We safely teetered down the hill on our first snowy-icy session for 2026 with run leader Sallyann showing how to do it with abundant balance!

It still felt Christmassy with...

• a layer of ice under a dash of snow

• zero temperature

• northern light photaes with our crazy head torches (courtesy of our fab photoers Steph & Naser & Leonardo)

• also the Christmas chatterings of course!

It was lovely catching up with each other after the Christmas break.

Also we met some lovely new members Amani and Karen , of the amazing Siân noless.

Welcome, welcome and we hope to see more of you in 2026. We also welcomed our newly stolen member from Islington too Alison - yeah for us!

Elaine arrived and explained we had done such a good job on the nettles and thistles it was now time to tackle some of the floor covering weeds too hopefully to give some of the non-weeds a chance in the spring. Those floor covering weeds also included litter which always a joy to clear up!

Seven bags later we felt we had made a good start to 2026 and put to bed our last days of 2025.

Thank you all for turning up in the cold and giving that good doing warmth and I cannot wait to spend more of my 2026 doing good with you guys and guyettes xxx

On the first day of December, whilst the last of the evening showers continued, 6 determined Goodgymmers met at our usual suitcases spot for the run to the task. This was to be my supervised run session to consolidate my Goodym fitness leader training. I was grateful for the motivated bunch that met me in the rain, showing that classic Goodgym Liverpool support.

After a welcome and warm up, we weaved through the streets of Liverpool Central, to finish at the 2km mark on Park lane, where Bekah was waiting to welcome us. Joined by Lucian and Elaine, we were ready to start our evenings task.

The idea of clearing some of the more persistent nettles and thistles had Lucien eagerly rushing into the Park Lane garden to get stuck in Bekah , on the other hand, had an hour of exposure therapy. She braved her fears to provide much needed light and nettle spotting expertise for the group!

After an hour of weeding, a little bit of December and January planning and the mandatory group photo, the runners set off back up the notorious parliament hill! Having well tested our fitness levels, we arrived at the suitcases for a much need stretch. I was thankful to receive some lovely feedback from the group. We said our goodbyes and headed off into the night towards home. Another successful task completed!

This week we were back to join Elaine on Park Lane for a mammoth weeding session.

We have been working on this sight through thick and thin, contending various weeds at different times of year. This time, it was the turn of the thistle and the site had become somewhat overrun with them.

Thankfully we had a fabulous team of 11 goodgymmers to wage war on them!

In no time we had cleared the majority and left the site in a much better state. Well done everyone!

GoodGym Liverpool meets every Monday for their group runs, followed by a task in the community. Two runners, SallyAnn and Dike, met at The Suitcases (Duke Street) for the run. Only Dike ran, while Sally cycled alongside, providing company and some coaching to the upcoming marathon finisher wannabe (pun intended). They headed to Park Lane, the venue for the day’s task, where they would meet up with Sian, Lucien, Danchito, Clara, Leonardo, and Elaine from the Urban GreenUp Project Liverpool, who would coordinate the task of the day. Previous tasks with Elaine had involved uprooting overgrowth at the Park Lane green corridor, so most GoodGymers who turned up that day expected the same. However, Elaine had a different plan—clearing a pile of green waste from previous weeding sessions. The waste was piled in a corner, some bagged but most left loose. The task was to re-bag the waste and load it into a van. Everyone worked on clearing the waste except Lucien and Elaine, who focused on uprooting more overgrowth. Stem after stem, shrub after shrub, they bagged everything by hand while chatting and laughing. Not even the thorns, the smell of decomposing leaves, or the sight of slugs could dampen their morale. In about an hour, more than three-quarters of the pile was re-bagged. The icing on the cake was an elderly man—probably a local—who, on seeing the GoodGymers clearing the rubbish, pulled out his phone to take photos while praising their efforts. By the end, the walkway, which had been blocked by the pile of green waste, was clear and fit for use again.

4 goodgymmers met on Hope street and ran our way past the cathedral and through china town onto Park road where we met Elaine and two more goodgymmers to continue our war against the weeds.

This week the targets were thistles, nettles and bindweed. And I really think we broke the back of it - by the end of our session you could actually walk through from one side to the other. Huge progress! Well done everyone. Elaine will now be able to focus on maintaining the plants and the site and really making it a beautiful space for all.

On Monday evening GoodGym Liverpool returned to our regular haunt on Park Lane for our urban street clean up.

Congrats to Jess for taking part in her fifth task!!

Most of us got to work removing the throng of thistles, learning top tips such as:

Double gloving is useful when you accidentally bring your rubbish ones You must cut off the thistle flowers and bag them up before their seeds spread Using shears as a method to transport thistles is very effective

Whilst we were tackling the thistles Bekah was doing a boss job litter picking. She also saved a cornucopia of slugs (I did not know this was the collective word for these docile slimy creatures so I've learnt something new).

She rescued them from certain death after finding one half in, half out of a can of lager, she liberated it and then found another 15 inside the can!! So she's relocated them somewhere more suitable so they can enjoy their best life.

We got an incredible amount of work done, as seen in the photo, and here's hoping that we managed to get those wretched seeds into the bags ready to be taken far, far away.

We will be back again next week and I'm so confident we will remove every last one of the thistles ready for Elaine to manage the area to make it beautiful for the people of Liverpool (and for her dog Riley to play in without getting prickled by the offending vegetation).

Well done gang!!