The joint was absolutely hopping tonight as 33 wise guys showed up for our third card bed workshop. A very warm welcome to our new runners Nick, Ben, Hannah, Roly and Ed, and special mention to our visitor Kerry from Ealing.

After a quick but rather choreographical warm up which 'somehow' ended up in a New York, New York kick line, we headed off to our destination, the United Reformed Church off West Street, Bedminster who have once again kindly allowed us to use the church hall for the workshop.

On arrival, we got all the discarded bike boxes out of a strategically parked car and met up with Elliot who showed us how best to cut and fold them into the template shapes he has designed. When assembled together, the pieces form a rigid cardboard bed that can be used by a homeless person to sleep away from a cold and hard concrete floor. The beds that we made tonight will be delivered to a local project Help Bristol's Homeless who will distribute them at their soup kitchens. Each bed comes packed in a plastic sheet which keeps the card dry and a printed set of flat-pack style instructions for putting everything together.

At times things were a little hectic as teams of 5 or 6 manned the available tables and tried to co-ordinate drawing and cutting in such a way that no one cut anything that was likely to bleed. However, after ten minutes or so everyone seemed to find their place and a production line of bed templates was in full flow. All the while, our expert clean up team packed up the discarded bits of card - and dressed one of their members in a cardboard suit of armour.

Half an hour later and Elliot was able to demonstrate an assembled bed with Cristian taking on the important role of chief tester. In all we finished another three complete beds.

While one group headed back to base for some fitness games the second helped to pack the completed items back in the car and then ran back too.

Congratulations Dave and Emma!

It just remained for us to congratulate our newest milestone recipients. Emma (aka Comet) who has reached a fantastic 50 and Dave (aka Godfather aka Dasher) who has reached an incredible 300. Well done both of you, GG Bristol absolutely wouldn't be half the place it is without your happy smiling faces, energy and enthusiasm.

Finally, back at the Vivo bar, Emma laid on a full party tea (including pink wafers) and Cristian led us in a perfectly pronounced chorus of Felicidades to Emma who is also celebrating her birthday tomorrow.

This was no April Shower as 16 sunny souls ran 3 km to Redcliffe to help Growing Support at their Spring Open Event with Redcliffe Gardening Club

IT'S OFFICIAL!! - GoodGym Bristol loves Saturday mornings and Saturday mornings love us back!!

It was fabulous to see a splattering of red at Ashton Court first thing today, turning up to find Hannah, Anthony, Dom and Bisa all getting ready to start their day by heading up the hill at parkrun and great to run across from there with Dom to join the GoodGym Saturday gang at Roll For The Soul for another fun filled jaunt to do some good in the local community.

It was a short run today, an ideal starter session, and we warmly welcomed newcomers, Robert and Martha (who had run once before with GG Camden), to the group for the start of our run to Somerset Square in Redcliffe, where we were met by Amy, from Growing Support, an award winning social enterprise tackling loneliness, social isolation and inactivity. running weekly gardening clubs, where older people are enabled to work together in the garden, grow their own food and connect with nature.

They were hosting the Redcliffe Gardening Group's Open Event and it was great to see the local community getting involved and enjoying the fabulous surroundings.

Amy passed us over to Kia and Marky, who ran through the tasks that we would be carrying out and in true GoodGym fashion our team organised themselves into four groups of four and got stuck into their respective tasks:

Paul B, Alice, Yiyin and Yuting headed off with a wheelbarrow to move stone chippings from one part of the estate over to the garden.

Paul R, Charlene, Julia and Nicole got busy with spades and forks moving and turning over compost in a tight area that required a great deal of synchronisation.

Deb, Maddy, Dom and Ellie were busy digging at the top end of the garden preparing the ground and then planting blackcurrant, whitecurrant and raspberry bushes.

David, Martha, Robert and myself were down at the bottom end of the garden digging and turning over the soil which Kia could then sieve to remove some of the embedded stone.

In amongst all the digging there was quite a lot of bricks being found, apparently from the old Georgian properties that had originally been there before the area had been turned into flats - there were also stories of dead bodies but thankfully we didn't find any!

This was a really nice morning and lovely to spend some time with people living in the neighbourhood who had visited the garden to relax, walk their dog or just to see what was going on. There was a real feeling of togetherness.

After our work was done, we enjoyed tea, coffee, juice, cakes and biscuits before a quick Heavy Metal Red Thunder photo shoot!

We were then heading back on our short journey for a stretch out and lunch at Roll For The Soul, where we congratulated Paul B on reaching his 200th GoodGym deed - a fantastic achievement by an absolute GoodGym legend and all round ace bloke! Thanks also for backmarking today Paul.

Well done to Maddy, who got of the mark with her first and today's pun!

And to Julia, who headed straight off after then run to help Surfers Against Sewage with a litter pick, which is actually what we will be doing next Saturday morning!

Thanks to everyone for coming today, it was great to see you all and a great job all round!

There are two more runs this week on Tuesday evening and Saturday and our monthly social with food and drink (and a few milestones to celebrate) after the run on Tuesday, so check all those out and hope to see you at some or all of those.

Cheers

Dave

Over 30 smiley and energetic runners, including 4 new faces (Hannah, Elly, Yiyin, and Kate), amassed at Vivo this evening for a incredibly productive flyer session and a harbourside run.

After the massive run of half a mile to meet our host for the evening Hannah and her ever helpful assistant Marky we were introduced to this evening's task. We were required to help Redcliffe Care deliver their most recent newsletter to the local community promoting all the great stuff they have coming up this year. This was no small feat as the community included 10 blocks of flats and two estates of flats and houses. This needed organisation and the most efficient distribution network Bristol has ever seen. We split into groups with pairs taking on blocks and groups taking one estates. Marky ran around the blocks and let the guys into each one as they went round. Soon everyone was posting and we were delivering to more houses than Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, covering more steps than a 90's tribute act.

We were all expected to meet back at base at 7:20 but most of the guys finished way before that so we did a little lap of the most beautiful church in Bristol lunging and jogging all the way. After an initial group photo with the the speedy posters a group went off with Godfather Dave to start a 3 mile lap of the harbour. Soon after the remaining teams returned having gone a bit rogue and started handing out newsletters to passers by, we'll call these the initiative collective, great work guys. Our wonderful host Hannah thanked us for our help and gave us water and biscuits (we always get looked after well in Redcliffe!). The remaining group ran the opposite way around the harbour and met the leading group halfway round and then back at Queen Square. In a run that was more perfectly timed than the gold medal winning flamingo synchronised swimming team performing their world beating performance at the waterhole world championships.

We stretched, punned (thanks Dave for you classic suggestion), and sang happy birthday to Debs; go on give her a cheer she deserves if not for bringing cakes then definitely for her 20 mile run at Larmer Tree this weekend. Big respect to everyone else who ran there too, it looked awesome and you represented the Bristol Red Thunder impeccably.

I am still gobsmacked by the speed you guys worked tonight, it was brilliant and Hannah was seriously impressed. Thanks so much, your are awesome.

See you next time.

Gary