The title lyric for this report is from a song about the darkness of grief and depression by The Rolling Stones, but it was really a very happy socially distanced evening full of colour!

8 of us met at the Braywick Nature Centre at 7pm. The area was looking lush and green in the Midsummer evening sunshine and Amy's face was nearly as red as her t-shirt in the near 30 degree heat.

We welcomed new member Vanessa, as well as Emily on her first mission in Maidenhead having moved from Newham, and Charlotte, who made us feel very special by coming all the way from Ealing.

Mike from the Nature Centre must have been in a colourful mood too as he left us a lovely note, which started 'Dear GreenGym...' before giving us a big thank you and very clear instructions.

Our task for the evening was to paint three recycled picnic benches and a new fence with black stain to help them last a long time. The colour was chosen to offset the beautiful white trunks of the silver birch trees in front of the fence.

The benches and fence are part of the picnic area right next to the Centre, which will be used by school groups. If you are familiar with the area, you may remember this space was a building site for some time while the neighbouring primary school was being built. It looks very different now with a stunning hand-made circular oak bench, a spiral log feature for children to climb on, wildflowers, and beautiful new paving. We are proud to be contributing to it!

After a chatty and productive hour we had completed roughly two and a bit benches, a third of the fence and a fair few random patches on legs, arms and clothing. We had also used up all the stain, so it was time to take some photos of our handiwork and tidy up.

We plan to come back next week to help finish the job. As the saying goes, many hands make dark woodwork, so click here and join the team!

On a bit of a tangent, it was lovely to meet Jason, Tom and Rory briefly, even if they didn't share their pizza with us. Jason does a hugely important job as the Countryside Manager for our borough, and Tom is his colleauge. Rory is an artist, who is busy working on a mural for one of the rooms inside the Centre. I've snuck a couple of photos of his work-in-progress into this run report because it is amazing! We can't wait to see the finished masterpiece.

After the task, Amy, Sula, Emily, Ana, Charlotte and Sophie went for a(n accidentally in reverse) lap of the much loved Parkrun route and it was wonderful to see it looking so leafy and vibrant.

Sula also shared a cool trick that if you put a rainbow 🌈 emoji in your run name on Strava it shows your route in rainbow colours! Mind blown. This is Strava's way of commemorating Pride month. You can celebrate Pride with GoodGym too by signing up to this awesome event on the 18th of July!

At the end of our run we headed home under a lovely orange sunset.

PS Sula isn't on the register for this run report because she is so super organised she wrote her own. Check out her fab title pun by clicking here.