There was lots going on at GoodGym Newcastle tonight. Former Area Activator Anji made a special guest appearance, only her third time returning since having screws inserted in her wrist after an accident. Possibly not ideal to be scraping paint off walls, but Anji scraped as much off as anyone else. Welcome back!

We also welcomed first time GoodGymer and student Muhannad. Not all of our tasks are quite so dusty. We hope to you again soon!

We also had a belated celebration of Aimee's 400th good deed, which involved meeting and stroking Ginny the horse. 400 good deeds is an awful lot of volunteering, with a lot of good done for the local community.

Before all of this, we went for a short run to show our support for This Girl Can's Let's Lift the Curfew campaign. Let's make sure that Newcastle is a safe place for women and girls to exercise outdoors all year round.

Next up for GoodGym Newcastle is a gardening task with Newcastle Parks on Saturday in Iris Brickfield Park. Please come and join us if you can!

On a very windy evening in Newcastle, thankfully Stepney Bank Stables' top yard has some very high walls and fantastic levels of shelter. The task tonight was to prepare the walls to be painted and, if time allowed (it didn't), paint them.

Three GoodGymers set to work scraping and brushing the walls to remove any loose material and dirt. Scott braved the ladder to extend the reach of the task. Quite a lot of material was removed from the walls, making for a successful evening.

On a balmy Monday evening six GoodGymers helped prepare Stepney Bank Stables for this weekend's Ouseburn Festival.

Louise undoubtedly worked the hardest, mopping the floor with cold water and no detergent. It did definitely look better afterwards than it did before! Scott rearranged the chaotic helmets, while put the dozens of pairs of boots into size order on their racks.

Meanwhile Eleanor, Aimee and Dan took the lead with transporting the horse-related books upstairs, then arranging them in a perfectly colour-coordinated way on the bookshelves.

Please visit the Ouseburn Festival at the weekend if you can, and we'll see you next Monday to pick up the litter that didn't end up in the local bins.

Three GoodGymers helped out at Stepney Bank Stables on a very pleasant Monday evening. The tasks tonight involved unloading hay bales from the horse box and then sweeping it out, before trying to remove the weeds from between the cobbles in the yard. A random oasser-by even offered to assist at one point!

Firstly, a big welcome to L on her first Goodgym session.

After a couple of weeks away in our second home, we were back at Stepney Bank Stables base and were tasked with freshing up the bedding for our hoofed friends.

We didn't have any time to horse around as we had to fill up a few wheelbarrows full of hay from the top stables all the way down to the bottom one.

A few of the horses were over the bale with excitement when they heard us approaching, which made it interesting when we had to get in with them to deliver their fresh ware.

After a quick reload of fresh stuff, and making sure the top stables were all spruced up, we dropped off the last of the new ground cover (which Bob the horse took great pleasure in doing his custom wee on!). And hopefully we will have straw-ted out a good night's sleep for our equine pals!

On a serene Monday evening two GoodGymers completed two tasks; cleaning the boards around the edge of the arena and picking some of the horses' favourite weeds and nettles.

The boards needed to be clean ahead of an event at the stables on Saturday and hopefully a big difference was made. Two large baskets were filled with horse snacks, which will likely be well-received.