While the Balloon Fiesta was cancelled due to the weather, 11 hardy GoodGymers met in the high winds and crazy rain showers this morning to run to do good. We jealously waved goodbye to Chris in the warm and dry ordering his porridge and started our long straight line run up to Bishopsworth to help Creative Workspace.

Having conquered easily conquered the hill and the rain even easing off a little, 5.5km later we arrived at the community centre where it was happy chaos for their Family Fun Day. After clambering over some small people to retrieve our equipment, we set to work in the woodland area.

Blown away

This space used to be incredibly overgrown and has therefore was covered in lots of tiny bits of litter and broken glass. As it is a space for children to play, the charity wanted it cleared of this to make it safe. We scoured the area then set to work weeding the surrounding tarmac and taking the nettles out of the green space. Vale hammered their bunting back into place so it was looking glorious once more.

Forty minutes later we had 4 full bin bags of litter and weeds. With amazing smells wafting from the Creative Workspace cafe it was hard to tear ourselves away, but we took a break for it in another slightly-less-rainy patch and headed on our more-downhill-than-uphill-but-still-actually-quite-a-lot-of-uphill route back.

Vale told us that she used to think that people running in the rain were crazy and now she has turned into one of them. We returned to Mud Dock very soggy and got even more soaked while doing our stretches, but wallowed in the fact that we could now enjoy the warm and dry even more.

Another sunny afternoon, another community mission, this time for Creative Workspace in Withywood.

Creative Workspace offer arts and drama opportunities to an frequently overlooked area of Bristol - helping to set more local young people on a path into further education and creative work.

We were last here a couple of months ago and were to continue helping to prepare the outside space for some landscaping in order that it could be used as a community garden area. This involved us litter picking while Paul and his family pulled up brambles and moved stone debris from the site.

Kudos to Mel for supplying not only gloves but protective glasses from her specially modified commish-mobile and to Darren for coming along for the second day in a row having completed his training in transit in said GG vehicle of volunteering.

Special mention too for Fi in her dedication to site wire removal services (see photo). While her efforts were ultimately unsuccessful they impressed with their tenacity especially on deed #4 of the weekend.