Tonight we returned to the cemetery for more bramble clearing.

We named and numbered off stating some pointless things we get asked to do at work as a nod to health and safety day. These included cleaning pigeon poo and management appreciation days! We also welcomed back Ellie and celebrated some excellent weekend running with Rich and Michal completing the 3 Peaks and Deb's parkrun PB.

We then set off with Lucy and Abigail back marking to meet Clive at the cemetery. After the midge swarm last time, Michael wore enough insect repellent to keep the entire group safe (and anyone else within a mile radius!). We therefore had a clear run of pruning, lopping and digging. Barbara got so excited she snapped a fork!

To finish off we did some fitness relays whilst practising our hammering, then headed back to base. We stretched off then some headed to the pub.

This week we started by presenting our GoodGymer of the month award marvelous Max, who has been active behind the scenes on the whatsapp community as well as being a more active and engaged taskforcer. Well done Max 🍾

We also awarded the Cape of Good Deeds to our fab co-area Activator Vicky, who was completing her 400th(!) Good Deed. Amazing effort. Give Max and Vicky a big cheer.

We then set off to York Cemetery with a nice run along the river, with some obligatory wall squats along the wall. Upon arrival we were greeted by superstar Clive who was well prepared for us as always. We soon got to work with loppers, rakes, spades and shears clearing an area that was previously part of a sensory garden but was in need a bit of TLC.

It took a little while for some of the GG crew to get to grips with the difference between a rose and a bramble, but we soon found our rhythm and started making some excellent progress in what seemed like a pretty straightforward task.

However things quickly took a turn for the worse when the midges decided they didn't like being disturbed and soon started feasting on any exposed GoodGym flesh that they could get their teeth (do they have teeth?) into.

With morale dipping and the midges biting, Ed put an early end to the task and started the fitness sesh - our GG York version of Paper, Rock, Scissors featuring Squats, Pencil jumps and Star Jumps. Fortunately everyone knows that Squats blunt star jumps, pencil jumps wraps squats, and star jumps cut pencil jumps, of course!

Nine fabulous GG Yorkies met the lovely Clive at York Cemetery this afternoon, some of whom were on mission #2, 3 or even 4 of the day! 💪 Clive was ready with his trolley full of tools and tonne bags and walked us round to the patch of brambles in question.

We set to work removing brambles, weeds and leaves and trimmed some of the trees as well. We soon filled a few of the bags and dragged them over to the compost heaps. The large twigs were put onto the wood heap to be turned into chippings later. After clearing a second section our hour was up and after a last trip to the compost and wood heaps, we gathered for our group photo just as it was starting to rain.

Several tasty bakes were shared before we went our separate ways for a well-earned rest!

🌸 York Cemetery is taking part in York Residents Festival 🌸 on Sunday 28 January between 10am and 3pm. There will be guided walks, the catacombs will be open and free refreshments ☕️ in the Harriet Centre. For everyone researching their own links to the Cemetery, the genealogy team will be doing grave searches of their huge database. You'll find them in the Chapel. You'll also be able to pick up and enjoy one of the many self-guided trails. Please note, dogs are not allowed in the Cemetery grounds, apart from assistance dogs.

☀️ We had a whopping 30 people at our group run this evening, on a gloriously light (and still sunny!) Monday evening.

👋 We were thrilled to welcome Rose for her first good deed, and Louisa for her first group run. We also had Rachel Maskill (MP for York Inner) along, which was great.

👻 We were heading to York Cemetery so waved off our walking group (led by Debs) then warmed up for running/cycling. We named and numbered off by recalling our favourite dead celebrity (in honour of our cemetery excursion). We discovered a lot of Bowie fans, along with other great and good, including Nelson Mandela and Casper the friendly ghost (hands up who’s ever put those two people in the same sentence before!)

🏃‍♀️🚲🚶‍♂️Ed led the running group to the cemetery while the rest of us cycled. We were met by the lovely Clive who was slightly surprised at our large number and tried to get a few more tools together.

4️⃣ We were given four jobs to tackle:

1) Digging and moving snowdrops to increase their spread around the cemetery for next year 🌼

2) Digging up brambles that we’d successfully cut back in January. (This required hunting down said remaining brambles, which was the first task!) 🪴

3) Lopping bank brambles in a particularly overgrown area 🌱

4) Digging and loading up bags of woodchip before dragging and distributing said bags 🌳

💪 Everyone tackled their jobs with aplomb and got a lot done. It was soon time to down and gather tools, take vegetation to the pile and head to the open area for fitness. In honour of our task location, we did a musical fitness session to the tune of Ghostbusters (thanks to Stef’s speakers). Many lunges and copious burpees later, with the backdrop of a very pretty sunset, we were Ghostbustered out and ready to head back to base.

🥳 We stretched off and said goodbye, lots of us heading to the pub for a drink and catch up.

👍 Thanks everyone, it was great to see you all. We’ve got other sessions coming up this week so you can find out more and sign up here.

🐣 I hope you have a great Easter weekend and see you for more of the same next Monday evening.

For our final session of Super Saturday, we gathered at York Cemetery. We bumped into David and Laura getting coffee en route and compared journeys (all having been deterred from getting to the Cycle Heaven cafe by the flooding meaning it wasn't on the way!)

We were met by Clive who gathered tools and pointed us in the direction of today's task, a specially-selected sheltered patch from the wind.

We were tasked with bramble-cutting, which we set about with gusto, armed with various tools. There was enthusiastic lopping galore of some fairly vicious brambles (and some shouts to get out the way as some particular large ones were prone to fighting back).

Quickly, it became apparent that we needed a system to gather said cut brambles so rakes were sought out and used to get the cuttings into bags to be transported to the compost area.

There was drama in both the lopping and gathering camps: - On the gathering side, Leanne accused James of drawing blood from her leg (we suspect it was a combination of the afore-mentioned brambles and the short leggings but who's to say?!) - Meanwhile, on the lopping side, we swiftly concluded that none of us would be able to win a fight with Stef over the last tin of beans in the event of a zombie apocalypse.

The loppers got so into their task that it was tricky to stop them, even after our allocated time was up. It felt like we made a big difference though, so thank you everyone. Now, time for a well-deserved rest before back to more of the same tomorrow!

Four fantastic GoodGymmers headed to York Cemetery after a brilliantly busy parkrun and yummy breakfast.

Clive quickly set us to work cutting back another overgrown area of brambles, nettles and the like. He's recently had surgery so couldn't get too involved and enjoyed chatting to Nicky's sister about the history of the cemetery while we gardened.

Time flew as we chatted to Louise about her new life in London and (mostly Nicky) got tangled in giant brambles. It was very satisfying to clear the area, although forgetting to take a before photo means you'll have to believe us when we say we made a good impact!

It was soon time to down our tools and take the huge bags of vegetation to the compost heap. We even found a gorgeous cemetery cat who we named Ghost.

It was then time for what we'd all been waiting for - Clive's cemetery tour. Not only did he pack in a huge amount of history, we also learned about different trees and Tay particularly enjoyed looking for bat boxes.

The tour complete, some of us headed to Spark for lunch (and maybe a cheeky beer) and to prep for the race tomorrow.