Massive Saturday turn out today for our trilogy of tasks. Big thanks to Dave, Alice and Matt for helping out so we could cover all the bases and spread the red round all todays projects.

A warm welcome to Beth too for coming all the way from WorthingWandsworth to visit us in Bristol - hope you had fun!

Bear Pit Community Action Day

Our headline attraction was participation in the Community Action Day that was taking place in the Bearpit. Sadly, times have been pretty tough for some of the folks down there in recent months. In fact its been so tough that the independent businesses are having to move out after years of working to shed the space of its 'no-go' reputation and create a genuine community feel to the place. One of our longstanding hookups with Incredible Edible is also situated there - one of their flagship areas of urban edible planting.

Rather than go out on a low, all the stakeholders decided to stage one last community action day to give place a general spruce up and clean. We joined them with some weeding around the planters (which we originally painted together with Bearpit Social) and in the edible bed itself. We also had a compost team working hard to rotate the contents - and its nice to hear they managed to make this competitive with Caroline and Hugh turning their section first!

It was pretty chilly today but the morning sunshine meant this was a very pleasant way to spend a morning and we warmed up at the end with a (rather chaotic) three-way running train race around Queen Square which seemed in keeping with todays triple theme.

Shed Smash Part Deux

A second group headed off to finish off the shed we began demolishing last month. By all accounts this was also a very pleasurable way to spend a Saturday morning - especially as it involved a sledgehammer. Kudos to Dave for coming back with an empty accident book!

The shed was rather derelict and needs to be removed so Emmaus can make the very best use of the house in their work with previously homeless people.

Willow Weaving - Taking a cake from it all

Finally, Matt and Alice led a group back to Hannah More primary to finish off the willow weaving we began last weekend. This turned out to be the perfect choice as there was apparently cake on offer and Matt has history here.

Six new faces today perfectly balanced our six Goodgym veterans as we ran to our rearranged task in St Pauls. On the way there we managed plenty of lunges and squats to help build up our core strength.

We were to help Emmaus by dismantling (aka smashing up) an old shed located in the garden of one of their newly acquired properties. Emmaus provide their companions (people who were previously homeless) with shared accommodation and training to help transition them into a more structured life with regular employment and a place to stay.

The properties have been provided by the council for a 'peppercorn rent' for those Emmaus companions who are ready to move on from their initial more structured shared housing arrangement with its regular rotas and routines to a more independent and flexible lifestyle while still being in the company of others who have had similar experiences.

The shed was too battered to be of any use any more so we were supplied with a range of tools (crowbar, pick axe, hammers etc) in order that we could dismantle it and reclaim the garden space. This was certainly a task where a bit of a health and safety briefing was in order but everyone worked together brilliantly today and we made a great start on removing the roof and a front window without any new entries in the accident book! Well done everyone!

There was even a bit of time for some wallpaper stripping in the hall!

Smashing up sheds is fun as you can see below - I know Sarah wanted to stay all day, but we WILL be back!

On the way back we managed a walking lunge through St Agnes park and a Rocky-style ascent of Castle park rounded off with a little running train to cap off a very active Goodgym morning.

Really enjoyed our starter session today and lovely to meet all you new members - it was especially good to see you all so enthusiastic to get stuck into our task - you're clearly all born GG'ers and we'd love to see you again soon!

Thanks to Clo for back-marking and Caroline for recruitment and time-keeping.

A fantastic 35 runners met at Vivo tonight for the short run over to the Bearpit to help out our good friends at Incredible Edible; represented tonight by the amazing Hannah. Incredible Edible reclaim patches of urban wilderness to grow edible crops that are then available to anyone passing through. Working together with the wonderful businesses that make-up Bearpit CIC, this once neglected (and somewhat notorious) space has been transformed into a much greener and safer environment that encourages mixed use by the whole community.

As it turns out, Hannah had been a little held up so the only option was of course to run split relays alternating step ups and lunges with circuits round the edge until she arrived. We then split into two teams with Liam once again stepping up to lead a sortie to a secondary IE site at Spring Hill so that the remaining (inedible) Snowberries could be uprooted to make way for edible alternatives. With few cutting tools available, this was a very physical task and while the team worked Incredibly-edibly hard and many brave snowberries perished, some still remained (although in the interests of the title pun - thanks Alice - this is to be regarded as fake news and ignored for the remainder of this report). Well done Snowberry team!

The remainder of us tackled the Bearpit itself, using an assortment of lighting options to distinguish food from weed-ville. Special mention to Alex (good deeds = 99), Mel and Julia for their horticultural skills in this endeavour.

Finally, when the special snow-beret troops returned we decided to call it a day and thanking Hannah dashed off back to Queen Square for some stretches and a well-earned - if long-awaited - pizza.

Welcome to Sally, Kimberley and Saskia for joining us on their first GG Bristol group run tonight!

In other news it is nice to see the Bring-a-Friend tradition continuing. Anna received her red laces tonight for bringing Hollie for the last two weeks, and Julia actually qualified for a second pair. Abigail - I still have yours for bringing Sophie, sorry I couldn't find them amidst all the gloves and lights in my bag tonight!

