We had astoundingly good weather for our regular Tuesday Bristol group run - it wasn't raining after a day of torrential deluge had left a lot of Queen Square under water.

It was great to meet Iain for the first time and welcome Ksu back from pre-pandemic times, along with lots of regulars, mostly wearing yellow jackets.

The running group were soon setting off for the SouthVILLE Centre, via Bedminster Bridge although Sarah K explained a few time that Gaol Ferry Bridge was definitely still open as she’d used it ten minutes before.

Melanie was the sole member of the exclusive walking group and caught up the runners by taking said Gaol Ferry Bridge.

Hugh met us and set us on brushwork - sweeping and painting outside at the front and back to be ready for springtime.

After lots of chatting and a bit of working, we were all done and despite the offer of a longer run around the harbour on the way back, the shorter route won the vote unanimously and Paul negotiated the route back, avoiding the biggest puddles and Dave made sure no-one got lost.

A good time was had by all, and we're already looking forward to next week.

What a night! To join us for the first time in this even-more-crazy-than-normal addition of GoodGym Bristol were Toby, Charlie, Dulcie and Rory. It was great having you and we hope to see you very soon when we (probably) won't make you sing. Tonight's craziness was due to the very special occasion of the amazing Paul Becker having joined the 500 Good Deed Club.

Our celebrations for him included: * A giant running, litter-picking Pink Panther in the shape of Chris ft. a weird lump carried around the whole night which was, in fact, 500 pink wafers * An amazing PINK SEQUIN CAPE, now known as the Cape of Good Hope, crafted from scratch by the talented Mel (and suffered the sequin aftermaths of by Darren) * The YMCA and Macarena with Clo and Matt's incredibly crafted new lyrics to fit PB Senior, sung (and danced) beautifully by our crew * An incredible massive pink wafer cake baked by the talented Richard B * Pink Panther masks for the masses made by Julie

Phwoar! What a load of Pink Panther Goodness for our very own PB. However, this is GoodGym, so there is never too much good to be had. Before all of this got appreciated, we had 40+ GoodGymers to do two Good Deeds before all of this could be appreciated.

Dave did a last-minute lead of the first group to Emmaus where they were met by Xanne and set to work with a bunch of tasks in the huge warehouse. The group got lifting, shifting, donation sorting and, most importantly, top photo-shoot shot finding. As usual, they were met with a plethora of weird and wonderful goods around the warehouse, and had to be torn away to get back to Queen Square in time.

Paul-uted

Meanwhile, the rest of us headed to Riverside Park to do a litter-pick for Bristol Waste. We split into four litter-picker teams and tackled different sections of the area, managing to gather a massive 10 bags of litter in just 15 minutes. We then ran on to get a litter-pick, running relay in at - you guessed it - St Paul's Park.

A wonderful Sequin-ce

Following all this hard work, we headed back to Queen Square to have a (very long) stretch off and regroup to perform our incredibly well-rehearsed Paul songs, eat lots of cake and, not forgetting, celebrate the wonderful Mel who reached her 400th Good Deed earlier today. Well done Mel!

Pun Credit to Richard G!

...Oh, light

It was great to have Catherine and Ingrid join us for the first time tonight - welcome both of you! We headed back to Holy Trinity Church tonight who were lending us their space to help The Marmalade Trust to prepare their hampers which each of their guests attending a Christmas lunch will receive.

When we arrived (with Maria's brilliant back marking safely getting the whole group there), Amy told us a bit about the incredible work they do: some of the people they speak to when arranging the lunches have not spoken to anyone in 3 months, and the hampers they get on Christmas day are the only present any of their guests have received on the years they have been running. The lunches can spark a change in the older people's lives and the charity direct them to social routes in the new year.

Crafty bunch

Our task for the evening was creating wrapped candles to add to the hampers. We divided ourselves into Very Crafty, A Little Bit Crafty and Not Crafty and got to work with distributing and wrapping candles and making labels to add to them. As time went on, the Not Crafty group even got a bit more crafty! (or at least gave it a shot and put the tables away very well...). 40 minutes later and we had a table full of beautifully wrapped candles ready for the hampers. We pretended to be candles for the group photo (see evidence above), then wished Amy from Marmalade Trust and Maria from Holy Trinity goodbye and ran back (with a short stop for planks, of course!).

What better way to finish off the night than with a candle-based joke?

When is a candle not a candle? When it's a-light!

Thanks Tim 😉

It was great having Harry, Faria, Kerry, Lucy, Liz and Polina join us for their first GoodGyms tonight and to have Rosie join us for her first GoodGym Bristol session! We were also lucky to have Danica with us who was celebrating her birthday (woohoo! 🎉) and Alex and Emma returning from their recent marathons.

With 46 runners and walkers, we got warmed up with a game of Truth Or Lie with - like most of my warm-up games - a questionable level of understanding of what was going on by most of the group and only vague warmth achieved. We then split into two groups, with Dave leading a smaller group to Emmaus and the rest of us going to St Werburgh's Park Nursery.

Scrubbing up nicely

The Emmaus group were tasked by Xanne from the charity to clean the bric-a-brac ready for sale. They channeled their inner domestic gods and goddesses and did a better job than we do in our own houses of scrubbing up. As always at Emmaus, there is an underlying challenge of find the weirdest donation/prop/hat. This week's contenders included some butterflies and a classic lampshade hat.

Purplesfully doing good

Meanwhile, it was time to play one of our other favourite games at St Werburgh's Park Nursery: Who Can Not Get Paint On Themselves During A Painting Task. This week's added challenges: * The dark * The colour purple

We were met by Mandy from the nursery who had invited us there to help with painting the fencing of a reflection garden they have created in memory of one of their colleagues who passed away earlier this year. We were honoured to be able to be a part of this project, so we balanced a variety of spotlights, lights and torches in the dark area and 14 of our handy GoodGymers got straight to work.

The rest of the group weeded an entire planter at the front, and got stuck in with digging out bindweed, chopping back bushes and general tidying.

Soon it was time for us to head back, and we dragged the reluctant painters away from the final touch-ups on the fence to jog our way back to Queen Square. Great work everyone!