It was a beautiful and majestic sight to see 23 Goodgymers gallop ( /cycle) across the green (and welcome back a few familiar faces) to where Jenny from the council awaited with many maaaaany plant plugs and bulbs. For today was no ordinary day, today we were going to do what many Goodgymers had tried before, to plant them all!

We quickly divvied up the tools and got to work digging in socially distanced teams in between the trees. We had various young plant plugs (which had to be extracted with screw drivers!?!) and handfuls of bulbs which included bluebells, crocuses, wild tulips and twiglets (or the roots of wood anenomes that looked like twiglets).

With valiant efforts not to eat the bulbs which were getting confused with garlic, potatoes, onions and twiglets we managed to plant everything in only an hour! Other highlights included Nikki unearthing a plug of a different variety, passing visits from GG legends Egg, Digby, Huw & baby Noah and by no means least the copious amount of baked goods that seemed to have mater that materialised as incentives to join the task (Big shout out to Babs, Vicky H and Nikki G!)

We then slowly dispersed and wound our ways to other Saturday activities.

Following an eventful litter pick a group of 11 GG Yorkies stayed for a social run.

In line with the latest guidance we split the team in two groups of no more than 6 and started with a warm up. With Leanne, who stayed for the warm up, we gracefully executed the following movements: opening the gate, closing the gate, leg swings, star toe touches, but kickers and high knees.

Warmed up, head torches ready we went to explore Clifton Backies at night.

After 30 minutes of running we gathered back at the start location for a warrior stretch.

The faster group, led by Ed, run the distance of 5k, well they had to run around some bushes at the end to make it 5k exact. The second team, led by the GG Yorkie mascot Furbie covered amazing 3,6k.

Despite the best efforts to use our head torches to illuminate one spot it was too dark to take a quality team photo with my phone camera.

The atmosphere has been brilliant throughout.

See you at the next run.

After some minor disputes regarding the actual meeting place, we all agreed that Ed was right all along and we were where we were supposed to be.

We then swiftly split into 3 groups, in the pursuit of 'litter hotspots' spread throughout the backies. Team 1 led by Bec headed towards the Clifton way entrance and tackled hotspot 1. Fortunately the were aided by scout leader Michael, who issued a stern telling off to some apple-throwing youths.

Team 2, led by Amy, headed towards the pond and a popular littering bench for hot spot 2. After much wrestling with spikey things the were soon filling up their bags with empty beer cans.

Whilst team 3 'led' by Ed wandered through the woods (which had almost certainly been litter-picked recently) looking for 2 metal benches that we were beginning to think didn't actually exist!

Fortunately Legendary Leanne lived up to her name and spotted the benches and a litter-picker's jackpot. Amongst the haul Johnny B snaffled a load of torn up exercise books as well as a copy of Roald Dahl's 'Boy'.

The 3 teams then regrouped back at the meeting place before some headed out for a social run.

36 GG Yorkies came to improve the wildflower meadow at Millennium Fields.

Tonight we all gave massive high fives to Laura, our very own taskforce legend who only joined GoodGym in April and has already completed an amazing 50 good deeds. If you haven't cheered her yet, make sure you do!

Laura also back-marked for us, swishing her cape as we ran along the river to Millennium Fields. Jonathan was in the far corner of the meadow sending morse code signals with his torch.

The task had three parts, all to do with connecting one end of the meadow to the other, and making the edge of the woodland a wildflower haven.

1. Digging an inch of turf up in a large patch, ready to plant seeds
2. Scarifying another large patch ready for seeding
3. Planting wildflowers along the border of the woodland

Digging is popular in winter so the 9 spades got snapped up super fast, followed by the rakes. Everybody else grabbed a trowel and started planting the wildflowers.

Is this definitely a plant?

I think I've just planted some mud

Some of the wildflowers did look a bit like Jonathan had filled a small plant pot with soil and some leaves, but he assured us there were teeny tiny roots in there with perennial plants that would flower next year.

People were planting one plant and then switching with a digger or a raker but the plants were planted so quickly that Jonathan had to come up with a new task which was basically digging a whole new patch, read for seeding... but using the trowels.

Just pretend your trowel is a spade - Jonathan

Then there was another bonus task which was digging up some tansy plants from down by the river bank to plant in our newly dug out area.

Whilst all this was happening, a few people were tool-less so we did a short pilot of the fitness session, and once all the tansy was planted, the whole group gathered for an extremely complex game of stuck in the mud (with plenty of real life mud).

This version involved rescuers who can only hop, baddies who can only lunge and people who are stuck having to squat continuously until they're rescued.

I can't squat anymore, someone save me!

After everyone eventually became stuck in the mud, we made our way back along the other side of the river, with an optional 1km time trial. Kudos to everyone who boshed it, and especially to Debs who managed to run a new mile PB!

Laura made a lot of really delicious apple cake to celebrate her 50th good deed, thanks Laura!

Til next week.