V hot indeed for a Bristol GoodGym Group Run and a first good deed for Roddy - welcome!

The walking group set a gentle pace on a not-very-direct route taking advantage of the underpass to stay cool on the route with the runners already hard at work when we arrived at School.

Litter picking, sand sifting, planter wandering and leaf sweeping were the orders of the day with lots of us taking advantage of the shade offered by the trees and buildings on a sweltering night. Lyra the dog was in top supervising mode and not letting anyone take the ball from her mouth, as usual.

Having discovered that the Daily Mile is a whopping 16 laps of the painted track, we opted to eat cake instead before being forced into the evening sunshine for a pretty photo.

Not so much taking in this heat but we made up for it back at Workout's ClubHaus, out by the river and watching the Olympic swimming on the big screen, celebrating Ireland's Wiffen's Olympic Record performance in the not-at-all boring 800m freestyle and watching the rowers pass on the New Cut - picture perfect GoodGymming.

We assembled in St. Anne's Park on a gloriously sunny afternoon to continue the good work started earlier this week. We first continued digging up the turf in meticulously straight sections (my German heritage answers for a lot here, and honorary German GoodGymer Art was a great supporter), before getting our trowels out and planting the wildflower plugs (not so meticulously, because, after all, they're meant to be wild).

We also enjoyed having a chat with the Friends of St. Anne's Park (I think one of the chaps is still convinced that our Jason will be continuing to dig into the night), and seeing all the local kids getting involved in planting (as a primary school teacher, our Elizabeth had a close eye on them).

Of course, let's not forget the grassy skatepark that our Aaron has been building with the turned up turf. It's coming along splendidly!

All in all, a wonderful afternoon which left us excited to see all those beautiful wildflowers coming out next spring and summer!

It was still daylight! We met in daylight and tasked in daylight - Spring is here!

It was a longer run out today but nice and flat along the river and we were meeting up with Erin who showed us the wildlife wilderness/wasteland cliff face at the back of St Anne's House.

Our main tasks were to free the tree and reveal the wall which Erin promised was there. Lots of brambles, moss, nettles and mini sycamore trees were trying to take over the space and fortunately we had lots of chopping and cutting tools and Lucas who discovered how useful discarded laminated or plasticated notices are as grabbers for brambly clumps of sticks and stuff - welcome to GoodGym and a belated welcome to Bristol from Brazil, two years ago!

Big piles of brambles, weeds, nettles and other weeds were made and the wall and tree looked lovely. Erin, the task owner, was suitably impressed and has asked us back sometime soon. We were soon talking all things worm (w-air-m in Scouse) and have started our improving our language skills in Brazilian Portuguese with minhoca (a cross between Menorca and pinata to my untrained ear) which absolutely isn't Lucas's new nickname.

We were saying a temporary goodbye to Sarah K as she heads off to Canada for three months and Russ has one more Tuesday before he heads off on his travels.

It was supposed to be really cold but was much warmer than the forecast so people were still in shorts for our run to lovely Emmaus, home of Indoor Tasks. It was great to welcome Ash from Sheffield GoodGym (we all had to be on our best behaviour), Kate to her first group run and Ed returning from his foreign travels.

Back at Emmaus, not only did Satya have an indoor task lined up, she had super warm high viz coats to lend everyone so they didn't get cold! We're now expecting this level of e=welcome on every visit.

The task at hand was to tidy the basement, which we didn't even know existed. The warehouse is a bit empty at the moment as both Emmaus Bristol's vans are broken so they're not able to bring house clearances and other furniture pick-ups to the site. They have a couple of borrowed smaller vans which did mean we could take a photo pretending to have run all the way to Coventry and Warwickshire.

The basement was chock full of bedding, boxes and cleaning materials, the floor was barely visible so the team were tasked with bring their Tetris A-game to the fore to make best use of the shelving all around the edges of the room.

With specialist cardboard box flatteners, pillow stuffers and shelf stackers (by the end needing to be the taller GoodGymmers, thanks Sarah K) plus photographers Run Leader Richard and Backmarker Alice/Margaret capturing the moments as well as participating, we were soon Very Tidy Indeed and Satya was amazed how quickly it had gotten so tidy. And all the boxes were ready for recycling and any leaking cleaning fluids were bagged in shiny blue bin bags, even though they all smelled of lovely soap.

We took the opportunity to have photos in our high viz jackets (now you see us, now you don't) before we were forced to give them back, run back to Queens Square and most of us carry on to Pieminister for National Pie Week's lovely pies and warmth - thanks to Clo for organising another great Eats.

We returned to the Northern Slopes on a chilly spring morning ready to take up our scythes and loppers. Heroically, we tackled the densest of bramble to enable access further along Novers Hill. The brambles proved as stubborn as ever, but our relentless determination (and a significant amount of elbow grease) helped us reach our goal: making a little dent in the impenetrable thicket. And as we gathered our tools at the end of the task, Julia reminded us that great things are achieved by many people making many little dents over time.

Credit to Richard G for the excellent pun!