Lily's no silly billy

I want a goat.

I want a white nanny goat called Lily that amiably wanders round, curious to see how each Goodgymer is doing on their section of a new water channel and then waits contentedly to be petted before moving on to the next person.

Sadly this seems to be destined to be a pipe dream as it might be a little impractical keeping a full grown nanny goat in a third floor flat.

I'd also make a terrible goat keeper as once again we failed to open the gates before shooing in the kids in our warm up today. I'll put it down to the distraction of the rather cold conditions, although we did at least manage to get to and from the task without any major snowfall today.

The run to the urban dairy farm allotment "Street Goat" is a challenging one, a good 5k of gradual climb where the hill isn't always perceptible visually but rather is progressively felt the closer you get to the destination. Everyone did really well though and we benefited from a quick rest half way through while Julie changed out of her parkrun pyjamas (or onesie).

We were met at the allotment by Amy who was fully prepared with an array of spades and mattocks - yes that's right, mattockS plural - not often you get that on a Bristol Goodgym task. These were to be used to dig a water channel from a water trough to the barn where the goats hang out. This was quite a distance but with 17 people spread out along the length it was fully completed by the end of our stay and there was still plenty of time to check out the goats and enjoy the delicious flapjack and refreshments that Amy had supplied for us. The hot drinks were especially welcome after an hour spent in freezing winds at the top of a hill - once again well done to all involved!

But wait, 17 Goodgymers? What about the other 4? Well one was as usual shirking the work and wandering around taking photographs (and making friends with goats). But the other three were working hard to reposition a line of fence posts - quite a challenge when you can't feel your fingers even through two pairs of gloves. Nice one Alex, Paddy and Tom!

Thanks to Dave for backmarking today.