It was great to see so many red (and one black, Caroline) t-shirts in sunshine at Queen Square, and to bump into Maria and persuade her she DID have time to pop along to the Cemetery.

We were soon setting off, runners led by Vaguely Northern Darren, backmarked by David and each carrying a gardening hand tool of choice, the walkers led by Melanie with the bag of all the other bits and bobs.

Most of Bristol seemed to be out and about enjoying the sunshine but we weaved our ways through to arrive at the Cemetery, basking in the sun.

Di set us to various tasks, paths, brambles and weeding around some New Zealand Flax plants that had been hit hard by frosts earlier in the year but were fighting back and needed some help to breathe, which involved identifying weeds from plants. Dec and Effy failed to notice all the more experienced GoodGymmers had backed away at this point and the two of them took on the challenge.

Di and Darren were cutting back "a bramble" that turned out to be quite a forest of brambles, Richard, David and Maria looked after some of the spiral path that nature was trying to take back whilst Caroline, Frances and Melanie tackled a bit of path that you wouldn't have known was path.

No-one could believe it wasn't raining or cold and the time flew by, with a full (brand new) dumpy sack and a lot of compost heap additions, we were ready to take the obligatory "after" photos and head back to Queen Square and on to Workout - another successful Tuesday evening!

For the second week on a row we had a late notice task cancellation but the stars aligned perfectly for an urgent visit to Redcliffe Nursery School and Children's Centre who were being visited by Ofsted the next day and wanted the outside spaces looking as good as possible despite the downpours of the last few days. They also mentioned trusting us with the power-washer that was confiscated from us on a previous visit as we made too much noise whilst a governors' meeting was also going on.

With the walkers taking a direct route and the runners setting off in the opposite direction, the walkers sneakily ticked off a couple of extra unicorns on the route and are beating the runners 10-9. The runners don't know about this ongoing competition yet so we'll see who reads this report...

With a small courtyard and a larger playground, we were soon busy sweeping, weeding, composting and power-washing between moving large pieces of play equipment and small trucks for transporting sand back to the sandpit. Sonehow it stayed dry for the entire task except for Matt and Vicky power-washing!

A lot of staff were in preparing for the Ofsted visit and we hope we brought a smile or two to their faces as we productively larked around in the playground, having a great time ourselves. It was a fantastic visit to list the school's spirits as we declared them Outstanding.

And then we went for lovely pizza (or salad) to Franco Manca as we hadn't chatted enough yet - thanks for organising Eats, Clo!

Inspired by Gina G on her way to Eurovision glory in 1996, 12 GoodGymmers did just a little bit of litter picking on a hot muggy evening. (thanks to Richard for the title, even though he's not old enough to know all the lyrics like some runners tonight!) Dave knew where all the best litter is around the harbour (not suspicious at all Dave) and along with 10 regulars, a difficult second good deed for Declan and a first group run for Amy, we headed off to make the harbour even more beautiful!

We filled 6 bags full of regular litter, however, Caroline found what appeared to be a rather large snake skin! Fortunately, we didn't find the snake it used to belong to, otherwise I would be slowly being digested and the avid readers of GoodGym run reports would miss out!

On the return route while deciding which Bristol Waste bin we would leave our collection at, council stalwart and knower of council stuff Jason, had arranged for Dave from Bristol Waste to be parked up right where we were going to deposit our bags! Dave was extremely happy to see us and didn't seem against the idea of us driving his van for a bit, but we had to rush back to Workout to celebrate Tim's birthday!!! Happy birthday Tim, and congratulations on the cookies you baked today, genuinely delicious!

Hopefully it will be cool enough next week when we might be 'Raking your leaves up! (Bucks Fizz, Eurovision 1981)

A slightly cooler evening greeted nine wonderful GoodGymers as they gathered in Queen Square ready to set off to Southville Centre for today's task. It was great to welcome Declan who was joining us for the first time - we hope you enjoyed your first session Declan.

Paul kindly headed up the running group, with Richard backmarking and we all chatted happily as we ran, walked and dodged cars, pedestrians and cyclists on our way to the task.

Hugh greeted us at the Southville Centre and provided us with an array of paint brushes, brooms and dustpan and brushes to carry out an assortment of tasks.

The painters were Phill and Paul, tackling the fence posts, with Frances, Declan and Richard painting a small play house followed by a bench.

Meanwhile, Caroline, Clo, Jason and Dave were on sweeping up duty to clear the leaves, stones and dirt from the play areas and pathways.

45 minutes later we called time on our brush work with the place looking somewhat brighter and fresher and headed back to base and on to well earned burgers for this month's Eats Social 🍔 - yum! Nice one Clo on organising that and for taking the photos this evening!