On a long, sunny York evening, GG Yorkies came one by one to collect batches of letters to be distributed across the city.

Packs were sent out to people all over the place, and only one to an address that definitely did not exist.

This is a school. Pretty sure nobody lives here (Kate)

Michael had originally agreed to deliver to one village on the edge of the city but slowly started to take on extras to further away locations. He found himself exploring new roads lined with poppy fields.

Speaking of exploring, adventurer Max was delighted to discover a secret cycle path on his route.

Paula didn't mind where she went, she was just glad to be out doing something good!

With a few stragglers in the 'random' location pile, Nan swooped in and saved the day, bagging herself her 10th good deed in the process!

35 GG Yorkies saw in December with two massive tasks!

We welcomed along two brand new runners to the gang, your best cheers please for Vix and Evan especially because they joined us on a very chilly night.

Mitch led the majority of the group off to a lovely indoor task at Fishergate School, where everyone was tasked with wrapping HUNDREDS of presents for the school's Christmas shop, where the kids can buy small gifts for their families.

There were matchmakers and chocolate oranges which were easy and rectangular, then the slightly more complex triangular lip balms and much more difficult cylindrical pots of slime!

Mitch did have a go at wrapping but as you can see from the picture of his efforts, he was better just staying in charge and making sure nobody was going rogue with the scissors or getting paper cuts.

The remaining small but hardcore group ran with me over to the Groves where Jane of the Secret Garden had asked us to move "about 50 big stones".

The short version of this story is that a local man spotted some excellent large rocks which had been excavated from a local building site. Some of the stones are carved and almost certainly have some sort of historical significance but we don't know what.

With permission, and an electric milk float, they took all the stones with the idea that they could use them to build a rockery in the Secret Garden (a local community space) and stored them in his front garden, where they've been for months.

The rockery can't be built until spring so this task was to shift all the rocks to the shared garage for winter storage.

It was a bit like a strongman Atlas Stones challenge as the awkwardly shaped stones challenged everyone, with only the biggest ones going in the single, rickety wheelbarrow.

This is a proper task! Max

Max was very happy to be lifting heavy rocks and there was some rock jigsaw solving going on that a drystone waller would have been proud of.

30 minutes down and the last, enormous rock was placed in the garage. We estimated that there were in fact about 150 rocks. Slightly more than anticipated.

With our task complete we ran to see if we could help with any last minute present wrapping. It was an absolute hive of activity when we arrived and there was some seriously high quality wrapping happening. The rock gang mostly focused on recycling cardboard and being countdown timers whilst the wrappers finished up.

There were hundreds of gifts to wrap, it felt like an impossible job to do in the allocated time. The GoodGymers were amazing; they came in, cracked on, laughed and did the lot right until the very last minute. What absolute stars. I imagine they are sick of the sight of matchmakers! - Friends of Fishergate School

Amazing work with all the good tonight everyone. There are LOADS of community missions coming up in the next week so check out the listings and get involved.

The clocks have gone back and it's properly dark and cold but that didn't stop two groups of GG Yorkies from doing good!

We welcomed along two brand new runners tonight so lets give some hearty cheers to Alice and Jiachang.

Almost everyone wanted to go long tonight so Tim led a hardy crew of six to the Planet South Bank Community Garden whilst everyone else came with me to Danesmead Wood.

Tim's crew snuck through some snickleways that surprised even the seasoned pros Debs and Vicky. They popped out by St Clements Church and met Lyndall who told them the long list of tasks.

The primary task was to cut back all greenery that was overhanging the footpath round the edge of the garden. Charlotte and Beth jumped straight to it, snipping and chopping the various weeds and bushes that were encroaching.

Vicky and Debs got stuck straight with the fun task of de-teabagging the compost in the main flowerbed. A delicate task handled with great skill no doubt.

Tim and newbie Jiachang got to work weeding the flowerbeds and clearing the weeds over to the now massively overflowing compost area! The church were kind enough to provide hot chocolates to fight the cold. But Tim decided that wasn't enough so he made everyone do a few sprint repeats on the way back!

Over in the deep, dark, Danesmead Wood, there were two piles of woodchip at either end of the central path and Jude wanted us to top up the paths. She had quite specific dimensions for the width and depth of the bark too.

One team nabbed five of the six wheelbarrows so the smaller team were having to work fast with only one 'barrow, but the bigger team had a few too many people tool-less so we started a hill sprint relay to ensure everyone was always doing something, and keeping warm!

Craig took all of about five minutes to get himself covered in the evil spiky sticky plant things and nobody was willing to help him extract them given the location on his body. It's also a bit of a mystery how he brushed against them in that position.

