What a lovely morning at East End Women foodbank at Building Futures East! Krishti and I battled through some very dicey roads to get there in the snow and it was totally worth it.

We have only ever done one task together in all this time so the time flew over today while we chatted about life and how GoodGym has enhanced so many connections for us- very wholesome.

We completed two tasks this morning, packing food parcels for families in need of support this Christmas, and organising toy donations (including a big pile of presents from GoodGymers!) into age categories. These tasks were much appreciated by the foodbank staff who work hard to improve the lives of people in the east end of Newcastle.

I think Krishti and I can safely say we are on the Nice List now.

Tom and me were back at Hodgkin park to tackle the massive overgrowth of Laurel bushes bordering the upper park.

Someone had dragged up 4 wheelie bins and set fire to them right in the middle of the path and Mike, the ranger, spent a good part of the morning clearing up that act of vandalism.

After 2 hours of hard work we've managed to clear up a pretty good part of the park. We reckon the next session in three weeks time should help clear the rest of the bushes up.

Today Krishti and I helped out at the apple day at Nuns moor park. Krishti helped in the morning and I helped out in the afternoon.

The apple day is a family day event, where all are welcome. The whole day has a theme of apples .... even the delicious homemade soup has a hint of apple in it.

Krishti and I helped on the apple shy stand. I didn't know this until today .... To shy something can mean to throw something suddenly, often in a sideways movement. Both children and adults appeared to have fun knocking the apples off the plant pots on the apple shy stall.

Many had brought along their apples from their own gardens and gave them to the apple juice stall. Volunteers took it in turns to wash,chop and sort the apples. The apples were grated and then pressed and produced a lovely tasting apple juice. Nothing additional was added, just the juice of a variety of apples.

It was a really wholesome couple of hours. It was really joyous looking from afar at the whole event.

We will definitely be back next year to help out.