This week's Group Run took us on a 4km journey out of town to the Stony Hill nature reserve.

But first we welcomed Zainab and Daneal to their first session warmed up and made sure everyone had lights before we headed out into the dark night.

On arrival at Stony Hill we split up into three groups and spread out around the small nature reserve, just big enough to lose sight of eachother between the trees. We collected up nine bags full of litter from the field, the hedgerow and among the trees. Just as we finished we all assembled accidentally under an apple tree, with its red fruits still hanging on leafless branches and shining out in the darkness 🍎 so we took a moment to enjoy a fresh, cold and sweet apple each to restore our energy for the return run back into town.

A sudden temperature drop left us with a very cold evening for a group run this week. A hardy bunch of keen GoodGymers gathered ready to get moving and keep warm.

We didn't hang about getting our much needed warm-up started, welcoming three newbies Yelma, Nuriya and Alem who had all chosen the coldest day to try out Goodgym for the first time!

Our task this evening waited around 2km away at the Penrose Roots to Recovery garden. The whole place is looking very neat and tidy these days but there was a wildflower plot and a patch of bramble that needed cutting down to ground level and raking up into piles. Warm from our run there, we got stuck into the task to keep the energy flowing. With ten of us on the task we made quick work of clearing both areas and got a quick group photo before running off again through the cold night and keeping warm with our leg work!

This week's group run took us up to Stockwood Park to collect acorns, continuing the tree seed collection for Bob the Tree Officer's new planting scheme. Theres loads of grand old oak trees here and they have given us many acorns this year so we filled a bag full in no time at all.

With those collected, next on the list of seeds to collect was holly berries, so we went down the road a bit to Kidney Wood where we'd been told we'd find some holly berries. However, completing a fruitless circuit of the dark dark woods left us empty handed. Giving up, we headed back into town but soon spotted an enormous holly bush overhanging the road with a bumper crop of shiny red berries. Moving on again we took a slight detour to Memorial Park, where a few more holly trees waited for us to finish filling our bag.

Seed swag safely stashed, we swiftly strode back into town to round off another good deed, and mark another good run, done!