After our December endeavours shifting many bulk bags of sand for Botley Primary School, yesterday we were back to shovel and rake shingle.

The school are rejuvenating their inner courtyard into a more usuable space, both for children and teachers, but as it's surrounded by corridors and classrooms it was a logistical puzzle to work out how to get the gravel/shingle from the delivery point into the courtyard. With a solution found (a pallet truck), we were called in to lend extra hands to the task.

In less than an hour and a half our team of 7 GoodGymers and 4 school volunteers managed to get 9 bulk bags of shingle shifted into the courtyard, shovelled and barrowed around the space, and beautifully raked to an even finish.

Many hands make light work of a big task!

After a winter full of cancelled tasks thanks to poor weather, it was a joy to be out in the sunshine at last!

We have a long history with Marston Forest Garden, having helped out and witnessed it's transformation since it's early days. This time we were moving and replanting a Sea Buckthorn tree (very spikey), collecting barrow loads of compost from the communal compost pile, and weeding away grass from around the Mulberry tree and surrounding herbs.

Two hours whizzed by and our Vitamin D levels got a boost.

We ate, drank and were merry.

Mark flitted between 2 parties and we all tried to kidnap pub dog Oscar.

A pretty glorious evening.

We were a group of six at City Farm this morning, welcoming Cindy and Daniel to their first task. There was a very long list of jobs on the whiteboard but, in true GG style, we managed to complete nearly all of them. Raking compost, shifting compost, sieving compost, putting compost in pots... After some tea and carrot cake hiding from the sudden rain, we continued with some sterling poop scooping from Chris, planting broccoli, and good-old digging for potatoes. Oh, and there was also a very friendly cat!

If in doubt we'll figure something out!

Nevermind the real GoodGym motto of "Do Good, Get Fit", last night was all about improvising to complete the task. We had been asked to spend our evening giving the Ark-T centre garden a tidy-up, but with the promised tools nowhere to be seen we had to do some rapid re-thinking. Fortunately we all had sturdy gardening gloves, a few of us had brought along some hand tools, and we found a broom (missing it's handle, but we were in no position to be picky!), and so we were able to do a decent amount around the garden.

Lots of weeding was done in the courtyard garden, we cut down 6ft high brambles around the shed, detangled miles of bindweed, and removed ivy from the stone wall. Particular kudos goes to the hardcore GoodGymers who removed large amounts of nettles with nothing but small secateurs and sturdy gloves!

Welcome to GoodGym Sarah, and welcome to GoodGym Oxford Becky.