GoodGym Nottingham felt all a bit Stone Age this week!

We were back at Walter Halls School with Adele, this time tasked with helping make over a patch of ground that will soon become a garden for the children to tend to.

Peter took a pickaxe to the patch marked out to become a pond. The ground there is pretty tough at the moment and Adele wants to have the kids help dig it out, so he was breaking it up and turning it over for them to make things a little easier.

Dayna, Vytautas and Rosemarie were digging holes to plant some of Adele's ferns and climbers – much tougher than it sounds with the hard soil, roots and rocks hindering progress.

Leah and Rachel were back shifting soil from a tonne-bag up on the hill down to the new garden space, and created a no-dig flowerbed with newcomer Marta getting the honours of sprinkling over the new wildflower seeds for her ingenious use of a big log as a hammer to get the little border fence into the ground.

We're back in a couple of weeks, hope you can join us!

We were back at the AMC Gardens this week to continue our previous efforts to rid the kids' play area of brambles.

A small but mighty team of Bozena, Adrian and Leah got stuck right in (sometimes literally with those grippy little barbs), chopping out the bulk then digging up the roots.

Despite Leah's overly enthusiastic chopping breaking the handle of a pair of loppers, we managed to move seven wheelbarrow loads of these thorny customers over to the compost heap to rot down a bit before burning.

We're looking into organising some more sessions here in the near future, so keep your eyes on the WhatsApp and here!

GoodGym Nottingham were in demand this week as we had requests for help in two locations on opposite sides of Nottingham. As we can’t be in two places at once (sadly), we decided to split up and give everyone the option of attending in Sherwood or in the Meadows.

The Sherwood group returned to the Community Centre where we helped out last week as there were still a lot of jobs for us to get stuck into. Once again, Louise was there to welcome us and tell us what needed doing, and we split into 3 groups to tackle each job.

Dayna and Rachel were tasked with moving a pile of plastic matting to one of the grassy areas which will hopefully enable it to be used for additional car parking at events. The mats had clearly not been moved for a long while and had become home to various insects and spiders who will now need to find a new place to dwell. They also had to remove all the old plastic pegs which had held the mats down previously, which proved to be the trickiest and most time-consuming part of the task.

Group 2, Rose and Florence, were tasked with sorting out some of the cupboards inside the community centre. Those of us who were outside did not see exactly what this involved, but the photos suggest it may have involved moving books, suitcases and….bottles of champagne???

Meanwhile, in the back garden of the community centre Peter was tasked with trying to dig out a wooden rail that had seen better days. Unfortunately it was securely concreted in and, whilst one side came loose the other was not to be shifted. Soil replaced and copious amounts of water (not champagne) were drunk!

As the hour drew to a close, everyone helped to lay out the plastic matting before a quick group photo.

Thanks again to Louise at the Sherwood Community Centre for having us and we hope to return again very soon.

We welcomed Florence to her first GoodGym session and Dayna back for her second!

Well done to Bozena and Kat who attended the Grownotts Wild about Sneinton day of action.

Read more about this amazing event and all that was achieved here

Last night’s task was right on point as a fabulous 10 of us headed to the Sherwood Community Centre. We were met on arrival by Louise who talked us through our jobs for the evening.

The main task was to move several metal storage cabinets from one cupboard space to another – sounds simple, right? But before the cabinets could be moved, they needed emptying of all sorts of contents, most of which was not boxed, bagged or in any particular order. We also needed to move some ballet bars from the destination cupboard which were to be re-homed in the original cupboard next door. Once the storage cabinets were safely in their new cupboard home (which Dayna had diligently measured up to check which order the cabinets would need to be placed), we then had to restock them with their contents, ensuring that the same items went back in the cabinet in which they started.

Alongside this, we were also tasked with removing some items from the original cupboard (but that weren’t in a metal storage cabinet) and transporting them to a shed outside in the garden. Finally, a few of us also helped with moving some items of rubbish and broken furniture to a garden area at the rear of the carpark. Are you still following?

It was a complex task worthy of any escape room or Taskmaster challenge, and with 10 of us it did get a little chaotic at times. Thankfully Louise was on hand to direct us and despite a few confused moments we managed to successfully complete our mission (hopefully with every item back in its rightful place….).

We thoroughly enjoyed our first visit to the Sherwood Community Centre. Not only did 10 of us attend which may be one of our records, we got to channel our inner Chuckle Brothers, Darcey Bussell and Dale Winton as we moved furniture, ballet bars and a shopping trolley!

As you can see, by the end we were jeté-ing with joy (well, some of us were…).

A warm welcome to Dayna who completed her first GoodGym task. Also a big congrats to Peter who has completed his 40th task - the countdown is on to the black t-shirt!!

We will be returning to the Sherwood Community Centre next week for more fun – why not join us? Sign up here.

It was a welcome return to the Windmill Community Gardens for four GoodGymers. Tasked with trying to clear the (almost) dried up brook of lots of overgrown brambles and ivy we all got well and truly stuck in. It’s always surprising how much we can get done in just one hour but we were about assisted by Lu and Linda (who shared her amazing knowledge of spiders) from the gardens.