GoodGym York knows how to party. We celebrated turning 7 with a brilliant weekend of running, revelry and doing good.

It was Vicky and Ed's first year of leading the GG Yorkies through January, always the busiest time of the year as we take on the January Challenge.

With a double-booked hostel, we had a fairly last minute change of location and Vicky secured a stay at YHA Langdale, a totally massive place with amazing views around.. and we had it all to ourselves.

Laura diligently arrived first and took on all the health and safety info, then Friday night kicked off some mobility challenges using a mop and then a chilli night.

I thought we might need to do a jobs rota for meals, but then remembered it is GoodGym - Vicky

Everyone chipped in with cooking and serving and sorting and cleaning, before we nailed an excellent selection of cake and retired to the front room for a hilarious few rounds of the present game, where we all attempted to get rid of excess or unwanted gifts. Cheryl Cole's book and a hairy glasses holder were both in very hot contention.

There might have been a few fuzzy heads on Saturday morning, but nothing could stop GG Yorkies from getting to parkrun. A small subset headed off to Muncaster Castle for Egg's 500th parkrun whilst most ran straight from the hostel to Rothay Park in Ambleside across the fells.. with a litter pick afterwards, obviously.

Best route to parkrun, EVER! -Nikki

After a massive group breakfast back at the hostel, it was big task time. Vicky had managed to sort a really last minute task at Langdale Primary School. We had a walking group, a running group and a fell group to get over there.

The task was amazing, check out the task report to see all the details!

It was supposed to be team fitness after that but that got vetoed in favour of the pub...

Saturday evening was curry night with an incredible selection of seven curries contributed.

With some very full bellies, we could then enjoy Michael's brilliant quiz, with some sneaky GoodGym and parkrun themes!

Then, 20+ fully grown adults played sardines in the giant hostel, with Lyndsay securing the best hiding place and Paul Kelly coming up with the incredible 'tea towel on the head behind the freezer' disguise.

There were so many highlights to the weekend, we can't wait to turn 8 and do it all again.

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.