Welcome to Chris for his first GoodGym task and to Sarah from GoodGym Brighton who was in the area for work. Hope you enjoyed the task!

On Earth day we took to the water to remove debris and lots of plastic that had built up in and along the River Mersey, particularly following the floods over new year. We kitted out in buoyancy aids and collected a stash of litter pickers, oars, and bags to collect the rubbish 🚣‍♂️🚣‍

🛶 With two per canoe and then fastened in pairs, we slowly made our way upstream, collecting any rubbish as we went, particularly from tree branches were items had accumulated 🌳. In particular, there were lots of bits of plastic bags, bottles, cotton and material, plus polystyrene. At one particularly crowded tree, we collected lots of materials and freed much of the tree of rubbish, including a blue barrel that (eventually) was freed from the branches after some tactical sawing and cutting. We did our best to avoid the sewage outflow nearby too but couldn't avoid the wild garlic that lined the river bank!

Once the bags were full, we slowly drifted back downstream, bringing the canoes out of the water and onto racks (after a quick rinse in the Mersey) to be stored back at Venture Out 💪

Top effort from all involved. There will be more canoe (or kayak...) sessions planned for future dates so keep an eye out for that.

Happy New Year! Welcome to Niamh who joined us for the first time. It was great to meet you and hope to see you for another GoodGym session soon!

With flooding, snow, ice, and freezing rain threatening around the Greater Manchester area, 3 plucky GoodGymers wrapped up to varying degrees (not sure about Ben wearing shorts...) to pick up any discarded litter in the central Manchester area.

We met outside Manchester Central Library, next to the now unlit giant Santa, before winding our way past Princess St to Chorlton Street before taking on an array of litter on the path between Manchester Piccadilly train station and the O2 Apollo. We managed to fill 5 litter sacks and found a large, broken umbrella to report back to Keep MCR Tidy for collection, before taking a final picture and a questionable selfie.