Leah headed up to Walter Halls School to help out at their annual Dig Day.

She arrived towards the end of the event, but Adele quickly set her to work helping to create planters out of tyres. The soil was bone dry, so she used the GoodGym muscle to lug watering cans down to the tap.

Just before she left, she got a glimpse of the new pond we helped dig getting filled with water! We're all so impressed with how it turned out!

We were back at Walter Halls School last night for another incredibly fun task. This week, we moved away from the pond and garden area where we have worked previously to focus on one of the storage cupboards underneath part of the school (although Peter and Tom did start off with a quick 10-minute pickaxe session on the pond area to warm them up, or was it a cool down after also running from Market Square to the school?).

Our job was to help clear out an enormous amount of ‘stuff’ from the storage area so that it could be sorted through and tidied. We set to work with Adele and Emma from the school, taking all the items outside so that we could assess what was worth keeping and what would, sadly, need to be disposed of.

There was such a random mix of equipment, toys, tools, boxes and much more…plus a wheelchair. However, most surprising was a huge pile of pushchairs which had been donated to the school by East Midlands Airport. Emma went through them all to check them and see if they were still functional, and we all helped with some of the trickier ones to see if we could work out how to put them up and down – we managed most of them, but some had us stumped!

Once all the equipment was out, we swept and cleaned up the storage area ready for the salvageable items to be put back in. With the cupboard repacked in a more orderly fashion, we finished up by wheeling all the broken pushchairs and taking all the rubbish to the bins at the rear of the school ready for collection.

It was lovely to see Tom back after a break and also well done to AJ for completing his 5th GoodGym task.

Thank you to Adele and Emma for once again hosting us at this amazing school. We’ve enjoyed every visit so far and we always leave feeling satisfied and impressed with all the amazing projects going on at the school.

A stonking 10 GoodGymers descended on Walter Halls School this week for an evening of garden renovation. We were back in the same area we started last time that is being turned into a pond and wildflower garden.

We welcomed Peter for his first session, which he took with gusto, swinging a pickaxe like a pro, taking turns with Peter and assisted by Dayna and Rosemarie with spades.

Debbie and Aj started off by collecting stones to put in the tyre planters, then topped them up with branches and soil.

At one point, Pete M and Dayna (the two tallest people) helped remove a rainbow tarpaulin from the wooden pergola as it had seen better days and Adele wanted to repurpose the material for something else.

Nigel, Rachel and Marta planted some wild flowers in the no-dig beds we created, and Marta did a lot of watering with Debbie

Leah and one of the school staff, Emma, headed off up to the entrance to cut down some branches that had been causing a trip hazard on the paths, loading them into one of the now-empty tonne bags for use later in the planters.

Busy busy busy! Too bad ITV cancelled on us at the last minute!

GoodGym Nottingham felt all a bit Stone Age this week!

We were back at Walter Halls School with Adele, this time tasked with helping make over a patch of ground that will soon become a garden for the children to tend to.

Peter took a pickaxe to the patch marked out to become a pond. The ground there is pretty tough at the moment and Adele wants to have the kids help dig it out, so he was breaking it up and turning it over for them to make things a little easier.

Dayna, Vytautas and Rosemarie were digging holes to plant some of Adele's ferns and climbers – much tougher than it sounds with the hard soil, roots and rocks hindering progress.

Leah and Rachel were back shifting soil from a tonne-bag up on the hill down to the new garden space, and created a no-dig flowerbed with newcomer Marta getting the honours of sprinkling over the new wildflower seeds for her ingenious use of a big log as a hammer to get the little border fence into the ground.

We're back in a couple of weeks, hope you can join us!

We enjoyed another great turnout last night at Walter Halls School, welcoming back Diana and Theodor for their second tasks, and Rowan for her first! Also major kudos to Tom and Peter for running up from Market Square.

We were on a tight deadline as the school's site manager had to lock up by 7:30, so we got stuck straight in. The free shop's stock of donated clothing was getting a little out of hand, so we were tasked with sorting it by size and bagging up anything stained or unsuitable ready to send for recycling.

The storage room was pretty small and two other volunteers and the deputy head were sorting more stuff in there, so we filled some boxes and bags and took over the adjoining room. Some of our favourite finds were the world's biggest pair of shorts, a toy cat, some doll's clothes (which contrasted pretty well with the shorts tbh), and a t-shirt with a print of another place we've helped, Green's Windmill!

Finally, we went to toss the discarded donations into the clothes donation bin on the school site, which was harder than it sounds in the dark! Despite a few pieces being determined to escape and jump back down on us, we got most of it in before we reached the brim and took the remainder back in so it didn't get soaked in the inevitable rain.

Thanks to everyone for attending!

Sadly, Adele had to cancel our planned session due to a family illness. However, she did have a little something for us to do instead.

Peter, Nigel and Leah met up at the school with a bunch of leaflets to deliver. But it wasn't your standard drop-one-in-every-door-just-watch-out-for-snakes leafleting task.

Adele is looking for people who are having a bit of a home clear-out to donate some of their unwanted stuff for her to turn into playthings for the kids at the school - what a fab idea! (See the copy of the leaflet attached if you've got anything of your own) This meant we were looking for houses with For Sale or Sold signs.

We didn't find a huge number, but Nigel did have a chat with one person who was at their door when he dropped the leaflet and found out that the next-door neighbour had recently moved in, so we dropped one through their door too.

We just had time to pose with one of the scary children bollards before heading home for a well-earned warm-up!