On a lovely spring (or early summer?) day, we went out to help out Mr B and his lovely canine companion with his front and back garden. Both were impressively overgrown with a carefully nurtured selection of weeds, so we rolled up our sleeves and got started.

Mr B planned ahead and borrowed a chunkier lawn mower from the neighbour, which was a lifesaver for us. After all three of us got started with the front garden, we decided to also give the back some attention, leaving Kathryn to put on the finishing touches while Wendy and Nik got started in the back. Wendy expertly worked the lawn mower, with Nik preparing the sizable patches of grass with a pair of secateurs , while Kathryn took care of everything and anything the other two might have missed.

Filling up one bin after the other, Nik jumped around on the already binned garden waste to make space for the gifts of Mr B's grassy cornucopia of a garden.

Overall a fruitful day out, with Mr B and his four-legged friend happy to have their garden back as the summer starts. Thanks for having us!

It was a very rainy Shrove Tuesday tonight. While the people of Bristol sat in traffic jams to get home to their cosy pancakes, we donned our waterproofs and got ready to run.

We were helping two tasks tonight: Group 1 set off to help Emmaus and Group 2 to help Up Our Street.

Emmaus had just got a big delivery of donations from another charity shop which was closing down. They therefore had a choc-a-block warehouse which needed sorting. Many bodies squeezed between each other and all of the donated goods to get as much sorting as possible to organise the warehouse going forward.

The second group (after having a long press-up, chair hold and squat stint on the way) were met by Khalil from Up Our Street who manages the Lawrence Hill area. He armed us with litter pickers, hi-viz and bags and the group split into teams of 4 to tackle each of the allocated streets in the 30 minute time frame. The group had soon cleared the streets and gathered over 8 bags of litter to be collected by Bristol Waste. Khalil was delighted with our efforts and has already asked for us to come back and help again.

The two groups ran back to base in the increasing rain and gathered for the second most important activity of the night (good deeds always come first, obviously): the Pancake Race 🥞. Each team was equipped with a frying pan and a pancake and instructed to sprint and flip until their whole team had successfully ran. Some questionable flips, some very muddy dropped pancakes and some downright mush later, I think we can truthfully say that we should probably stick to the running...

We rounded off the evening with an alternative circular, beige snack with our monthly GoodGym Eats to Franco Manca, where we warmed up stuffing ourselves with hot sourdough - delicious!

A truly beautiful morning in Bristol as Zdeni, Nik and myself met up to give Mr V a hand in his back garden.

Great to see Nik back in the GG fold after a year out and great to catch up with him whilst Zdeni had already been with me for 2 other GG adventures today - so this was number 3 for us - and we would go on to complete number 4 this afternoon.

After a nice chat with Mr V who told us a bit about his life, he showed us through the house into the back garden which was pretty much covered with brambles and other unwanted foliage. To say it was wild would be an understatement.

It was one of those where if you were on your own you really wouldn't know where to start, whereas working as a team we were able to dive straight in (figuratively speaking)!

With only secateurs of varying effectiveness to do battle with the spiky foe, we set about our task, Nik clearing the corners, Zdeni the sides and me through the middle, chatting all the while and enjoying the warm sunshine.

Having cleared about half of the garden, the next door neighbour popped his head over the fence wondering if we'd like a hand and also the use of some more tools. In a lovely gesture he joined us, bringing with him some loppers and shears and with the extra pair of hands and more functional equipment we were soon racing through the rest of the brambles.

Nik was demonstrating his immense uprooting skills, whilst Zdeni was employing a rather nifty joint secateur and scissor approach to bramble reduction and after 2 hours we were done much to the delight of Mr V and it was great to see him appreciating the efforts of his neighbour - heartwarming stuff.

Leaving Nik to negotiate his route back home, Zdeni and I made our way over to adventure number 4 and some more brambles to get stuck into!

Lovely!

On this sunny eve in June, our sweaty brows showed that summer is properly here in Bristol. And what better way to make the most of it than to spend an evening working on your gardening tan while doing good? Welcome to William, Serena and Nicky who joined the group tonight - great to see you with us and getting stuck in! Huge well done to Maria, who hit 50 Good Deeds tonight and Sarah who got to 51 after her 50th Good Deed on Sunday.

The group set out to tackle the Northern Slopes of Bristol to get to our task. The Run Leaders promise they thought about a route which wouldn't be quite so hilly for at least 1 minute before we started... but the joys of Redcatch Road called. With some speedy sprinters leading the way, the whole group put in a brilliant graft to get to the top on such a hot night, and we had soon arrived at Springfield Allotments to help Urban Escape's Youth Moves group with a plethora of tasks. This great charity give children and adults from south Bristol the chance to connect with nature and the outdoors.

The willing GoodGymers were split up and partnered with two young people from the Tuesday night Youth Group. Each pair of young people had their own areas and tasks which they instructed the GoodGymers on. Of course, they then kept a watchful eye throughout to ensure it was done to the high standards required. Our runners did not disappoint, and soon pulled out weeds were piling up, wood for the stove was chopped, floors were wood-chipped and raised beds were ready for replanting.

Somehow, Darren got let loose with a wheelbarrow and Richard with a saw and some questionable wood-chopping techniques. But apart from that, our merry crew made light work of the large area, and we left Urban Escape tidier and with a promise to come back and see them soon.

But is doing good in one way enough for our GoodGymers? No way. A group set off on an impressive 15 minute leafleting mission in the area to spread the word about Bramble Farm's Summer Open Day.

Well done everyone! All that was left was to enjoy the view of Bristol from the top of the hill and the long downhill run to reward all our hard efforts - phew.