On a wet and windy Sunday 8 GoodGymers joined all sorts of other volunteers at The Greenbank Sports Academy, to help run a day of sports for blind and partially sighted people in the Liverpool and surrounding areas. There was an array of sports all day, from football, to goal ball, boccia, curling, baseball and tennis.

Attendees ages ranged from the 20's to the 90's. We basically mucked in and did whatever was required, from joining in with the sports, acting as ball fetchers, to helping people getting around, and sometimes just having a friendly chat.

It cannot be underestimated the power of what we did, and the power of just having a chat. This is a section of society, which has struggled more than most during the pandemic. Not only do some of the participants have sight loss issues but other health issues as well, so it was heartwarming to see everyone giving every sport a go.

As well as the indoor sports we offered tandem cycle rides, which proved really popular. I was privileged to be able to take out C, who at 93 years old wanted to do a tandem cycle ride as it was on her bucket list. So, off we went. The smiles on everyone's faces after the rides and sports was something to behold. It was lovely to see Heetu, Lee, Christina, Pauline, Jess, Ruth and Roz throwing themselves into the event, in cases literally, in order to make it such a success.

Coming together to do up this miniature railway, none of us stayed Station-ary for very long! Our task was to help in anyway to restore the railway grounds to a usable condition again. Arthur greeted us at the gate and explained how Covid and a fire had impacted operations. With many areas needing TLC (train loving care) we scoped it out, choochoosed a tool and got to work. A bed full of weeds, some tree clearing, pathway weeding, timber flower bed repairs, timber sawing and raking out. We conducted our work with aplomb. Nothing was going to derail us. It was a great way to let off some steam at the end of a week and we’ve a return ticket in the bag.

Well done to Steph and Pauline for their long distance travels to make it. It was great to have Tony back and sawing the logs ready for the fire, Ben getting us from the best angles(check out social media pages soon) , Libby coming up with the best pun whilst tree clearing, Ruth clearing the bed of weeds, Steph raking the soil clear of weeds, Jess and Lee clearing and repairing the timber flower beds, Roz and Emma clearing the walkways, Eimear and Jo clearing the trees and Matt digging.

You made a big impact and we’ve given the miniature railway group further and hope. With a return journey we could bring it closer to …. getting back on track

Browsing Facebook one evening, I saw a post from 'Calderstones Park Forever' :- "The Nature Reserve is progressing well but there are still a couple of serious grot spots that our volunteers cannot tackle and are not very accessible by a digger..."

"If you are a strong footie or other team, group etc that are capable of dealing with this rubble and would like a workout in the park one evening instead of the gym, please email..."

This being the raison d'etre of GoodGym, even though we are not a footie team, I got in touch immediately and a week or two later, seven of us met with the lovely Caroline from Calderstones Park. The area to be cleared was part of the Harthill part of the park, which having once housed thirteen greenhouses containing a world-renowned orchid collection, had fallen into disrepair and was saved by a judicial review a couple of years ago from being turned into a housing estate. A lottery grant has paid for a lot of the work needed to establish a nature reserve on the site instead. A load of concrete, bricks and other debris had been cleared using mechanical diggers, but there were some hard-to-reach spots where good old people-power was needed.

We set to work to clear the first area and also make a pathway to enable us to wheel barrow-loads to the disposal area, using old flagstones to make a neat little ramp. Then is was onto the main area to be cleared, which had once housed a fernery. Countless trugs were filled byLee, Pauline, Christina and Jo, and dozens of wheelbarrow journeys made by [Mina](/runners/mina-mesri, Joe and Jess. In under two hours we'd cleared the 'grot spot' and even managed to shift a very large and heavy bollard!

Well done to all for working so hard today, and a special shout out to Mina and Joe for attending their first GoodGym session with us.