Three travelling Goodgymers met at the Leamington Winter Night Shelter to sort and pack food and toiletries donations from reverse advent calendars.

Once items had been sorted, we helped to load up the van so the items could be delivered to people who need them. In between sorting donations, we had time for a good chat and a singalong to some festive tunes!

Nice to meet you Catherine, hope to see you at another Goodgym in the future!

It was a Bumper Birthday Night: massive happy birthday to Claire who celebrated with us (and a whole load of chocolate cake) tonight and to Kerry who had her birthday on Sunday. 🎂🎈🎉

It was great to have Stephen join us for the first time - welcome Stephen! And lovely to see Nick back from his 6 month stint in Canada, welcome back to the rain Nick! Alex and Richard also joined us an impressive 3 days after completing the Green Man Ultra - ouch! Great to see you both.

We had two tasks tonight to help with tonight. Maria led a group to Clifton to do leafleting for her orchestra who are doing a fundraising concert for the Bristol Drugs Project. The team did a great job of climbing Park Street, distributing the several hundred leaflets and working on their orchestra impressions/ invisible instrument playing.

Meanwhile, the rest of the gang headed to Faithspace where we were met by Suzanne and Marky. Marky set a small group to work with some gardening tasks in the green space opposite the community centre. The rest of the group helped Suzanne by distributing 200 leaflets about upcoming community centre events around the local area, prompting a game of Who Can Find A Letterbox - surprisingly challenging in Redcliffe!

We finished off with some biscuits, juice and a bit of core, then headed back to Queen Square with a stop for arm-circling-relays and finished off with tabata lunges and squats - you might feel them tomorrow.

I don't Claire what you say, there is no such thing as too much cake

After all of that, we headed in for birthday celebrations with not one, not two, but three types of cake. OOFT.

*Pun credit to Darren and obviously not me who it needed explaining to

It was great to have Fran, Ingrid and Jo join us for the first time tonight - welcome all! We had two tasks to spread our good deeds to. Mel had arranged a last minute trip to continue helping Hugh at the Southville Centre with their endless painting, and headed off with a group of walkers and out and back runners to cover the 3km round trip to the centre. As we were lucky not to have rain, they managed to continue with some outdoor painting to protect the wood in their grounds. Impressive work in the dark!

Meanwhile, the rest of the group split into Gary's Speedies and Shona's Sexies to get to the Northern Slopes. We were met by Julia and Caroline who got the group to work on continuing to clear a big area which is going to be used for planting new trees. With headtorches donned, the group chose their equipment of choice and got to work with scythes, loppers, shears, and even a Tree Popper and Steve's new favourite, The Slasher. There was also a bunch of rakers and shovelers moving all the newly chopped debris away from the area.

It's getting a little bit toasty over here

A second group got to work doing a litter-pick of the area, filling five bin bags and one recycling bag with waste. Top finds of the night included a toasty maker and hoover. We discussed the possibility of upcycling these (maybe or maybe not into presents), but opted to clear them away for Bristol Waste instead.

It was soon time to pack up, and we got treated to biscuits and tea from Julia, which was much appreciated on the cold hill! We headed back to town with some squats, sprints and chair holds. Once there, we presented the amazing Kait with her 200 Good Deeds t-shirt - massive well done Kait!! She had made some delicious peanut cookies so we feasted on those to celebrate and then a crowd went to Revolucion de Cuba for some more exotic feasting for March GoodGym Eats.

*Pun credit to Richard G!

Bristol is no GoodGym group which only gets out to hit their new year's resolutions and January challenge goals: on our first run of February we had a massive 62 people join us to run and walk to do good. It was great to have a massive 10 new runners join us - welcome Chloe, Becky, Owen, Aidan, Steve, Beth, Reuben, Barnaby, Dom, Emma and Sophie! It was also great to have Ivo pop by on his travels to the South West - thanks Ivo!

Brooming marvellous

Alison stepped in to lead a group to Task 1 of the evening to Hannah More Primary. The group were tasked with making the place look spic and span, so it was all hands on brooms and all brooms on deck to get the place sweeped up and then everyone did a mass litter-pick of the grounds until it was spotless. They got this done so quickly they had time to do some relays on their return to get their heart rates up!

Meanwhile, Richard led the hardcore mob up (and up) to Task 2 in Clifton to do some leafleting for Children's Hospice South West's Rainbow Run. Not only did they conquer the hills, they also delivered 400 leaflets around the area - phwoar.

I introduce you to: The Red Barrows

Melanie was leading the walking group to do some additional jobs at Redcliffe Nursery, where we had helped last week. The group had a huge long list of tasks to get through, but there was so much sand from the sandpit which had been blown all over the playground in the recent bad weather, that they spent their whole session clearing this all back into the sandpit. Oh, and importantly setting aside some time to choreograph GoodGym's very own aerobatics display team, the impressive Red Barrows.

Sally is waiting for you

The rest of us headed up the cycle path for Task 3, helping The Matthew Tree Project with our regular donation sorting. The team were split into groups for tin-sorting (or sor-tin more like), crate washing and separating the food donations into food type. Everyone was also lucky enough to get a chance to meet Sally for a quick (but who knew 3 minutes and 25 seconds could feel so long?) session of Sally Up Sally Down. Gary admired how well Matt scrubbed up, and we all headed back on our way.

Once back, it was time for a good stretch off and for our GoodGym Eats for this month to Turtle Bay organised by Clo - thanks Clo!