It was lovely to meet recent joiners Linn and Leah, which reminds me I need to finish signing up for aaaall the supermarket reward schemes. Joel had taken the evening off child wrangling for a good cause. Bets were taken on who would turn up last and/or late, Andy just pipped Martin on arrival but technically no one was late (hurrah!).

Fay was up for the run and we had a cruise down the highstreet to the new Little Edi tardis. Hiding behind a white door is a huge, soon to be excellent space for a foodbank and community support.

There were tables to be assembled, racks to put up and some painting to be done. But first things first! Anyone want a cup of tea? Biscuit? Sneak a few chocolates? We probably shouldn't pick favorite charities but if goodgymmers hear the kettle going on you might just double our numbers.

Rich, Erin and Benedict approached the racking full of confidence and in their defence, they did read the instructions first.. just not the front of the box, which was unfortunately labelled 2 of 2. Once 1 of 2 was discovered they threw it together in no time.

Team table got building. Again, reading the instructions first (pattern emerging here) but the tricksy tables turned the tide and were actually supposed to be able to fold up. Once all the tables refused to fold there was some last minute jiggering but we pulled it off in the end.

A cold jog back but looking forward to Little Edis open day on Saturday 5th April.

Good luck to all the runners out and about in Chelmsford on Sunday.

9 GoodGymer's tidied up a community garden

We were glad to welcome Joe P back for a second time in 2023, and Rachel back from a long break too!

No one was keen to run lead, so we all set off together, and after a brief chat about which the best fish and chip shop is in Chelmsford (Martin and Jenny suggested the one in Writtle), we headed into our task to find Fay, Sallyann and our task owner Tess.

Our task was to improve the space for families to use as a community garden. Richard joined Fay and Sallyann in cleaning the green portacabin, Rachel chose the pea planting box to clear, and Martin, Jenny and the two Joes helped to clear the prickly hedges.

Well done everyone, the garden looked so much better after our trip!

We jogged back a slightly different route to take us over 5km.

Next week we have our super leaflet drop, see you there!

Laurie

Lots of bread. Some chicken stock. But mainly bread! Come on Tesco pull your socks up.

Didn’t take any pics so here is a cat!

For our regular Sunday afternoon task with the Little Edi Foundation we welcomed Tim to GoodGym Chelmsford. After getting to know each other a little bit in the gorgeous spring sunshine Tescos gave us their Fareshare donation for the week. You never quite know what you’re going to get, bread is a given but this week we had the lovely surprise of some daffodils to include with our food drops!! We bagged up two deliveries each and dropped them off to families in Chelmsford. Lovely to meet you Tim, hopefully see you at more tasks in the near future.

Me, Caroline, David and Laurie met up with Josh from the Little Edi Foundation and a couple of their other volunteers for the weekly Fareshare food drop from Tescos. Sadly this will be David and Laurie’s last task for a month or two. But on the bright side, things should be in full swing when they come back. Making sure they left their mark they bought a few goodies from their cupboards at home to add to the Fareshare donation and even a few Easter egg bunnies as well!

There won’t be any task next weekend as far as I know, as it’s Easter Sunday but this will be back on after the Easter break.

But…… Now the restrictions have eased slightly, we will be having a short social run on Wednesday evening. If you want to join in you can sign up here.

Me, Laurie, David and Rachel met up just as the heavens opened around the back of Tesco’s for our weekly food deliveries of Fareshare donations on behalf of the Little Edi Foundation.

Having a little catch up it wasn’t too long before the donations were given to us. There wasn’t a large amount of food but Rachel had bought a bag full of canned foods and other goodies to add to our food parcels and and bulk them out a bit. Thanks Rachel!!!!

We packed 5 food parcels in total and got to delivering them to families around Chelmsford.