Happy New Year! Welcome to Niamh who joined us for the first time. It was great to meet you and hope to see you for another GoodGym session soon!

With flooding, snow, ice, and freezing rain threatening around the Greater Manchester area, 3 plucky GoodGymers wrapped up to varying degrees (not sure about Ben wearing shorts...) to pick up any discarded litter in the central Manchester area.

We met outside Manchester Central Library, next to the now unlit giant Santa, before winding our way past Princess St to Chorlton Street before taking on an array of litter on the path between Manchester Piccadilly train station and the O2 Apollo. We managed to fill 5 litter sacks and found a large, broken umbrella to report back to Keep MCR Tidy for collection, before taking a final picture and a questionable selfie.

Christmas cracking turnout today! Great to meet Rhi as well as Christopher again for an efficient clearing up task.

Following various parkrun excursions, we convened on the Fallowfield campus, parking with various degrees of success or coming from Salford by bus, or on foot via the Fallowfield Loop or Didsbury.

Following the Christmas Day meal for recent care leavers, we were tasked with clearing up the entrance hall of decorations and cataloging the leftover gifts and activities ready for next year. We managed to remove any rubbish, recycle leftover cardboard, and bag up any items of food that could be re-purposed.

After just 45 minutes, we were done and dusted (record time apparently) and made our way home. Great to meet other volunteers too, some of whom helped out on the day and it sounded like a good event for the attendees.

It was the last session of the year down at The Landing in Stockport today and we got stuck into planting some leftover bulbs in hanging baskets and planters with mulled wine and mince pies to keep us warm and in festive spirits! Was lovely to bump into fellow goodgymer and regular Landing volunteer, Sarah, with her new little goodgymer in tow, peacefully snoozing away and getting very comfortable with greenspace action going on around him

City of Trees arranged a bumper day of tree maintenance on the Thursday before Christmas 🎄

With an in-depth health and safety briefing, we donned high viz, hard hats, tough gloves, and goggles to cut away at the hawthorn that had grown up and made it inaccessible to park users.

Over several hours we hacked, cut, trimmed, and sawed our way to make a mountain of piles of wood to compost away over time.

Big thank you to City of trees for organising and for the tea, coffee, and biscuits.

Tonight saw our annual Christmas run to see the festive lights! 🎄

Each year the residents of Warwick Drive in Hazel Grove deck their houses with the most marvelous display of Christmas lights and scenery to raise money for Make a Wish Foundation. Make a Wish Foundation aims to provide life changing experiences for children with life changing illnesses. 🌟

The running group began from Life Leisure Bramhall and met the walking group en route before navigating our way to view the spectacular delights of Warwick Drive. ⛄️

Alongside regular goodgymers, it was lovely to welcome Juno 🐶 and Dougie 🐶 and 2024's newest recruits, Olive 👶 and Emmy 👶.

We enjoyed festive mince pies and baked goods before jogging back home. 🥧🍪

🎁 Merry Christmas everyone 🎅

Well done to Hannah and Maimoona for completing the run!! Aced it

Was a sold out race with lots of running clubs taking part. Good running conditions with little rain, mild but overcast.

Laura and Ben along with Juno provided able support from Marshal point 17 (near 3 mile marker) with Ben marshaling the traffic to ensure the runners could cross safely and so any cars looking to turn could do so safely.

Cracking race and hope to have another GG Stockport contingent there next year!