An ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING 51 runners and walkers came along to our very first Monday group task of 2020!!

What a fantastic start to the year, we welcomed along Ian and Amy who joined us for the very first time, and a shout out to Steph too who joined us for her first group run.

It was also brilliant to see loads of old faces back with us and getting their own January Challenge off to a really GOOD start. Everyone was very excited to get a Yorkie bar for their first good deed of the year (love plying people with chocolate!).

With Debs as our walk leader and Pete bringing up the rear, we all headed over to Westbank Park where Kristina had reached a new level of organisational splendour.

We need 4 groups of 3, one group of 8, one group of 10 and then everyone else split into two

We thought the first run back might have a big turnout, and Kristina had produced a vast and dreamy task list which included:

• Bagging and moving grass cuttings from picnic area to top gate
• Sawing off 'too high' posts
• Turning compost in the new bins
• Sweeping and clearing the basketball court
• Topping up the dog grate with hardcore
• Thinning the overgrown bamboo area
• Coppicing hazel in the orchard
• (Re)building the dead hedge in the orchard with the (above) coppiced hazel
• Removing all "organic matter" from old compost bins to the new ones
• Deconstructing old compost bins and take all wood to bottom gate
• Clearing leaves from play area into compost bins

Once everyone had been briefed, we had all of about 32 minutes to complete all those tasks. Here are some short reports from those in the field....

Max: We moved three extremely smelly compost heaps 5m to the right

Leanne: We were asked to coppice hazel, use the cuttings to create a dead hedge and saw up some logs. We couldn't find the logs so concentrated on cutting down hazel and building an awesome dead hedge. Turned out we were supposed to cut some of the larger bits of tree but Kristina didn't care because our hedge was so amazing.

Nikki G (same task): We excelled at coppicing and dedge building. Actually genuinely skilled at it. Still in shock at our own level of skill.

Nick (still the same task): Alaya was incredibly good at finding flexible, whippy bits of hazel to weave into the hedge, such high quality.

Debs: I led our team pseudo-confidently to exactly where we needed to be. Our big pile of dead stuff to move proved to be elusive. We wrestled the smallish pile of prickly brambles into one of the two tonne bags. We dragged it up to the top gate and then split up to assist teams "gravel-gate", "bamboo pandas" and "Jeff's slimey leaves and poorly pigeon". Ellie, Katie and various Amys attempted to establish if it was gym equipment or play equipment in the park, we still don't know. (Egg: it's 'active play' equipment designed for children but absolutely suitable for small adults.)

Lizzie: We emptied compost from an old bin to new one. Then we dismantled the bin which involved Michael kicking it into submission. We shovelled a lot of really minging compost.

Katie: Amy, Chloe and I were joined by Jenna (who was important because she knew exactly where the basketball court was) and were laden with tools for the "heavy job". Armed with 3 tampers, 2 giant crowbars, a wheelbarrow and 2 shovels, we reached the cattle grid designed for (tiny) dogs and jimmied it off to scoop out the leaves from the watery pit. En route to collect to promised hardcore (for filling the pit), we also collected an enthusiastic Lionel who barrowed many heavy bags of hardcore. After the second trip it became clear (unlike the water under which the hardcore had now become completely submerged) that there was not quite enough hardcore to finish this item of task roulette. We called in David and Debs to assist with replacing the grid cover, leaving the puddley pit to be completely filled another day!

Although I don't have a direct quote from the play area leaf team, I can tell you that Christine and Louise were both massively excited to be in charge of leaf blowers and were fairly close to running home with them.

It was as slick as a military operation and all teams reported back bang on time, ready for a huge group picture. A small and speedy team led by Nick hung back to help Kristina put away millions of tools before catching the rest of us up.

To finish an amazing evening, the first workout of the year was a Team 500 workout, in which teams of about 10 shared 500 reps of squats and lunges to help celebrate Leanne and I both achieving our 500th good deeds. There was even a Mexican lunge in one of the teams which is probably my highlight of 2020 so far.