There was some bonus massive log moving too ready for spooky storytelling in the woods and Jude had made a couple of traybakes which everyone indulged in post-task.

After a few step reps and sprints at Millennium Bridge we were welcomed back by Tim's crew and Debs was doing her best market selling for all the veggies she'd procured from the community garden.

Potato, anyone? Radishes, 3 for a pand!

A 38-strong GoodGym crew headed to Millennium Fields for an emergency raking session

It wasn't originally going to be raking and there has been a lot of raking recently, but we did have to rake because lots of grass had been cut which wasn't supposed to be and there's a short period of time to turn it into a lovely wildflower meadow.. so sorry team but I promise there'll be no more raking now!

Everyone was in good spirits anyway after an absolutely brilliant weekend of volunteering and racing with the Yorkshire Marathon and 10 mile, the official GoodGym water station and various fell races.

After a run along the river with some bonus wall sit action, we arrived at Millennium Fields to a whole trailer full of rakes which Maria had expertly cycled over.

There were three areas which needed all the grass raking up, and two of those also needed to be scarified so that wildflower seeds could be sown.

There really were a lot of rakes, but there were also a lot of us so whoever wasn't quick enough to grab a rake was in bag duty. Aidan had come to GoodGym fresh from giving blood.

I'm two pints of blood down so I'm happy to just hold the corner of a bag

Mel totally owned bag duty, spotting whoever needed one and ensuring they got it.

I am the bag lady

With many sore and tired running legs, fitness was optional and involved regular sprints over Millennium Bridge and up the steps. Uptake was not extremely high, back to mandatory fitness next week!

We finished up with everyone sprinkling some wildflower seeds and stomping them in, a group piccie on Millennium Bridge and a run back along the river.

If that's not enough good for you, there's a community mission you can get stuck into tomorrow, without a single bit of raking. Promise.

*Pun credit: Mel - excellent spice girls reference

It's was black history month at the oaks (and presumably everywhere else as well) so for October's games night Tracey decided that we could play a game called Mancala with some of the residents. One of the oldest known games in the world, with its origins in Africa

A fantastic idea on paper. However teaching the game to dimwitted GoodGymers and dementia sufferers proved a bit trickier. Especially when 'expert' Craig started adding more complex rules to poor old Prescilla who was yet to get to grips with the basics.

Well travelled Nan had played a different version of the game and looked completely baffled by this configuration of buttons and holes despite Deb's guidance, whilst Pete, very sensibly, joined in with Vikki who seemed to have grasped the basics.

Over on Egg and Leanne's table the Mancala board was swiftly pushed to one side and a giant dominoes tower was being constructed and toppled. Further proof that GG York are probably better off with destruction than learning new games!

On a very soggy bank holiday Monday, 28 GoodGymers turned up for a lovely run in the rain!

We welcomed along Caroline all the way from GG Sheffield and celebrated Beth and Jenna's first half marathons over the weekend, as well as Laura's first 10k and Andy's 10k PB, phew.. loads of weekend running.

We split into two teams and the walkers, led by Ellie D, headed off whilst the rest of us had a little warm up (still in the sunshine).

Mitch led a group to Greenfields Garden, where the team had three tasks to complete:

• Clearing an area of old wood chip (essentially, grass) to lay new wood chip
• Scything an overgrown path to make space for a new manure pile
• Moving carpets, moving soil between bays, adding layers of soil, hay and guinea pig droppings and covering with carpets whilst moving sticks and folding up bags into other bags...simple, right?!

When the rain began, everyone took shelter and enjoyed having dry feet to to our excellent drainage system which we created in 2017 - still going strong! Despite the weather, the tasks were finished and everyone warmed up with a good fitness session and some hearty singing of rain-related songs.

I liked the bit where we ran under a bus shelter - Amy's highlight of the evening

My team at Rowntree Park were clearing the borders of the sensory garden, which is being reinstated after a long period of neglect. Our task was to dig up all the weeds, leaving only the plants and herbs.

First thing I dug up, definitely had a plant label - Debs

We had to pull up a lot of dock, as well as something that looked a lot like dock and wasn't, and the funny little white flowered weed too. Weeds were piled into three wheelbarrows and run up to the park gates where we filled giant bags, ready for collection.

When the deluge hit, everyone just carried on doing good but when it hit even harder the second time, some of the group took shelter. The rule was that if you were taking shelter you had to squat continuously as an alternative to doing good.

Once the sacks were filled with weeds we warmed up with a little fitness session on the new grassy labyrinth. The fitness session doubled up as a helpful task as our stomping and fast feet flattened the grass to make the labyrinth outline more distinct. We did some lunges, side hurdles, jump to squat and leap frogs for those who were feeling brave.

Let's hope it's back to the usual dry and sunny York for next week!