With Ciara and Dennis mainly deciding to stay home tonight, it gave the hardcore GoodGymers a chance to get out for Tuesday Group Run with only some gusts and a bit of hail to contend with. It was great to have Ellie, Darius and Julia join us for the first time - welcome! It was an extra special day for GoodGym as it was UK Pun Day - surely this is the equivalent of an important national holiday for GoodGym?

Turning the tables

Liam was leading the Warehouse Shifters to Emmaus, where they were helping Xanne on our regular slot in their big donations warehouse. As we had been told that they were going to be leafleting for the night, it was a lucky escape into the warmth and dryness of the indoors! The team were tasked with a massive game of Furniture Tetris (or clearing all of furniture donations into ordered areas with enough aisles and room for movement around them). A lot of shifting, lifting and 'To me, to you'-ing later and the warehouse was in a much better order than before.

Up above the streets of Bristol, leafleting in the night, GoodGym fills your letterboxes, with stuff you'll like - come and run the Children's Hospice Rainbow (Run)

The rest of us headed to Clifton to continue leafleting for The Children's Hospice South West's Rainbow Run. Luckily the hills were not to punful, and soon we were up and punning and ready to go. We split into four teams to cover the area. Between them, they distributed 500 leaflets in less than 25 minutes. Paul B was there so I think he was sharing his secret leafleting skills with the group. The first group back celebrated with the underrated biscuit classic which is The Party Ring. We headed back to centre with the added entertainment of watching trailer-gait and Darren entertained/confused most of us who were vaguely young with a rendition of the Rainbow theme tune with the impressive GoodGym-based lyrics. Luckily the power of Google has refreshed our memories and we kind of know what he was going on about.

Finally, our bunch of pundits got inside and paired up with their well-earned GoodGym pint/beverage/hot shower/dry clothes. Happy Pun Day one and all!

It was great to have lots of new faces join us for the final Tuesday Group Run of January: welcome to Richard, Harriet, Isabelle, Pawel, Sara Sona! And welcome to Frankie joining us from GoodGym Hackney for the next few weeks!

We tested everyone's brain power with a game of Shona Says (back by popular demand). Everyone's brains were ticking pretty nicely and there was only a few forfeit sprints. We split the group into three to complete our tasks for the evening:

1. Donation sorting at the British Heart Foundation
2. Tree pulling for Up Our Street
3. Painting at Redcliffe Nursery

Skirting the issue

Richard led a team of 10 to British Heart Foundation to help with donation sorting. Divided between sorting donations, tagging them and getting a new found love of steaming, the group got through loads of donations and found some hot new outfit items for their wardrobes (see photo evidence).

No beating about the bush

Meanwhile, Gary led a group to The Dings to help Up Our Street in their garden beds their. The team were surprised at the task of all of them removing a bush in the middle of the bed. Surely it wouldn't take them all to do that? But half an hour of them rotating and shovelling later and the group got the satisfaction of getting the whole thing out - well done gardening team!

Painting the town Redcliffe

The rest of us headed to Redcliffe Nursery with Mel leading a walking group there. Once we had all convened (with some detours), we got inside and split between painting the corridors and offices, moving all of the pebbles back into the pebble pit, sweeping and litter-picking the garden and doing the Squat & Lunge 200 Challenge. After half an hour of rotating around the different jobs, the nursery had a new feature wall in their office, a tidy playground and a coat of paint on the entrance to their hall and we had sore thighs and bums and surprisingly un-paint covered clothes. We will be back again soon to continue the job!

Once we were all back from our different corners of Bristol, we were able to celebrate the wonderful Alex hitting 200 (and 14) Good Deeds - she hit the big 2-0-0 a couple of weeks ago but this was her first Tuesday run to be presented with her t-shirt. In the meantime, she has managed to rack up 7% more deeds than what was being celebrated, wow.

Good-deeded and celebrated, that was it for another night of GoodGym Bristol and the last of the January challenge Group Runs!

Pun credit to Gazza

Goodgym put down their gardening tools and brought their singing voices to Lockleaze Community Orchard this saturday lunch time.
With an unusual medley of traditional wassailing songs, children's verses and sea shanties.

This was some peoples first wassail and others first GoodGym deed, hopefully the first of many.

Thank you to the thirty wonderful Wassailers who joined us to sing songs to bring luck to the community and the orchard in 2020! A special thanks to Dawn and Claire Mitchell for baking delicious cakes and mulling cider for everyone!!
Amy>