There’s a lot less bindweed and nettle in the ground around the fence line of the community garden and old bowling green, plus a lot less on the fence itself. And my hands are tingling all over from all the little nettle stings!

A rain shower meant a midway tea break and catch up, and for those who stayed to the bitter end, an elderflower cordial to finish off whilst I got stuck in the loo!

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!

There was no drought about it, even though tonight's run numbers were slightly dampened by, well, the damp, we still made up quite a cloud. 50 GoodGymers turned up to hold on to our second place rain in the January challenge and we got lots of new hardy people join us for their first session too - welcome to Nicola, Liz, Natalie, Liana and Sasha!

There was no raining on our parade: we got warmed up with a complicated maths warm up, and then headed on our short run to St Thomas's Church to help the Churches Conservation Trust while Alice led a group on a longer 7km round trip run to help the British Heart Foundation with donation sorting.

Once the donation sorters got all the way up Gloucester Road they were separated into different groups for donation sorting. It required some imagination at first to work out the methods but they soon got into the swing of it, making a dent in the huge pile of donations which need to be sorted before another 100 bags arrive later in the week, and finding a body-less teddy bear along the way - spooky...

Once the church scrubbers had made their way through three exercise stations on the short run there, we were met by Ed and split into groups for removing wax from all of the church floors and dusting, sweeping and hoovering the rest of the church. Ed had the tunes pumping and before long the church looked much better, a few cups of tea had been drunk and it was time for a detour route back ft. hills, stair climbs and LOTS of rain. Eventually we headed back to gain shelter and to celebrate Art getting his 50th Good Deed tonight and Lexi's delayed centurion celebrations for her 100th Good Deed on Saturday! MASSIVE well done to you both!

We headed to Bambalan for our first GoodGym Eats of the year, where we realised it had been abreeze. Although there did continue to be a chance of (warm, hot) showers for 50 sodden GoodGymers.

WOOHOO GoodGym Bristol Tuesday night Group Runs are back with a bang for 2020!! We don't do things in halves here at Bristol so we brought in the New Year in style with our new record of 70 runners on a single Group Run! This included 14 lovely first timers - welcome to the gang everyone!

To put all these hands to good use we split into three different tasks...

Sofa Away

Group 1: Emmaus

Richard led a running group and Melanie led a walking group to Emmaus to give our monthly helping hands with sorting their donations in their huge warehouse. On this occasion, it included the newly-founded sport of Sofa Smashing - who knew?

Group 2: The Litter-Pickers

Maria and Alice led the chatty groups and I led the returning (still casual) Greyhounds on our 6km run to and from Lawrence Hill. Alice then did a stellar job of co-ordinating a team of litter-pickers to pick up 5 bags of litter in just 25 minutes from the local area. Definitely a task which needed doing, so thank you Alice and litter-picking dream team!

Group 3: The Matthew Tree Project

Meanwhile, the rest of the group split into A and B to do a 50:50 session helping The Matthew Tree Project with sorting their massive load of donations which they had gathered in the run up to Christmas. As the warehouse was packed, the rest of the group were outside doing The Uptown Funk Dance* and sprint relays.

*may not look good on the dancefloor.

The Fresh Face of Bristol

After sorting a mass of Amy from TMTP's donations and puffing a bit more than previously due to our dancing, we headed back to Queen Square and reunited the groups to play a game of When was Keep On Movin' by Five released. It was a nail-biting one, but Tim eventually stole the prize of the correct answer (1999, in case you were wondering).

We then had the chance to celebrate the wonderful Sarah hitting her 50th Good Deed tonight. Well done Sarah!! We look forward to seeing you sporting your black tee soon!

And that was a wrap! (Well, after we found Alex was looking as fresh-faced as a 17-year-old on tonight's run anyway). We will see you all very soon for more January Challenge Madness!

Pun credit to Gary