which were gratefully received.

We then headed back to Heart where Lighthouse Futures was holding an event for local volunteers...perfect for us! We did the quiz, had food & drinks & even won some raffle prizes. It was a great evening & I manifested winning the theatre tickets & it worked! There's a first time for everything!

A big shout out to Helen who ran sessions over the last few weeks...what a great GoodGymer she is. Thank you!

Well done to Rachel who did her 40th mission tonight & to Katie Presley who has done 60! Thanks for all you do :)

These were Adele's words as she let the all female running group into the farm to join Freddie, Adam, and Jubz. The task was to weed the raspberry patch....however the lads were struggling with plant recognition. Luckily Katie had an app on her phone that distinguished bindweed from borage. So the mission was accomplished quite quickly and after an easy 3km run down to Kirkstall Valley Farm we were now facing returning up the hill. We dropped Adam off at his door and took the scenic route via parks and ginnels. On the ginnel beside the rugby ground we met an artist called Griff who was painting murals on behalf of a local dementia support group. We barely noticed the hills!