It was great to have Sophie, Fiona, Lydia, Shrey, Grace, Johanna and Rahul join us for the first time tonight on another busy evening with lots of people joining us as part of Week 2 of the Bristol SU's Mind Your Head campaign.

Before we got going we had a long list of well dones for this active crowd who had been running around the country over the bank holiday and were feeling tired tonight for very different reasons to why I did. Not only that, but we got to celebrate Paul's birthday and 5 Year Group Run Streak!

Art Attack

Then we split into two groups for tonight's good deeds. Alice wonderfully led a group to Southville to do some last minute awareness raising for this weekend's Southville Art Fair on behalf of BS3 Community. It turned into quite the social affair as several GoodGymers bumped into people they knew along the way and from behind the letterboxes! Before long the group had distributed the pile of hundreds of leaflets and made a massive difference for the group ahead of Saturday's event.

Camouflage

The rest of us headed to Holy Trinity church is Hotwells where we were helping Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group with various tasks. The main task for the night was clearing an extremely overgrown area to create an area for a vegetable patch for the local gardening group to use. As this area is often used for anti-social behaviour then this will have a big impact on the local area. The group also did an incredible job of lopping back all the brambles, branches, weeds and nettles sticking over the pathway to the side of the church, deweeding the path itself (including lifting a massive moss jacket which Liam made look like an outfit from last night's Met Gala and was rivalled only by Shreena's weed-dress), refreshing the raised beds for the summer and putting a new raised bed in place (by Team Strong). Not only this, but some of the group also made a crack at delivering some of their 900 leaflets advertising the gardening club and other activities happening in the area.

In 30 minutes all of these tasks had been completed beyond Suzanne from the charity's expectations. We had time for juice and biscuits before hitting the road, with a cheeky plank stop and sprint home to spice things up on the way.

We headed back and then celebrated May's GoodGym Eats with pizza and cider at The Stable - thank you to Danica for organising!

It was wonderful to see so many people tonight for our event ahead of World Earth Hour on Saturday. Especially good to welcome Richard, Alice, Alexander and Andy to their first GoodGym Bristol run!

Tonight was a cause for many a celebration as it was Zdeni's 100th Good Deed, which she has completed her past 50 deed for in just 3 months! Massive well done Zdeni, you are great!

Hopscotch, Skip and Squat Jump

Our first group tonight went to our regular task, Felix Road Adventure Playground. While our tasks were set up, the group started the longest Squat Jump Macarena (in my opinion, anyway). The Felix Road team were glad to see so many pairs of hands for the big, heavy work they had planned for us. They had hired a skip and the group first had to clear the skip of metal objects, which they can sell to make money for the charity and then clear a large wood stack and a whole area of wood, rubbish and more ready for the summer. The group split into teams and got the work done in just 20 minutes, much to the Felix Road team's amazement!

Next, it was time for our regular clear-up of the playground. Half the group got to work tidying toys and picking up litter. Meanwhile, the other half of the group did a 10 minute sprint leafleting session to spread the word of Helpful Peeps locally.

Before we left, it was time for a game of Cone Up, Cone Down (but which way really is up?). It was a neck-in-neck competition and the cones up finally took it with just one cone and some questionable rule-following.

Picker-point

Mel led the second group to Dame Emily Park to help them with a big litter-pick of the area. The group filled 11 big bin bags from around the park and only had to stop when there were no more bags left. Included in their pickings were Darren's bear, which was then held at picker-point with Darren.

This was in competition with Alice's bear which, although she had threatened to wear her panda onesie, had turned out to be a panda carrot cake to continue our World Earth Hour theme. The litter-picking crew got in their quick, but reports have it that it was the tastiest panda around.

Once Zdeni's group had conjoled her into her Centurion outfit, she also produced an array of amazing baking to add the party. We do love it when someone reaches a milestone!

Our final (sadder) celebration of the night was to say bye to Alex who is off to Pembrokeshire for the summer. We will miss you (and who is going to make the puns?!) but have an amazing time!

We had a lovely amble down the Malago Greenway this morning to the Berry Maze. There, we met the rest of the group who had made their own way there and Barney, who was looking after us today. Barney explained a bit about the history of the Maze to those of the group who had not been before then about our task for the day. They had 500 wild flower plants from the pea and mint families to edge around each of the berry sections. We troweled up and got to work in pairs on each section.

Despite the gusty (40mph?!) winds, creating an extra job of chasing empty plant pots across the maze, in 45 minutes, not only did we plant all 500 wildflowers, we also weeded several other sections (including a Groundforce-esque 10 minute de-weed challenge for Zdeni, Gary and I). We finished off the morning jogged back to town and wished Alex good luck with the Bath Half tomorrow!