It was a lovely sunny evening to be in one of our favourite Monday evening places - Stepney Bank Stables. We started the evening with some fantastic news - Sport England has pledged £10,000 to the current Crowdfunder! This takes them past their initial target and opens up the stretch target. There are a few days left donate - if you'd like to help this wonderful charity keep doing their amazing work with local children with differing needs, here's the link Stepney Bank Stables Crowdfunder

So to work! Sara left me with a list of jobs to choose from. Not being averse to hard work we decided to walk up to the top stables to continue the cobble clearing that a few of us started a few weeks ago. When I say started, I should really say re-started, as it's one of those painting-the-forth-bridge type jobs that we and other volunteers have done before. For Max, who we were delighted to see back for his second task, this was a new experience, but despite having tweaked his back earlier today, he got stuck in with the rest of us. We had a slightly slow start as we couldn't find the hook-y scrape-y things (horse hoof cleaners) that we use to remove the muck between the cobbles, and our improvisation efforts were unsuccessful. Fortunately, Sara came to the rescue! We made up for lost time and I'm pretty sure you'll be able to see the difference in the before and after photos. In any case, with the horses supervising and Scout inspecting our work, there was no chance of us baling on the job!

On the subject of baling, Sara had one last task for us - moving a big hay bale from the yard into the barn. I decided at this point to heed the warning, too many cooks spoil the broth, and to stand back and take photos! The team made short work of the task and we were done! Thanks to Elliot, Aimee and Chris as well as Max for another productive GoodGym Stepney Bank Stables evening!

Check out the website for three, yes three tasks to get stuck into over the coming bank holiday weekend!

There’s something satisfying about returning to the scene of a GoodGym a week later to finish a task off! We headed back to the heart of Shieldfield tonight to complete a leaflet drop that told residents about the Oceans of Kindness exhibition at Shieldfield Art Works. And the lineup tonight was also almost completely identical. The weather was definitely better, and unlike last week I wasn’t completely stressed about the route given we’d done the lions share of the work last week.

A rare weekend of no GoodGym had passed so there wasn’t a great deal to catch up on so we quickly said hello to new GoodGymer Max, caught up on another brilliant weekend of racing for Louise, and got cracking. It’s a colourful walk up Stepney Bank and on such a glorious evening the pubs and bars were overflowing too. I loved hearing about Damu’s volunteering day at the Rob Burrow Leeds Marathon yesterday which had left him with no voice and a sore hand from cowbell ringing.

With just 100 leaflets to distribute tonight we headed straight to the streets on the list we hadn’t covered last week and in just 15 minutes the drop was done. Very cool! As there had been zero running so far, we headed back to the square that featured in a lot of last week’s history/golf chat ready for a running challenge with a twist for this week’s fitness session. Think Race across the World but with free travel, no motion sickness, stuff to find and instead of a hotel guest book at the end there’s just me.

Two teams were set off on an out and back challenge of 5 parts to find and photograph the following:

Something green

Two things that begin with L

Two different post boxes

A street that contains a letter from your name

Two different types of wildlife

Team Aimee/Louise was victorious, winning the glory of this unique challenge and feeling smug to start the week. Look at their winners photo! (On reflection the street names bit was ridiculously hard and I’m still feeling guilty about that, so I’ll do better next time.)

Louise is leading a Stepney Bank Stables session next Monday while I am working away. There are always lovely things to do to guarantee a great start to the week.