On a finally cool summer evening, Goodgym assembled at St James Gardens to get to work giving the park a bit of a spruce up.

We divided into three teams: Bekah and Sallyann on the litter picking, Ellie, Dina and Clara on the weeding and Naser and Vikky on bench varnishing duty.

We were joined by Friends of St James Gardens who provided fun facts (like what a pineapple weed is) and witty jokes (a lorry carrying Strepsils overturned on the motorway; there was no congestion).

We soon got 'into the groove' of the task, quite literally in the case of the weeding, whereby we were digging up weeds between the paving slabs. Likewise the varnishing team successfully varnished two of the newly installed (and very nice looking) benches for years to come by very carefully applying Varnish into all the 'grooves'. Even the litter picking duo conquered the 'grooves' of the park, retrieving litter from some of the nooks and crannies.

All in all, after two benches varnished, two bin bags filled and a good chunk of patio was weeded, we called it a night and said our goodbyes before heading off in our various directions until next week!

Sophie, Vikky and Aatefa ran to Princes park from Hope Street when the temperature was still very warm. Laura, Steph and I were with Ali, a Friend of Princes Park helping him get the wheelbarrows, watering cans and the water butt on wheels out of the lock up. Katy from Friends of Princes Park gave us some instruction on what we were going to do today; water some of the trees that were earmarked for watering in the park. Apparently a new tree, up to two years old, needs a minute of watering every few days as it has not yet developed a deep root system that can access lower ground water. Dina and Ellie joined us before we started wheeling our water collectors down to the lakeside. There we formed a human chain, passing watering cans along to fill up the water butt and the cans, it was a workout! Some twisting and lifting. Then we made our way to the new trees that needed watering. They were each labelled and we marked each label as we watered so that we knew which ones had been done. Liam, Tsitsi and Craig joined the group just in time to see the Cinnabar moth caterpillar on a piece of grass. It was black and yellow striped, the nature signal for ‘don’t eat me, I am dangerous’ but there was nothing dangerous about this caterpillar except that they were munching all the leaves on our baby trees. We watered plum trees, cherry trees, oaks and horse chestnut trees. Ali asked us to water a few extras that weren’t marked just because he liked them which was very sweet and a sign of how much he cares for the park, developing fondness for the trees. I eyed up a fantastic blackberry picking location that I will definitely be returning to in a week or so when the berries have ripened so I can forage a few to have in my porridge. We definitely got our lifting exercise in on this task and really enjoyed the beauty of the park on this warm sunny evening. Katy told us about the Friends of Princes park anniversary event that is happening in a few weeks so many of us agreed that we would love to return for that.

It was a very warm evening in Liverpool. Sefton park was very busy with people enjoying the evening sun, picnics, ball games and singing.

In a corner of the park runners were gathering to run the annual Tony Barnes Memorial 5-Mile run. Tony Barnes was a member of the Mossley Hill athletics club and when he passed away his community started this run in his honour.

Waiting at the start line were Sophie, Bekah and Steph. Lots of other runners were in their packs of running club mates, it was both reassuring and intimidating to our goodgym runners… this would be a great run but also a challenging one with lots of strong runners picking up the pace.

Me and Aatefa pitched up at the intersection where runners would pass multiple times as they made their way in a figure of eight around the lake and around the top of the park. Sallyann cheered on the runners from the pavillion area of the park.

It was a gruelling run in the heat. Lots of runners were visibly struggling but all three of our goodgym runners managed to smash the 5-miler (8km) race in under an hour. Steph came in at 58.38, a whole 12 mins under her predicted 1hr 10mins. Bekah came in at 52.54, a whopping 3.20 mins faster than her time last year. And Sophie came in at just 45.34, an amazing achievement.

Once our runners were finished it was time to head to the picnic tables for our annual picnic, Dike and Ellie joined us and there was so much delicious food we had enough for all of us to take lunch for the next two days! Special mention for Steph’s homemade brownies, Bekah’s famous salt and pepper sausage rolls, and Dike’s incredible effort into cooking fried chicken wraps and fried plantain. He may have decided not to run the race but more than made up for it in his cooking efforts. We all decided that Dike had set a level of expectation in us all that would mean he would have to prepare this for every future gathering.

It was so nice to stay out until late in the park and enjoy this summer tradition. Well done runners and thank you to everyone for making a great picnic.