Thanks very much to Charlie for leading the second group (and carrying backpack #2) tonight and Alice and Jack for back-marking (and group photos). Congratulations also to Mel, Jack and Charlie for becoming qualified GG run leaders!

Refreshed from a bank holiday a massive group of ravishing runners met at Vivo to help tidy up Spring Hill with Incredible Edible and the yard at Emmaus.

20 runners came with me (Gary) to Emmaus. We ran around a mile to get there before being greeted by the ever smiling Xanne. She gave us an introduction and explained that our task would be a little different from the usual. Today we were to sort through all of the donated items that were put into the yard as they were deemed trashier than a romantic airport novel cover being read aloud by Oscar the Grouch. We were put to work smashing furniture, tearing fabric from mattresses, smashing electrical equipment to separate the plastic and metal parts and tool sorting.

New runners Roanna and Guido worked alongside veteran and recent conqueror of the Matahorn Ultra Madahorn Matt to sort a plethora of tools. While the electronics team had a smashing time a really swept the floor with their dance routines. But biggest shout goes out to the team taking on the task of removing the fabric from a mattress that had every spring individually wrapped. Needless to say they did not quite have enough time but we will be back to finish the job.

After finishing up and leaving Xanne happy with our work we ran back to Queen Square for a game of Chicken Otter Badger before stretching out.

On root to snow berry who's boss

The remaining 10 runners joined Hannah of Incredible Edible to mercilessly destroy the (superficially appealing) snowberries that were taking up valuable edible space that could be used for planting tasty food.

The 10 surely did the work of 20 and after haf an hour snowberry remains littered the path. Special kudos to Sophie who managed to break off one of the prongs on her fork in her enthusiasm and to the Godfather who totally laid waste to a particularly tough snowberry root.

Farewell from Goodgym Bristol to Louis who is heading home after finishing his job in Bristol. Hope to see you on the Birmingham run report soon, Louis!

Thanks for a great evening guys. It was hot and humid but you smashed it putting the jobs to bed no problem a-tool. Snow runder our task hosts reallly dig what we do and root for us all the way!

See you next time!

18 runners ran 4k on a Saturday morning double to help out at Windmill Hill City Farm and Incredible Edible’s volunteer day at the Bear Pit

It was great to have two newcomers along today as Cicely and Claire joined us for their first run and it was great to have a treat in store for them.

With our Saturday morning numbers swelling and with Wimbledon approaching it’s climax, we thought we’d go for a game of doubles today, which is becoming a bit of a feature of Saturdays, and it’s great that we are able to do this and that everyone is willing to go along with this.

We ended up conveniently with a 7-Eleven split and Paul very kindly agreed to take a group over to the Bear Pit, to help out Incredible Edible at their volunteer day.

Team Paul

A magnificent of GG gardeners (and if that isn't the correct collective term for a team 7 of Goodgym gardeners then it should be) passed up the opportunity to visit the animals at Windmill Hill and headed instead for the more urban wildlife of Bristol bearpit.

Since the distance was extremely short, we took a bit or a roundabout route through Castle Park (as some squiggly strava routes will testify). We had some fun trying to keep up with Matts exploratory excursions as he attempted to find some sort of gradient to run up and managed a few stretches of sideways and backwards running to mix things up a bit. A somewhat ill-advised attempt at lunges around the bandstand had to be quickly aborted when it became apparent that it was playing host to a peaceful party of Tai Chi exponents.

Once we arrived at the bear pit we were met by Hannah of Incredible Edible. This was a bit of an impromptu visit and so it was a relief when she seemed pleased to see us and have our help in weeding one of the new planted areas before a visit by the RHS (Royal Horticultural Society don't you know!). She equipped us all with trowels and we did a very thorough job removing all the unwanted growth. (Sadly the tool store was locked up so for once the wheelbarrow remained stashed away but we now have a couple more Incredible Edible outings in the diary so no doubt we'll get some wheelbarrow action on a future visit!)

Thanks to all my bearpit crew for coming along and working so hard - hopefully the RHS will be very impressed!

Team Dave

I took the larger group off to Windmill Hill City Farm, which is a glorious place full of animals and plants where people of all ages come to learn and play. Here we met up with the wonderful Beth, who explained a bit more about what goes on at the farm and in particular the development of the community garden where they grow food to supply the cafe on the site.

We were tasked with removing some pesky bindweed that was taking over the perimeter of the farm site, quickly organising ourselves into 3 groups and setting about clearing out the bindweed into plastic buckets and then transferring this into special bindweed compost bins, where it will take up to two years to break down before then being added into the everyday compost containers.

Our work completed, we headed off to the volunteer centre to grab a drink and then wandered round to look at the animals on the farm, stopping for a group photo by the cows and then realised that there was one that we couldn’t find. Caroline the Puma had gone missing!

We eventually found her stealthily patrolling the farm, bid farewell to Beth and trotted back to Roll For The Soul for a cool down with stretches and looking longingly at the other group who were already inside the cafe awaiting their lunch.

Another wonderful Saturday run, gang - thank you for being the awesome people you are!