As the drought continued there was a huge outpouring of goodness going on in York at our Monday night group run. Tonight we welcomed Abel along to his first ever good deed. Give him a big cheer 🥳. Nick had also completed an epic triathlon at the weekend and successfully managed to stay afloat during the swimming leg 🏊. Whilst the cape of good deeds would be doing the rounds tonight with David completing his 300th (fresh from an ultra at the weekend, of course!) and James coming along for his 200th 💪. I'm exhausted just thinking about it all!

Tonight we were heading off to Millennium Fields to lend a hand to Nicola who had spent the day clearing a load of the grass on the wildflower areas in order to new growth come through. Ed led the main run out with Laura backmarking, whilst Vicky and Babs weren't far behind in the party pace group. Upon arrival we were straight off to work with Jen, Michael, Martin and James getting stuck in to the composting area in order to make enough space for all of the new grass that was coming across from the field. John had kindly volunteered to do the photography, so you can thank him for the much improved pictures of tonight's session (but also blame him if your photo is missing!) .

The rest of the Goodgym crew got to work in the field collecting the cut grass with pitchforks and rakes then getting it into tonne sacks or onto sheets and then dragging it across to the guys at the composting bays. Abel made an excellent first impression dragging three sacks full of grass at once, whilst Lucy was regularly seen with a smaller (but still very impressive) bag over her shoulders. The dried grass was soon piling up at the composting area where the guys were working flat out to make sure there was enough space for it all.

Matt, Abel and Neil did an excellent job scything more grass down for the guys to take across, and before too long we'd just about cleared all of the dried grass Nicola had spent the day cutting down plus a bit extra for good measure! This meant we just had to wait for the last few backs be taken over to the compost bays and then for everyone to come back, which gave Amy and Leanne time to get creative with the group photo

Then it was time for a quick group fitness session with Vicky, Babs and John demonstrating a game involving collecting cones and competing against the 2 other people in your group to be the first to get 3 of them back to your corner. Everyone had a few quick games before an epic final between Max, Kirsty and Abel, with Kirsty being declared the winner!

After tonight's session we had our summer Task Force catch up with lots of exciting things being planned for Goodgym York over the coming months including our tenth anniversary in January! However one thing to note was that the unfortunately a GGer's bike at the bottom of St Martin's Lane was stolen, so please be super careful with where you park your bikes. Make sure you've got a really good lock and try to park in a busy area

We started today's session by saying our geeky interest in honour of Embrace your Geekness day! There were mentions of spreadsheets, cloud spotting and jigsaws to name a few.

We also congratulated the group of goodgymers who completed the 58 mile ultra in the lakes in the heatwave and the group who ran up and down Snowdon despite their race being cancelled.

Mitch then led off a small splinter group to Acomb Library.This is what they got up to-

We arrived at the library not to new raised bed, but old rotten beams of wood. We quickly got to work moving them from the garden and out to the drive. These will now be used for the path at fishponds woods.

After half an hour the garden was left crystal clear.

The remainder of the group headed to New Walk to drag many sacks of grass to the collection point. In goodgym style this was completed much quicker than expected so we headed off for a bit of fun fitness in the form of goodgym scrabble.

Despite stretching it out we still had a nice early finish so a few thirsty folk headed to the pub where in true geek style, Paul showed some strava tricks which got us debating each others' popularity!

Another glorious morning at the Tiny Forest. Alastair strimmed the edge path. Becca & Claire pulled blanket weed from the pond. Charlotte & Becca refreshed it with 58 pints of the finest Holgate tap water. The entire pile of woodchip was moved & the edge & entrance paths were completed. Plenty of damselflies and many varieties of butterfly (including painted ladies, small tortoiseshell & meadow brown) flying amongst the wildflowers kept us company. Thankyou all for a very beneficial but lovely relaxing morning. The Tiny Forest is not so little now and is looking very verdant.