It was great to welcome Natalie and Tracy to their first Bristol GoodGym run this evening! It was a special night for several reasons. Richard G hit his 5 year Group Run streak. What a hero. To mark the occasion, he had a fetching '5 today' badge which he wore with pride for the rest of the night. Our second celebration of the evening was Emma becoming a Centurion with her 100th Good Deed. Massive well done Emma, we look forward to seeing your wear your wings with pride 😊

Spring forward for a good forking

The group split into two gardening tasks to celebrate the first light Tuesday evening of the year. The first group set off on a longer 8km run to Easton Community Garden. There, they did some speed compost shovelling, sawing, sanding, digging and weeding to make a dent in the pile of work required to start off the warmer months at the garden. We will definitely be back to continue this work before long!

The second group headed over the hill to St Werburgh's City Farm Community Garden. The garden has adults with disabilities there during the week, so the group were set to work with manual tasks around the garden which are too difficult for the group. The tasks were: digging and deweeding a large mound for planting, putting their signs up, weeding a bed for planting, shovelling animal compost (Group 1 weren't the only lucky ones...) and chopping down large amounts of overgrown willow. Sarah was gobsmacked at how much of a difference we were able to make in just 30 minutes with all hands on deck.

After we had got a bit too involved in our willow-lopping, it was time to hot foot it back to base. After this, it was time for our monthly GoodGym Eats, where twenty of us crammed in to Bambalan for delicious food and a delicious Alice-baked cake (again!) to celebrate Emma's 100th. Thank you Clo for organising!

A tear in the eye this morning as 6 of us forewent our lost hour in bed following the clock change to head down to St Pauls for our final mattress and duvet move of the year.

Despite being a little more sleepy we smashed it once again. Thanks for the pun Alex.

It's been great fun and much appreciated by the Bristol Churches Winter Night Shelter.

Our final morning of mattress moving at City Church Bristol went as smoothly as ever. While waiting for the van we chatted and had fun playing and throwing the ball for a passing dog!

See you all for the penultimate shift tomorrow morning!

Our very last Wednesday of this season's mattress moving, happy and sad moment. The weather is better this week so hopefully the nights will be getting warmer for those who've been able to use the shelter this year.

A slight delay as Father Richard had been called elsewhere, so no final gig for 'Father Richard and the GoodGymmers', but it gave us a chance to check out Zdeni's cuts and grazes from her centurion tumble last night ahead of her half marathon next week. Fingers crossed it's all feeling better and has just enforced a proper taper!

The dream team were soon finished one the doors had been unlocked and went their merry ways for the rest of the day.

Wednesdays won't be the same without early mattress moving!

It was wonderful to see so many people tonight for our event ahead of World Earth Hour on Saturday. Especially good to welcome Richard, Alice, Alexander and Andy to their first GoodGym Bristol run!

Tonight was a cause for many a celebration as it was Zdeni's 100th Good Deed, which she has completed her past 50 deed for in just 3 months! Massive well done Zdeni, you are great!

Hopscotch, Skip and Squat Jump

Our first group tonight went to our regular task, Felix Road Adventure Playground. While our tasks were set up, the group started the longest Squat Jump Macarena (in my opinion, anyway). The Felix Road team were glad to see so many pairs of hands for the big, heavy work they had planned for us. They had hired a skip and the group first had to clear the skip of metal objects, which they can sell to make money for the charity and then clear a large wood stack and a whole area of wood, rubbish and more ready for the summer. The group split into teams and got the work done in just 20 minutes, much to the Felix Road team's amazement!

Next, it was time for our regular clear-up of the playground. Half the group got to work tidying toys and picking up litter. Meanwhile, the other half of the group did a 10 minute sprint leafleting session to spread the word of Helpful Peeps locally.

Before we left, it was time for a game of Cone Up, Cone Down (but which way really is up?). It was a neck-in-neck competition and the cones up finally took it with just one cone and some questionable rule-following.

Picker-point

Mel led the second group to Dame Emily Park to help them with a big litter-pick of the area. The group filled 11 big bin bags from around the park and only had to stop when there were no more bags left. Included in their pickings were Darren's bear, which was then held at picker-point with Darren.

This was in competition with Alice's bear which, although she had threatened to wear her panda onesie, had turned out to be a panda carrot cake to continue our World Earth Hour theme. The litter-picking crew got in their quick, but reports have it that it was the tastiest panda around.

Once Zdeni's group had conjoled her into her Centurion outfit, she also produced an array of amazing baking to add the party. We do love it when someone reaches a milestone!

Our final (sadder) celebration of the night was to say bye to Alex who is off to Pembrokeshire for the summer. We will miss you (and who is going to make the puns?!) but have an amazing time!

We were ready to get into it and do our thing, we were movin’ and doin’ it, shakin’ our arms and using our form, although we didn’t take them to the bridge, only into the church!

Stu thought we were serious when we told him to get on up so he could hear it like it did on the top, but we hit it and quit, right on, right on!

One, two, three, fourteen duvets and mattresses, all got on up! Come on!