This evening we were back helping The Slough Refugee Support with a gardening task.

We met at 6:30pm in Salt Hill Park for the task brief and warm up. As the task venue was also in the park we decided on hill sprints as our 'run to' session! I say we, I mean me!

With the sun shining down on us there was only one way to do… UP! and boy was there some competitive sprinting going on!

It was great to have Eoin join us today on his first Slough task!

With the hill sprints completed we headed to the other end of the park to the task location.

On arrival Keriann was there with tools at the ready to give the garden a makeover. With a good sized group tonight we divided into two teams to cover the side garden and back garden.

Dr was straight away on the lawn mower - he fought the lawn but the lawn won, though to be fair, Savi did a great job!

Sandy took her little patches and weeded them into nice little spikey piles - she did her good weed for the day.

Jean was loving being in the rose bushes, she cut back the ones that were turning ‘wild’, who knew roses turned wild? But these are the types of things that Jean always knows about - just one of rose things

Lauren and Eoin were busy sweeping, weeding, working out what were weeds and what were plants - they used a bit of trowel and error to get there in the end.

Simmi didn’t moss around. She was straight into the flower beds de-weeding. Then cutting back the hedges with her newly WD40’d tool - we always have cutting hedge technology!

And finally we had Pam who always can’t herb her enthusiasm on gardening tasks. Pam was helping out here there and every where.

There is never a dill moment with us around and amazingly in just 45 minutes we had given both gardens a lovely makeover!

Giving us enough thyme to do lamppost to lamppost sprints all the way round the park, and finishing off with some leg strengthening exercises.

Next week we are over at Ryvers school. It will be a walking task as we need welly boots and long sleeved clothes on!

This morning, seven Goodgymers gave up their Sunday morning to help tidy up the wonderful Ouseburn Trust in Byker. Upon arrival, we were greeted by Dave and Steve who talked us through the day's tasks and taught us a little about the history of the area, in particular, the stone bridge at the bottom of the valley is one of the oldest bridges in Newcastle, dating back to 1771!

We split up into two groups, with Louise L, Liz and Louise B going with Steve to litter pick and tidy up the area underneath the railway bridge, filling up numerous bags of litter, with Louise L's trophy find being a small trolley shopper which can be seen in the trolley in the photo above! The steep banks of the valley didn't stop them from venturing down to grab every last bit of rubbish they could.

Hannah, Lauren, Eoin and I joined Dave to cut back large amounts of overgrown brambles and nettles that were intruding onto a particularly busy section of path at the top of the valley. We were joined by a number of impressive horses from Stepney Stables parading around next to us, with one, in particular, enjoying the audience that we provided!

You can really see the difference we made in opening up the path in the photographs, along with the mountain of rubbish bags which are a testament to everyone's efforts this morning and I really look forward to returning next week!

Are we going to be allowed to pet the animals?!

It was a new task for our Group Run tonight following a switch around of our regular visit to Eagles Community Arena, this one pulled together by fearless fun run leader Katy. This had been a visit for previous Community Missions including a painting task last summer, so it was ace to get the chance to go along for a Group Run tonight too.

We took a different spin on the weekend round up today, with Katy also giving a special task force intro for the first time ever and giving us the lowdown on all the action from last week's puntastic Community Mission on Valentine's Day and all the great things that are coming up- so many things to get involved in, check them out here and sign up if you fancy.

It was a big welcome to new runners Eion, Melvyn and Maddy's Dad Andy who joined us for their first ever GoodGym run tonight. They all brought so much energy along with them and were so great to have along, we can't wait to see them all again. There was a lot of hand shaking and general kindness in the run/jog/walk warm up themed for Random Acts of Kindness day- kindness is our thing, right?!, then we got ready to head off to Ouseburn. Our conversation topic was around favourite films and thankfully not Spotify playlists which I had been forced to share in Apple last week. I loved the route tonight across the city and towards Byker, before dropping down the very steep bank towards Ouseburn Farm. Even better was having the wind behind us all the way!

Ouseburn Farm sits right in the middle of Ouseburn Valley and it's a working farm in a very cool part of Newcastle. They offer loads of activities and educational opportunities which you can read about on their website here. There were no animals for us tonight, just straight into the education rooms for our task. We were met by the brilliant and super-organised task owner Stuart who had loads of cleaning products out and ready for us. Our task was to clean down doors, skirting boards, door fascia and frames, with the biggest challenge being that we had to stay quiet due to a yoga class going on next door.

Namaste

We turned the room, staircase and passageway sparkly clean (Maddy, great job on that glass, by the way) and regrouped ready to head back into the cold for fitness. I kept it simple tonight, parlauf hill sprints and long recoveries with loads of cheering, high fiving and excellent marshalling from Paul and Rachael.

I'm sure you said there was only a minute left, a minute ago

As my final act of kindness I allowed everyone to walk the hill back up from Ouseburn as a little bit of a cool down before we headed back to Hotel Indigo.

Hope you all have a great week knowing you started it with good things!

See you next week,

Anji xx

PS: I wrote a thing for the GoodGym website for the Give it Heart theme last week, all about what it's like to be a runner with a heart condition. Please give it a read and share with anyone you think it might help. You'll find it here.