Welcome to Julie and Lucy for their first GoodGym outing, and Sophie for her first stroll with GoodGym Manchester! Hope you enjoyed the walk and look forward to meeting you again.

Today, as part of the GM Walking Festival, we took route number 14 of the Manchester Green Trail from Fletcher Moss Park in Didsbury up to Levenshulme, passing several green spaces in South Manchester 🌳 The weather was sunny and warm 🌞 so no waterproofs, woolly hats, or extra layers were needed (although we did come prepared). Water bottles, sunglasses 😎 and sun cream were much more necessary!

Passing through Didsbury Park up to Fog Lane park and beyond, we discovered a vast network of ginnels in between houses and estates, some tidier and more accessible than others.

Along the way there were conversations over running, doom scrolling, rambling, volunteering, improvised comedy, choir, dogs & cats, Bristol, plus much much more. A handy McDonald's along the way for a toilet break was a cheery relief too.

We ended to walk near Station South rather than Chapel Street Park as the bike festival 🚲 there was in full swing and the food and drink was certainly tempting following the 10 km walk.

We'll try to organise more walks in the Manchester area to visit other parts over the warmer and lighter summer months, so keep an eye out for those.

With the sunny weather and bank holiday, rubbish and litter had started to build up in the local area.

Juno and Ben picked up a few sacks of rubbish and discarded waste from around Longsight and Rusholme.

In between work, I did the pre-event course check at Fletcher Moss parkrun before 500+ people completed the 5 km course.

Later in the day, I joined a community group in Longsight to help clean up the area of rubbish on the streets. Big group collecting 41 bags of litter in total!

Big kudos to the 6 GoodGymers who helped return bags to runners taking part in the Manchester Marathon this year! Welcome to Ewan who picked a big task for his first GoodGym Manchester outing.

We arrived bright and early to get our hi-viz, packed lunch, and briefing from Claire, one of the bag collection team leaders. We were allocated Group 2, to start unloading and laying out bags from lorry number 2 for the initial waves of starters. With a system in place to order the bags from highest to lowest on the ground and then only having a single layer of bags on the lorry bed seemed to work out OK. Once the harnesses had finally arrived, Jordan along with a couple of additional helpers enabled us to reach to bags at the back so we were ready for finishers coming in.

Bit by bit, bags were safely returned with their owners, with many suffering a little bit in the unexpected Manchester sun and heat. Through a combination of good prep and teamwork, I think we managed quite well, even when it got a bit busy in the rush hour between about 12pm and 1pm.

Once we had a very brief break, we were assigned to lorry number 11 to repeat the task again, this time Stefanie getting in the harness to get into the lorry and get the bags in reach of those on the ground. With us being right at the end of the queue of lorries, lots of tired looking runners managed to reach us only to have to go back the other way to get their t-shirt, freebies, meet friends & family which seemed a bit of a trek after completing 26.2 miles!

With the bags in order and many having been returned to the runners, we reached the end of our shift after 5pm to sign out and watch some of the finishers on Oxford Road nearby.

Long day but was made much more fun as a group and having a decent packed lunch and snacks on hand. The warm and sunny weather helped too.

Juno and I completed the pre-event course check for Fletcher Moss parkrun event #245. Around 480 runners and walkers completed the 5 km course on Manchester and London marathon weekend. We marshaled at Old Bedians marshal point 5.

30 km run beforehand then 7 km back home. Juno ran 17 km.

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.