Peter and Ben met up for a light jog and litter pick in Manchester.

After meeting outside the Central Library in St Peter's Square, we made the run to Hulme park. The park itself was thankfully spotless, but the surrounding area and places near the road and footbridge had seen a build up of litter and discarded waste. We collected 7 full bags in total plus other large items consisting of:

• Pillows
• Shoes
• Lots of drinks bottles and cans
• Car bumper
• Piping
• Cones
• Road signs
• Lamp post covers

After clearing the area, we made the run down to Barrack park (aka St George's park) that again, was generally tidy near the play area and football pitches (where a man decided to have a swing at golf...) Around the outskirts, however, we found more debris mostly consisting of food & drink packaging. We did also find some large mushrooms although likely not edible.

After placing the rubbish bags in easy to collect places, we took pictures and noted the What3Words location to pass on to Keep MCR Tidy to ensure collection this week.

After a short jog back, we enjoyed a swift pint at Wetherspoons to chat about holidays, GoodGym Shindig, moving house, and the state of modern football. Cracking way to spend a Monday evening.

Welcome to Ruoyun for their first GoodGym Manchester session! Hope you had a good time and maybe see you again soon.

Today, we helped out with the Shakespearean Garden in Platt Fields Park. A really beautiful community garden with a vegetable/herb garden growing items for a local charity, The Place, a rockery, central seating area, and a stumpery that was popular in Victorian times. With it being open all day long, it takes a lot of tending to, but Kattie and the rest of the volunteers have done a sterling job to revamp the area since 2021. Huge kudos to them!

We helped with several physical tasks, once a lot of litter had been removed from the area. We were tasked with laying woodchip for a path around the perimeter to keep people away from the planted areas and to provide a marked route to explore a lot of the garden not visible from the main footpaths. The pile of woodchip at the start was sizeable and healthy, with apparently inedible mushrooms growing out of the top. Over 90 min, we managed to reduce the pile to a handful and the path had been successfully laid, topping up other sections in the meantime. We certainly got our workout in with shoveling, wheelbarrowing, and raking to ensure everything was laid as required.

We had a brief tour of the garden and shown the set up for the Open Garden on 27th July where we'll definitely be needed to help set up the gazebos and tents. Sign up if you are available!!

Today, Ben went along to Brunswick Parish Church to help out with Ardwick Climate Action for their monthly Saturday volunteering.

This week, there were several activities to get involved with:

• Litter picking
• Planting out plants from the Manchester Flower Festival
• Digging over the grass near a "wildflower mound"
• Wheelbarrowing lots of soil from one site to another

Abigail and John took on the challenge of litter picking while Gordon, Ben, and another volunteer moved a whole rubble bag of soil (i.e. lots and lots) from Lockton Close to the Kale Street site. We certainly got our workout in and covered many steps between the sites to give a dragon tail (or sperm...) shaped wildflower area on the Kale St site to be planted with poppy seeds and later other wild flowers once the grass had been fully dug over. We did make a start on the latter around the edge but it was tough work!

Some fox glove (I think) were planted in another bed, and there was a lot of weeding in the lavender beds.

The wheelbarrows each had their own quirks, either with holes, broken bits, and one with very squeaky wheels(!) but they certainly did their job.

Welcome to Divya for their first GoodGym outing. Hope to see you at another session in the future!

This Spring Bank Holiday, we hastily organised a walk, with May being the GM Walking Festival and also National Walking Month to encourage people to walk or wheel during the month.

This time, we covered Route 2 of Manchester's Green Trail, starting from Clayton Park through:

• Clayton Vale and along some of the River Medlock
• Around Brookdale Park
• Along Rochdale canal (and the many numbered and named locks)
• Looping through Moston Vale
• Meandering through Broadhurst Park
• Encountering Boggart Hole Clough

There were lots of green spaces, trees, waterways, and parks to cover and we managed it in around 2 h 40 min for the ~13 km route, with plenty of time for some chit-chat along the way.

On the way, we passed GM Police HQ, Clayton House, and several Metrolink stations (although not one near the end of the route). Juno found a decent football. I have since discovered that a "Clough" is a narrow valley; a cleft in a hillside; a ravine, glen, or gorge. Who knew.

We'll try to arrange semi-regular walks at weekends or bank holidays in different parts of Manchester so keep an eye out for those.

Well done to everyone who ran or walked at Fletcher Moss parkrun event #249. A whopping 499 participants completed the 5 km course on a muggy morning following the overnight rain.

22 people completed their FIRST EVER parkrun.

Big thank you to the 16 volunteers who helped make the event happen.

There was a touch of litter picking and clearing pre-parkrun before setting up for the bank holiday running crowd.

Welcome to Gaynor for their first ever GoodGym Manchester Task! Great to meet you briefly and hope to see you at another session in the future!

This evening, we collected any tins, cans, jars, and other non-perishables from the cupboards or the shop, to drop off at the big ASDA in Hulme as a donation point for Manchester South Central food bank. We had lots of peanut butter, jam, tinned meat & veg, rice pudding, UHT milk, pasta sauce, and added the carrier bags in for good measure.

With a 2.3 km distance from the meeting point to the drop-off point, Pavel and Ben did their own version of the Farmer's carry with bags in each hand and a hefty backpack each to take the load past Parakeet Parkway. Excellent Monday evening workout to get a bit of a sweat in the May sunshine.

Lots of chit chat about a possible GoodGym app, marketing GoodGym, camping, plus much more. Much lighter walk on the way home too!