In a gap between rain showers (it never rains for GoodGym) 43 weedy nice Bristol dwellers took a few hours out of their evening to run 6k and help at the Malago Greenway Berry Maze. In recent weeks some unsavoury (and by that I do not mean sweet, which I guess would be the opposite to savoury but very much not suitable on this occasion) characters have vandalised the berry maze and we wanted to come and help as much as we could to get them back on track with their fantastic community project which has taken a unused and often fly-tipped area of green space and turned it into a beautiful, educational and enjoyable area.
We met at Workout, and after a hokey-cokey style warm up we split into two groups; the first led by myself and backmarked by the ultra-crazy Matt, the second led by Danica and back marked by our cake queen who never gets a soggy bottom, Alice.
On our arrival Germinal and Luke were pushing around two wheelbarrows of tools ready for us to let loose on the juice factory (berry maze). Their faces lit up in shock and a-maze-ment as 43 runners arrived to do as much work as possible in under an hour. The team was introduced to the project and its berry worthy cause before splitting into groups. 6 of the strongest around (well keenest maybe...) took on the role of bashing in posts to replace those that were vandalised and the rest spread like jam over the area to clear weeds. Wheelbarrows were filled with unwanted greenery and posts half disappeared into the ground leaving them strong and upright able to hold the laziest and most fruitful of brambles. Our red t-shirt wearing army of good tore through the weed faster than hippies at Woodstock, and did more fencing than Zorro facing Arya Stark in a fight to the death. When the leader of the maze project, Raluca, arrived 10 minutes before the end she was astounded and incredibly thankful for all the help we were able to offer in such a short time.
Once the time had come to leave we tidied up the tools, took a group photo and ran back to Queen Square. The faster group did a few progression laps of the square before we all stretched and Alice reminded us just how much cake is involved in all the GoodGym tasks coming up over the next week. Seriously, dough you might not know it, flour runs may bake some effort but should you rise to the occasion there's often a slice treat at the end!
Thanks so much to everyone who came along tonight, Raluca, Germinal and Luke were incredibly impressed and thankful for everything you have done. We all prove that despite the wreckless and mindless actions undertaken by a small proportion of our community, there is always a bigger heart of kind and thoughtful people to outshine them. Shine on, you crazy diamonds!

It was great to have Sophie, Fiona, Lydia, Shrey, Grace, Johanna and Rahul join us for the first time tonight on another busy evening with lots of people joining us as part of Week 2 of the Bristol SU's Mind Your Head campaign.

Before we got going we had a long list of well dones for this active crowd who had been running around the country over the bank holiday and were feeling tired tonight for very different reasons to why I did. Not only that, but we got to celebrate Paul's birthday and 5 Year Group Run Streak!

Art Attack

Then we split into two groups for tonight's good deeds. Alice wonderfully led a group to Southville to do some last minute awareness raising for this weekend's Southville Art Fair on behalf of BS3 Community. It turned into quite the social affair as several GoodGymers bumped into people they knew along the way and from behind the letterboxes! Before long the group had distributed the pile of hundreds of leaflets and made a massive difference for the group ahead of Saturday's event.

Camouflage

The rest of us headed to Holy Trinity church is Hotwells where we were helping Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group with various tasks. The main task for the night was clearing an extremely overgrown area to create an area for a vegetable patch for the local gardening group to use. As this area is often used for anti-social behaviour then this will have a big impact on the local area. The group also did an incredible job of lopping back all the brambles, branches, weeds and nettles sticking over the pathway to the side of the church, deweeding the path itself (including lifting a massive moss jacket which Liam made look like an outfit from last night's Met Gala and was rivalled only by Shreena's weed-dress), refreshing the raised beds for the summer and putting a new raised bed in place (by Team Strong). Not only this, but some of the group also made a crack at delivering some of their 900 leaflets advertising the gardening club and other activities happening in the area.

In 30 minutes all of these tasks had been completed beyond Suzanne from the charity's expectations. We had time for juice and biscuits before hitting the road, with a cheeky plank stop and sprint home to spice things up on the way.

We headed back and then celebrated May's GoodGym Eats with pizza and cider at The Stable - thank you to Danica for organising!

It was great to have Sarah, Karen, Elizabeth, Janine, Beanie, Claire, Genoveva and Zhang join us on their first Group Run tonight, several of whom were joining us as part of the Bristol SU Mind Your Head campaign. Welcome all!

We got warmed up (and I had to warm up my Maths due to Clem's demands) then split into two groups for the night with Liam leading a shorter-run group and the rest of us heading on a 5km loop.

Tool-tal wipeout

Liam's group (with impressive 2-day post marathon backmarking from Matt) headed to Faithspace where we were helping Hotwells and Redcliffe Development Group. This was a task planned a couple of months ago which we got distracted from by helping them with an emergency that night instead. By now, our planned gardening was desperately needed! The group set to work with gardening in the small park next to Faithspace, making a big difference to brightening up the local community. Another group were given the task of leafleting about the community happenings to the local houses, which turned into more of a challenge due to the extreme lack of residential houses in the area! They ventured further afield and managed to complete the task in no time.

Don't skip a beat

The rest of us set off to our regular session at Felix Road Adventure Playground. Thank you to Richard B for wonderful backmarking on our journey along the cycle path with chair, squat and sprint fitness stops and a cheer team of a several groups of local children on wheels. We soon arrived and were met by the usual overjoyed welcome from the team. The group were split into two: a skip team and gardening team.

Team Skip got to work with with smashing and bashing (technical term) to fit all the items into the skip. I must say, I have never seen such a neatly packed skip in all my life, neither have I witnessed someone saw a wheely bin in half (nice work Russ) or get quite so into hammering things to pieces (slightly worrying, really...) Team Gardening had the massive task of tackling all the nettles, brambles and sticky willy (I promise it's an innocent thing) to clear the land for planting and make it safe for the children to play.

In half an hour the team smashed through the tasks and once again left a very pleased Felix Road team with 6 bags of garden waste bagged, 2 bags of litter picked and a full skip waiting to be collected.

Tool-y, skip-y, sticky missions complete!