It was great to have Ben and Maz join us for the first time tonight, and to see Robin and Will again after breaks!

Once we had warmed up, Patrick led a small super speedy group to Strawberry Lane Allotments to finish the job we started there a few weeks' ago. Tonight, this was the big task of shifting one hundred 25 kilogram bags of sand and gravel down the steps at the allotment. With just seven pairs of hands willing to take on the challenge and a tough uphill 5km run to get there, it was a huge job. However, the guys still did it in record time before doing some more record timings back down to get back just in time for 8pm. Impressive stuff!

The rest of us started on our own long run to Zion Bristol. This was a new task, so it was great to meet Jess there and get stuck in (even if we had to tackle a big hill of our own to get there!). Jess from Zion explained to us that they are a super busy community hub, with the cafe during the day and 200-300 events per year on there in the evenings. This means there are a lot of odd jobs and cleaning jobs which the small team do not have time for. She was incredibly organised and had a list of tasks and laid out equipment for us to get our hands on.

The outdoor team got to work weeding, brushing pavements, clearing gutters, litter-picking, cleaning outdoor furniture and Mair and Olivia showed their artistic skills while giving the outdoor toilet a repaint.

Meanwhile, the indoor team had a big cleaning job on their hands from all the tinies who had been there over the past weeks. The chair team screwed all the legs fully back on and gave them all a good clean. All the surfaces were scrubbed and Dave got to work cleaning the toilet. Russ led a team with a long felt contraption and three pairs of hands to clean the metal beams.

Before long, it was time to eat the pastries Jess had kindly provided for us and get jogging (thankfully downhill) back home.

Tonight's pun credits to Shreena (as does the Task Finisher award of the night - thanks Shreena!).

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!