What a great Group Run/Walk to welcome three lively new GoodGymmers, back at one of our favourite tasks - and INDOORS!

We were chock-a-block at Workout to meet Nachiket, Tanmay and Joseph for their first GoodGym experience - we hope it's the first of many.

Runners strode of and the walkers were hot on their heels, joined by Richard B "fresh" from their Arc of Attrition exploits at the weekend through horrendous weather. It made for much chat through Castle Park. So much so that we forgot to turn left and walked a longer way to Emmaus than ever before... Well, it is the January Challenge :-)

Xanne was waiting for us and we were in the warehouse of joy for the first time in a while. its all change with the mezzanine being cleared for a fantastic project with St Mungo's running apprenticeships.

Weird and wonderful jobs including boxing and shelving unsorted donations in a tidy semi-organised ways, constructing beds to work out which pieces were missing, clothes "tat or treasure" and carpet tile piling that was more skilled than it looked.

We were busy bees as Xanne knows us of old and is the only task beneficiary that has a back-up list of tasks to keep us going when we've been so efficient to clear part one!

As ever, there were treasures to be discovered, old racist/sexist newspapers, figurines of old naked people cavorting, an evil clown-y figurine and Kingsley bagged himself a keyboard stand, as you do.

We were soon off sgain, many of us to Franco Manca to trade our kilometre Strava pizzas for real pizzas - fantastic Tuesday, everyone!

As GoodGymmers arrived for the task, the news spread that our venue for our festive Eats was unexpectedly shut with what turned out to be a norovirus outbreak - officially not festive. So whilst the teams set out to scavenge, take photos and collect litter on the way, Richard B and Melanie set about finding a substitute venue (The Stable was also closed, no room there).

Photos were soon flying about the WhatsApp group of 12 Days of Christmas achievements, runners versus walkers with excellent examples all round.

With a table found at Rudy's, a new venue for GoodGym, smiles were firmly back on faces as we worked out the complexities of food and drinks whilst "enjoying" Richard's specially-sourced prizes of jelly sweets where some were pickle-flavoured for a Russian roulette style flavour experience - shall we call that a new tradition?

Having double and even triple checked we were definitely on for St Werb's Community Centre, its was time to get excited about counting cutlery for the Festive Friends event. Oh, and wrapping Christmas gifts.

It was a great first task for https://www.thecomedybox.co.uk/site/301.asp?catID=2508 to get stuck in to, with Ousmane proving his photography skills weren't a one-off last week.

As the runners sped (faster than the walkers) off across town, the walkers maximised their chat time on a delightfully dry evening, past the Christmas Fair in Castle Park and many-a group enjoying the evening.

Harsheh has developed a new skill of getting ins huge number of the photos, whilst Becky shared that attaching lengths of sticky tape to a technical T-shirt is a fabulous storage tactic as they peel back off wherever your ready for them, no fluff included!

The cutlery was speedily counted with Carolineon Quality Control to ensure no soup spoons were mixed in with the dessert spoons before moving on to ensure every price sticker was removed pre-wrapping.

The team effort of cutting paper and tape and wrapping the gifts, with only Richard B managing to make a parcel look rude, was a veritable hive of activity and soon the trays of unwrapped gifts were trays of festively wrapped ones.

The walkers had a head-start but soon saw the runners ahead of then at a road crossing enabling most of the runners to have already ordered at the bar and arranged a big enough table for us to enjoy the treat of mince pies from Richard B.

That was a great evening, shall we so it all again next week? Fewer* parcels to wrap though. *None.

We know it's great to get out running and walking when the nights are drawing in and its dark so early - we're proud to support This Girl Can's campaign to make sure women and girls can get out and run (or walk) no matter if its light or dark. Let's keep getting out there.

So off to the Children's Scrapstore for whatever Hallowe'en adventures they had in store for us.

Phones, mops, brushes (but no witches broom) and a vacuum cleaner that you could live in. That was the order of things this evening. Now for a short poem:

A tangled web of wire.
Handset matching causing ire.
A mop to clean.
So mighty, yet so lean.
A brush in a rush.
And a vaccum.
So big it doth loom.

An evening full of fun.
Looking forward to another one.