Today we were called to clean up the mud from Pikeing Well to make it look nice. Win and her friend from the Friends of New Walk were waiting for us with an assortment of spades, buckets and various size of Wellington boots.

Ed an Michal went straight at it and started shovelling the sludge that included some sticks, leaves and stones into the buckets. They were soon joined by Leanne and bucket after bucket the stone floor of the well was being uncovered.

Amy and Paul led on the mud disposal part and together with Win and her friend were taking buckets full of watery substance to empty them straight into the river. Due to the splash back effect this part of the task has proven to be the dirtiest. Soon both of them looked like they have just done some serious muddy trail running.

In Georgian times people used to drink water from this well for health - Win

Well, we were definitely not going to try that today. However water in the well must be clean enough as we found some small fish in there. I guess that the fish were brought in by the recent floods and started to call the well a new home. We however thought that the fish will be much happier in the open river water and transported them in the buckets back to the river.

Filled with positive energy we had great time promoting GoodGym to a number of passerby’s who stopped to see what is occurring.

After just over 30 minutes the task was completed and we decided to go for a well deserved liquid refreshment, which wasn’t the water from the well.

Early arrivals observed the first team at work from the distance and found it very therapeutic.

As the first six red t-shirts were leaving we only had time for a quick shout 'hi', a wave and a very brief distanced handover.

The task ahead of us was to uncover the rest of the historic railway tracks (read the full historical study here), create a channel for the rain/flood water to drain, make edges of the dig less steep to remove trip hazards and tidy up the area after our counterparts.

Our excavation uncovered an interesting metal structure connected to the railway tracks and a rather large area of concrete around it and extending further under the grass.

What is this? Is this the… I think its metal…

After 50 minutes of honest labour we asked the task owner if he was happy with the results. Guess what he said!

You have made a fantastic effort. We wouldn’t be able to achieve that without your help - Chris

Everyone felt sense of achievement and found this task really rewarding.

As Rich stated in this report we are likely to be doing it all over again in the future.

HS2 budget slashed, new contractors appointed: experts predict delays ahead.

100 years ago there was a railway from the river Ouse to the army base for supplies. 20 years ago they uncovered the rails when building Millenium Bridge. 20 years of flooding had covered up the rails again with 30cm of hard packed mud until the Friends of New Walk called in GG for some enthusiastic but unskilled labour.

We were on the first team which meant we could make as much mess as we liked, safe in the knowledge that team 2 would get the blame if it was left looking ugly. The shoveling was so enthusiastic that the wheelbarrows were filled as quickly as they could be emptied. 45 minutes later then length of exposed rails had gone from 5 m to 15 m, and plans were made to drink beer while heckling team 2. The beauty of a task like this is next time it floods we can do it all over again.