Despite some rather miserable spring weather in Liverpool, 8 dedicated goodgymmers met for our usually Monday night task.

After a quick, 2 mile run, we met lark lane neighbourhood association and headed off down the lane to clear up any and all discarded litter!

We were all quite pleasantly surprised by how clean it appeared and felt like we had to really search for the litter. This meant it was all the more satisfying when we realised we had gathered 7 full bags!

Strangest find goes to Jowho found a fork in the road! (how poetic)

Well done everyone it was clear to see the impact we had!

For tonight's task, a group of Goodgymmers teamed up with friends from Litter Clear Volunteer and It'sYour World.Liverpool, led by the fabulous Vicky, to work our combined magic on the L8 Cliff Green park.

This is a small community green nestled amongst houses that could be a real local asset, but has sadly been neglected for far too long and had become an overgrown dumping ground covered in litter and dog dirt when Vicky decided to rescue it. She told us that on LCV's first litterpick of the area they collected a huge 25 bags, and they had clearly done a good job as our volunteers on litterpicking duty today had to look hard to find litter in the park, so much so that Sallyann and Ellie went off on an adventure collecting litter from the surrounding streets. We were just starting to get worried not having seen them for a while when they turned the corner carrying bulging bags of litter as a souvenir of their travels around Smithdown.

Vicky is good at keeping everyone busy and there was plenty for everyone to get involved in apart from litterpicking; the main task of the day was to clear the grass that had overgrown the path, so everyone got stuck in to digging, shoveling and scraping up clods of grass and earth, or collecting them up and tidying the path edges.

Together we managed to clear the entire path on both sides, and we were all amazed at how much wider the path really was compared to how it had seemed when we arrived. It's always good to be able to see the difference we've made at the end of a session and even in the dark that was really clear and a great reward for our hard work.

Vicky told us that the local residents are now beginning to plan how they are going to use the green when it is in better condition and that they would like to set up a bouncy castle there in school holidays for the children to play on. It will be great to see this green space being reclaimed by the community and hopefully becoming a safe and fun play space.

Well done to Katy and Gerard for their first GoodGym session!

Watch this space for the next installment!