We Cone, We Swore, We Conkered

14 good folk ran 7km to the Avon Gorge on behalf of Surfers Against Sewage to clear one side of the river bank of litter.

A beautiful morning saw pretty much all of Bristol come out to enjoy the warm sunshine, making the early part of this morning’s run fairly congested, particularly as motorists tried to tackle the new road system around the city centre.

This meant a fair amount of snaking around the streets in single file but things got back to normal as we headed out along the harbourside for a fairly leisurely run along the river, looking on a little enviously at the many people adorning the harbourside cafes enjoying a cool morning drink.

No matter, we had important goodness to do and arriving at the gorge, just under the Clifton Suspension Bridge we made a wooden step on the river bank (top work Paul R) allowing everyone to climb down to begin today’s task.

Armed with gloves and rubbish bags we set about clearing the area of all manner of weird and wonderful, and not-so-wonderful items.

There was the standard fare of beer cans and bottles, tennis balls, polystyrene and bubble wrap, but amongst the more unusual items were bits of carpet, a toy Snoopy and his plastic purple friend, condoms and a wild eyed hare that seemed to have taken a trip to the taxidermist – a most worrying sight, particularly as it kept trying to make a break for freedom by slicing open the bin bag!

The main bone of contention was a traffic cone (maybe that should be a cone of contention?) which was well and truly buried in the mud and despite the best efforts of Paul B and Chris, it stubbornly refused to budge – likewise a tyre that was just as pesky!

In amongst all this Kieran found a conker and with that our pun was born – well done Kieran – the future of GG puns is in safe hands!

Top marks to Charlene, who found a plastic crate and put this to good use in collecting bottles and cans.

Also to Dom, who turned an early morning parkrun and GoodGym deed into a half marathon!

Our work finished, we hotfooted (literally) it back to Roll For The Soul where Chris gave us an excellent series of warm down stretches to perform (thanks Chris), before wishing Deb good luck at the Sheffield Half Marathon tomorrow, and Mel and Jack at the Brighton Marathon, and congratulated Will on his Manchester Marathon run. We then headed in for a well earned lunch.

Thanks to everyone for coming today and cleaning up the river – it makes you feel proud of our city and it’s waterways. Great work everyone.

Thanks also to Paul B for backmarking today and to Kieran for the pun.

As usual we have more GoodGym goodness to look forward to on Tuesday evening and next Saturday so we’ll see you all again very soon!

Cheers

Dave