Our very first community mission in GG Bristol - and for a fantastic cause.

84% of families with a disabled child can’t access regular leisure and their health and well-being are suffering as a result. Furthermore, 72% of parents suffer from mental health difficulties as a result of isolation.

Gympanzees aim to address this by opening a permanent activity centre that will cater for the needs of all children with disabilities. However, this will not be opening until 2021 so in the mean time they are setting up a Pop Up Activity Centre run over the summer holidays at Emersons Green primary school.

Goodgym were asked to help convert three school classrooms for this purpose which meant

• Moving anything fragile or dangerous into another room using our amazing Tetris skills
• Stacking tables and chairs into an outside space to be used as a pop-up coffee shop
• Rotating all the shelves and cupboards so the shelves were safely facing against the walls
• Vacuuming the emptied rooms
• Erecting a fence around the play area
• Eating well deserved cake which was delicious but may not have been vegan

Special mentions to Fi for cycling all the way from South Bristol (and finding the school in spite of GPS instructions), to Alice and Jenny for excellent vacuuming as evidenced by the photos, to Richard for services to coffee machine plumbing and to Dave for overall logistics.

The divisive Tuesday night question: England's match in the knock out stages of the World Cup, or bagging a Good Deed with GoodGym? While a few red tee's strayed to the bar (and kept us updated with regular commentary of the match, thanks Darren), the rest of us prepped our helpful legs of a night of dodging England fans while running to do good. It was great to meet Anna, Alexandra and Alice as they joined us for their first run with GoodGym - welcome!

After the group warmed up with a very simple (ahem) game of GoodGym's very own Ship Sea Shore (the catchy Park, Food Bank, School, of course...), we split into two groups.

Group 1: A sign of the times

Dave did a wonderful job as group leader and chief cameraman (and pun maker) of the GoodGymers who were going to help Up Our Street with a challenging task. They had a big chalkboard which was at the side of the Bristol-Bath cycle path, but they wanted to give it to another of our tasks, the Felix Road Playground. Little did we know when we arranged for the group to come and do this, that several weeks of hot, dry weather would make the task a whole lot harder as the ground was so solid. But the crew did not give up and they shovelled and shoogled until the sign was loose. The Pink Panther then acted as a great supervisor watching the group carefully get the sign to the right place. All in all, a job very well done!

Group 2: Lifting us up

Meanwhile, the rest of us went back to our favourite Bristol storage unit to help East Bristol Food Bank sort their food donations ready to be made into food parcels for local people in need. As our normal guide Andy was tied up being loyal to Engand, we met Sally from the Food Bank team who was showing us the way. All our practice has been paying off and we managed to get the crates sorted and back in storage in no time! We are yet to finalise whether our speed of sorting or the number of people we fit in the lift was record-breaking, but we believe they both were!

Mel did a much better job than me of leading her group home from the Food Bank while catching Gromits (getting ready for Sunday's Gromit Run) - even managing to sneak one in the Marriott!

All of this was topped off by our monthly GoodGym Eats, this month at Turtle Bay. Thanks to Liam for organising - we had a relaxing or nail-biting experience depending on whether you were tucking into the 2-4-1 cocktails or tuning into Darren's continued football commentary.

Two tasks complete, a lovely meal eaten and a night well-spent!