Our task tonight was a slightly strange, but very cute sounding one: to make rafts for water voles. What a way to end our January of Goodness!

The evening started out eventfully when we arrived to find the gates locked, and Jonathan locked inside them! After some vague attempts to climb the gates (fortunately stopped before anyone got hurt), we were provided with ladders and started scrambling over. Amusingly the later arrivals treated this all as perfectly normal and just stepped straight onto the ladder, after posting their cakey treats under the gates :-)

Once inside in the warm our task was explained more fully - these weren't just any rafts, they were most likely little Voley's new favourite toilet spot! We may have speculated that St Nick's had a bet going to see how bizarre a task we would believe (rat jetskis next perhaps?) but we were assured it was a real thing.. These rafts would help replace missing habitat and provide a nice safe place for our furry friends to relieve themselves, hopefully helping the fledgling populations in Heworth Holme and St Nick's to grow and thrive.

The rafts were constructed from sheets of old plywood sandwiching polystyrene (like a giant custard cream), which meant lots of sawing, snapping and taping. Plus the all important task of naming each raft (with a pun, obviously).

Becky and I competed for the least straight sawing line, deciding it was the saw's fault for being "a leftie", while others employed some more advanced skills such as sitting on the plank they were sawing (and somehow remaining intact). Meanwhile there was much fun being had karate chopping the polystyrene, while each person periodically yelled out a vole/toilet/GoodGym related raft name: favourites being Vole Patrol, Floaters Only, Little Vole's Room, Rafty McRaft Face and other delights.

At the end of the night we had 30 beautiful little rafts, and had completed our 302nd (we think) task in January! We celebrated with some amazing vegan flapjack courtesy of Huw. We look forward to seeing our little floating lavs in the streamways soon (hopefully in the form of a vole obstacle course..)

A fabulous squad of GG Yorkies tackled lots of mud to start work on a new footpath and wildlife scrape at Heworth Holme.

We welcomed along two brand new runners to the family, so let's give some big, hearty cheers to John and Katie.

50 good deeds!!

We celebrated two people earning their black t-shirt and hitting 50 good deeds, massive congrats and high fives to Bev and Barbara who have both been running with us since the very beginning. Bev was awarded the Cape of Good Deeds first and wore it with pride all the way to the task.

Last year we started from the other side of Heworth Holme and built a beautiful footpath, but tonight we started at the far end, which is mostly a very muddy path of mud. Our new runners quickly understood what everyone else was talking about when they said they were wearing their "GoodGym trainers".

Our tasks tonight were to start lining the path with border planks and down the end, to start digging out some holes to build a wildlife scrape, which is a sort of multi-depth pond to encourage insects and in the future, wading birds.

The holes need to be about a metre deep, and it can be a wavy sort of hole, rather than a perfect circle or straight line - Jonathan

Jonathan obviously knows our strengths and weaknesses. Digging anything in a straight line or perfect shape of any kind is not something we tend to be very good at, so the idea of a wavy, haphazard sort of shape definitely appealed. Saying that, as soon as he walked away, I saw Leanne, Emma and Tim dig the straightest bit of trench I've ever seen.

Back at the top end, planks had been gathered and everyone was very happy about using massive hammers to bang stakes into the soft ground. Brett and Chance showed their St Nicks experience with brilliantly accurate stake placement.

Once the stakes were in, the planks had to be nailed in to create the perfect border for the path. The hardest part of this was probably walking up and down the path to get bits of wood without falling over on the mud.

Over in the hole-digging zone, I noticed that Nikki was inadvertently filling in the hole Becky was digging, so progress in their area had been somewhat hampered. New runner, John was doing an excellent job though and newish runner Lucy was starting to clear bits of turf to join up all the holes.

Time was up and we had made a great start to this long-term project. Nick didn't want to stop because he was enjoying hammering nails so much, but there's plenty of time for that in a couple of weeks. Everyone tottered back, doing their best to avoid the mud, and Bev handed over the Cape of Good Deeds to Babs for the run back.

Exiting through the gate, we surprised a dog walker with such a large group of runners doing the mud shuffle, which is a strange hybrid of running and scraping your muddy feet on the floor.

Back at base, we finished off our session with a few plank walk-outs and a sit-up challenge before Babs broke out the 50 good deed brownies - a perfect end to a good run!