The Scrapstore needed our help, and 17 GoodGymers answered the call! We welcomed RyanRuben and Kieran to their very first Group Run this evening and we hope they enjoyed their warm welcome this evening. 12 runners ran, 3 walkers walked and Frances and Jade appeared, worked hard, then disappeared back in to the night! We split in to 3 teams, Ryan, Ruben, Ruben, Richard, Richard, Helen, Frances and Nell set about rolling up coloured pre-cut materials, and much debate was had about the relative density, likely uses (pirate hats, capes and yoga mats for people who abhor comfort) before filling barrels and barrels full of them! Valè and Jason were the cutting crew. Jason proclaiming that one of the sheets reminded her of the smell from baby dolls in Argentina in the 1980'!...unpleasant! The final job was re-attaching handsets to phones. The staff had a little wager on how many we could do, and the team of Phill, Nell, Gareth, Jordan, Freya and Sebastian, surpassed their expectations, reattaching, according to Phil 'a billion!'. We left the Scrapstore dazzled by multicoloured scrap and hope to be back soon, but also with the promise of indoor winter tasks!

6 runners, 4 walkers and a cyclist (not the set up to a joke, an actual fact!) made their way to Sparks to help get them ready for their first Birthday on Saturday.

Helen joined us for her first group run after deciding to see what the difference is between morning sessions at Windmill Hill, to the evening crowd in Queen Square!

We all converged in the alley behind Sparks and Lucy showed us to the toaster that we duly emptied, shifted 2 metres, them filled again!

NikFrancesMarianne and I, Vaguely Northern Darren, made light work of table and chair organising, before we all went upstairs and shifted some not very light stage sets. My first time using a trolley thing, also needing some extra wheels to shift it, taking around 6 people and a significant amount of time manoeuvering , before we found that 4 people (if one of the 4 is Valè, could actually carry it much quicker! The service lift was an experience, that if you weren't there, you wouldn't understand 'man'.

After realising the door somewhere wasn't shut properly, Jordan braved the 3rd floor on his own, and survived to close the door and get us moving again. Everyone worked hard tonight, including Frances and Richard working tirelessly at keeping the doors open.

Back downstairs at 7:45 for a quick group photo before Frances and Marianne spontaneously joined the GoodGym Eats crew, while Caroline stuck to her guns of never doing anything spontaneously in her life and ran home.

Thanks to Frances for the pun, honourable mention to Richard for 'Up down Junk'. [edit from Melanie (in Finland) - we definitely need to use that one!]

What a bumper crop of GoodGymmers under blue skies for a foray to Brunswick Cemetery after the inaugural presentation of Very Exciting GoodGym Bristol Badges for Run Leaders, TaskForce and extra special helpers. Watch this space for future developments!

We were joined by Jordan on his first good deed, Tom on his first group run and Freya back for her second Tuesday and looking totally different without her big woolly hat - fantastic to have you all on board. And yes, it normally appears a little bit chaotic at times but is definitely All Under Control.

With the tree popper/root puller on site and training demonstrations given by Top Tree Popper Marianne, Jordan was in his element tracking down protruding sycamores and brambles to be collected up into the Dumpy Sack of Doom, alongside Richard B's entrenching tool's victims.

Valè and Richard G took to the paving slab tidying, Richard missing his seasonal role as a lamppost already.

The bindweed/buttercup/sycamore club scouted out more widely - Caroline, Jason, Janka and Frances uncovered lots of ground and were very good at leaving the non-weed plants to grow, whilst Tom moved on to earn his Pathfinder status with the muddiness redistributed away from the golden gravel.

Ed and Nik grabbed the loppers and went in search of bigger things to chop - do much is now growing so fast!

And Janka's email address is nothing like kangaroo, in case you were wondering.

Until next week!

This evening's GoodGymmers were rewarded with a lovely sunset as we ran and walked to Faithspace in Redcliffe to collect the tools and trolleys for the night's path laying.

Last time we'd had days of heavy rain and were glad of the light drizzle, tonight was drier and didn't the turf know it! We seemed to have found a particularly rocky patch which Marky had marked (so Marky-ed, I guess) as the next path joining the planters. There's already been lots of positive feedback about how much easier it is to get to the planters and beyond.

The gravel is a special "self-binding" type which makes for marvellous non-shedding paths and, when its been left a few weeks, a solid lump in dumpy sack.

Once the edges had been marked and knived (?), we split into ground-chiselling and gravel-chillesing teams, definitely a tough workout tonight. Many different strategies were tried with the top methods proving to be stabbing with a big fork for gravel breaking and sitting uphill and spading downhill for turf lifting (called sods, for anyone wondering). We are so creative and adaptive.

Perseverence paid off, the new path was given its preliminary stomp, catwalk-style and flavoured water was enjoyed. Laura and Vaguely Northern Darren headed off for a longer run back whilst the rest of us finished off, tidied up and took the tools back to Marky's workshop.

Top path-making, team!