A group of us GG Yorkies met near the river in Poppleton on a lovely sunny Friday evening.

We bashed the balsam for about 45 minutes before heading up the road for pizza/burger and drinks.

Despite the colder-than-hoped-for weather and threats of rain, we went to the Poppleton Beer Festival. There was some confusion over the venue (not the Poppleton Community Centre!) which caused a late arrival and quite a bit of unexpected walking for James, but we all got there in the end.

The challenge at this event is always to see who can get the biggest "half" and Steve Rice definitely won this year! The beers were great and Jackie enjoyed her cans of 7up. The music was, erm, loud but things definitely improved once the main act came on and treated us to a decent set of covers in the background whilst we supped our drinks.

It did properly rain in the end, but by that time we'd found a nice covered table to sit at. All in all, a very pleasant evening.

Tonight we returned to the cemetery for more bramble clearing.

We named and numbered off stating some pointless things we get asked to do at work as a nod to health and safety day. These included cleaning pigeon poo and management appreciation days! We also welcomed back Ellie and celebrated some excellent weekend running with Rich and Michal completing the 3 Peaks and Deb's parkrun PB.

We then set off with Lucy and Abigail back marking to meet Clive at the cemetery. After the midge swarm last time, Michael wore enough insect repellent to keep the entire group safe (and anyone else within a mile radius!). We therefore had a clear run of pruning, lopping and digging. Barbara got so excited she snapped a fork!

To finish off we did some fitness relays whilst practising our hammering, then headed back to base. We stretched off then some headed to the pub.

Another night, another midge death squad. This time it was the turn of Bootham Stray allotments to experience a midge swarm of biblical proportions. Note to self, if it's been raining then bring bug spray!

As tonight was well over 6k in total we met for promptly at 6.15 to set the party pace group off, joined by a small GG bike gang. Ed led the remaining GGers after welcoming newcomer Dan and numbering off by naming our favourite flat things in honour of Earth Day. I'm informed that Hydrostatic Bearings are the best flat things ever!

We arrived at Bootham Stray allotments and soon got to work turning over a disused patch that really needed a lot of work. And then the midges came...

I feel ticklish all over - Ben

On one side, Mitch's tool of choice was a 4-pronged spinny thing that he used to twist the weeds together, as if he were eating a bowl of spaghetti. Whilst the rest of the crew, armed with forks and spades, soon made light work of the turf, weeds and roots before tackling bigger things like old guttering and ground sheets.

It was an entirely different vibe over on the other side with Bec spending the night on the tiles whilst Dan got hammered, as the two of them uncovered some old tiling and the head of a hammer respectively.

As the night wore on the midges got the better of us and we called it a day, but not before a group photo and some jaffa cakes kindly provided by the task owner. We then set off back to the Priory Street Centre where Bec learnt that spinning around helps you to touch your toes, and that if you touch a wall with your armed stretched out, then put your arm down, you'll fall just short of touching the wall when you bring your arm back up. Who knew!?!?