GoodGym Nottingham replaced their usual Wednesday evening session with a social last night. Four regular GoodGymers, Peter, Tom, Vicky and Rachel L met at the Lion at Basford for some food and drinks, and to take part in the pub’s weekly quiz. They were joined by honorary members, Jane and Samuel, and by team mascot Blain the sprocker spaniel. He spent most of the evening stationed under the table wagging at anyone who walked by but he also, it would seem, proved a very lucky charm…

After a fairly successful picture round naming famous landmarks across the world, the team navigated through 5 more rounds of questions on themes including crime, collective animal nouns, music and ‘who am I?’. Despite pulling some stonking answers out of the depths of our brains (and Vicky coming into her own in the music round), we weren’t confident that we were in a position to challenge for the prize. We’d definitely hit the post on a number of questions and there were sixteen teams including some serious looking regulars.

However, as the results were read out and the scores got progressively higher, we began to think that maybe, just maybe we were in with a shot. As the host announced that there was a tie for second place with a round-number score, we couldn’t contain our excitement and disbelief – we knew we had a half mark so we could not possibly be one of those teams. And so it was, team ‘GoodGym’ triumphed by about 3.5 points on our very first foray into the Nottingham pub quiz circuit!!

We will definitely be adding pub quizzes to our list of regular activities, so if anyone has any recommendations let us know. We’re on a roll now!

On what was a wonderful Wednesday for Team GB in Paris, Team GG (Nottingham) were going for gold at Victoria Embankment at what proved to be one of our most challenging events yet – litter picking where there wasn’t much litter! After meeting Emily for a quick briefing, the pack split and headed off at pace, armed with litter picking batons and a determination to bag some rubbish.

It was a lovely warm bright evening (grateful that we don’t yet need our torches), although we were competing with a bit of wind which caused our bags to flap like flags. We were also thrown by all the feathers lying around the place which looked a lot like bits of rubbish. Thankfully, all our litter-picking training leading up to this event paid off and we all managed to rise to the challenge. By the end we were running rings around all those pesky cigarette butts and lolly sticks!

After 45-minutes or so, we met at the finish line for our usual closing ceremony – a chance to relay to each other what we had collected followed by a group podium photo. There were no stand-out items worthy of a gold medal on this occasion – a BBQ grill, a toy car, a silver key ring and a picnic blanket qualified in the ‘slightly exciting’ category.

For those of us who ventured down to the riverside itself, we were treated to the sight and sound of some dragon boat teams training out on the water, as well as the occasional group of paddle boarders and kayakers gliding by. Being so close to Trent Bridge, we also heard a lot of whooping and cheering from what sounded like an exciting cricket match. Oh, and a huge group of runners went by en mass(cot) – unfortunately we all had high-viz vests on so we don’t think they would have spotted our red t-shirts.

Thanks to everyone who attended for being such good sports - Serafina, Nigel, Bozena, Hannah and Vicky.

Come and join us at one of our next sessions – find out more here.