At the edge of a well-worn bowling green,

A team of willing volunteers were seen

Tools in hand, no fuss, no show—

Just GoodGym folk and weeds to go.

Gravel deep, dandelions bold,

Stories swapped as the soil unrolled.

A border cleared, a pathway found,

Order teased from stubborn ground.

Then chairs pulled close, the kettle’s call,

A kind reward that pleased us all—

Tea in cups, lovely weather

And the best Victoria sponge ever

After tea we wanted something stronger

So off yo the pub to stay a bit longer

Can't beat Friday night at the fox

A goodgym favourite ... but tonight it was cold so we just stayed for one!

Tonight we were back at the Arts Barge to help them do some jobs to get the barge ready for spring.

We had one group working on the boat doing a bit of problem solving sawing up rectangles of polystyrene to fit the inside of the boat for insulation.

The rest of the gang were tasked with tidying up on land. Michael, Jane and Nick were quick to volunteer to build a fire yo burn unwanted wood. Kit and Ben took it in turns to power wash the stones with a very big hose! Everyone else used various tools to weed between the cobbles.

We finished with a group pic then headed off to Tower Gardens for a Jenna speciality fitness. This involved moving around then getting in different sized groups to make a human sculpture! GG imagination at its best - we had a beehive, a barge, a snail, normal and sophisticated!

It was then back to base and off to the pub for some!

The Community Garden was looking great today with all of the tulips out. The bees were already enjoying the first few cornflowers and we planted some more cornflowers, sunflowers and honesty plants along the beds for them to enjoy later in the year. We also planted parsnips, leeks, fennel and lettuces straight into the beds and runner beans, french beans and courgettes into pots. The broad beans and radishes were already coming up from last months planting. We also tidied up some of the beds and trimmed around the edges. At the end we took some of the pots home to care for on windowsills and under glass ready to plant out later in the spring.

Today saw a great turnout for our first non headtorch run of the year!

Today was international Victoria day but rather than base our welcome on that we shared what we would do with our bank holiday weekend.

It should really have been Leanne day as she wasn't just crowned goodgymer of the month, but also got to wear the good deed cape for doing an incredible 1300 good deeds!

We also welcomed Ellie and congratulated Nick snd Babs for being married for 35 years!

We then set off to two tasks-

At Rowntree Park we were greeted by Stu who split us into 3 teams. The first team got to grips with a load of soil that we had previously shifted from from the gardens to the back of the lodge. This time we moved it to its final location into the raised beds.

The second group tackled a load of green waste and moved it from across the park over to the table tennis area. With Max particularly enjoying taking a ride in the giant wheelbarrow

Team 3 were instructed to remove the sedge from the garden, and after a quick Google to find out what sedge is, felt competent enough to know what they were doing. However the sedge in Rowntree park was about 50 times bigger than the ones in the photos on Google! Eventually the sedges, Sedgeric and Right Sedge Fred, were moved to their new homes closer to the lake.

All 3 teams finished their jobs with enough time spare to fill a couple of barrows worth of wood chip from the wildlife area and move it to the gardens. We were briefly joined by Jackie who earned her place in the team photo by grabbing a couple of handfuls of wood chip!

The second team stopped off at Southlands church to clear a bed of everything except the Magnolia tree! We pretty much completed the task just in time for team Rowntree to collect us and head to the park for some fun fitness.

Tonight we played heads, shoulders, knees and coins and the team with the most won a creme egg. After much tackling and slightly too much violence for goodgym, it all came down to a deciding game of rock paper scissors.

We then headed back to base and a decent crew stayed on for a drink, possibly to get one of Babs brownies!