5 Goodgymmers made it to the food bank this time, with a couple new faces joining us, welcome to Adeyinka and Alexander!

It was a strange task, mostly due to the crazy heat making it one time we'd really prefer and outdoor task, and with energy low we'd opted to sweep and hoover but leave the mopping for another time. There was also a sparsity in the foodbank, owing to its imminent shutdown, meaning it could be our last outing there...

Happy to help where we can and enjoyed welcoming some new members, onto the allotment next week!

Four GoodGymers spent a lovely warm and sunny evening at the Colchester in Bloom allotment. We watered, weeded, dug, strimmed and debagged some fresh soil to help rejuvenate a bed ready for something new.

Eight hands make light work, well done all especially Hridyaand Rayfor your first allotment task! And Louisewho showed serious strimmer skills!

Well, it was litterpicking again.

sunny evening, a nice chat and stroll through town with our bags, collecting more junk. Choice items were a tunnel ceiling sticker and lucky 8 ball, with chat ranging from an echoey rendition of 'in the jungle', the new parkrun route and what animals are in Bluey. Meanwhile Rowan found time for us despite moving house and a hundred other things, bonus points to you!

Seems like we are really making some progress by regularly cleaning one part of town, the effect of persistent small efforts. Join us all for some new tasks soon!

Food bank time again, and our group of six Goodgymmers descended almost entirely on bikes to the warehouse on a cloudy warm evening. The somewhat diminished shelves could be a sign of this location winding down, but our team gave it a good sweep and mop with some hoovering too!

Some chat on how cleaning products work, my recent adoption approval(!) and other ideas for Goodgym tasks. Another one in the bag and a good effort before we rolled off home.

3 GoogdGymers helped Pam prepare planters for new flowers, to be put in by Colchester in Bloom on Thursday morning (meeting at 10 am in town if anyone would be interested in helping them).

Once we had established where the "Bus Park" was (more commonly referred to as the Bus Station), we set to work removing significant amounts of old soil from the planters, and then losening the remaining soil so that new plants could be easily placed with new nutritious soil around them. It was more challenging than it initially appeared as some of the soil was so dry and compressed that those of us who stood down wind of the planters regularly received a face full of soil every time a new chunk was removed.

We lamented the lack of broom a few times when we surveyed the mess we were making, but we were pretty confident the weather would do the necessary clean up job before anyone could return with one in the morning.

Many apologies for the lack of quality pun!

Blessed with another sunny evening, despite Ella's 4 layers of clothing, we assembled as a strong team of six tonight and did a litterpick loop of town. Rowan's early find of random cables at the bottom of Balkerne hill was probably the choice find, and her diligent efforts got her the gold star for most litter collected.

On warm evenings its nice to make our neighborhoods nicer, drawing compliments from a few passers by, and we can all catch up and chat about Eurovision, left handedness and our memories of the Queen's death.

Following some litter collected we stopped off at Turtle Bay for some refreshments and snacks, our first social in two years! nice to see new members coming on board and getting a chance to chat without litterpickers in hand.

Back to the high St next week for Colchester in Bloom!