250 deeds - that's Scott to Matt'er!

A couple of weeks of loitering round cycle shop parking lots felt wholly worthwhile tonight as the accumulated boxes were once again turned into ingenious beds for the homeless by the massive throng of Goodgym runners who met together in Bristol tonight.

Almost 40 of us (welcome to our first timers Kara, Kathleen and Emma) ran up to our usual workshop location at the United Reformed Church on West Street to meet Elliot the card bed designer. Elliot quickly ran through the essentials of card bed construction - fold before you cut, orientate the templates correctly with the 'grain' of the cardboard for maximum strength .. and don't make too many C's (the template sections are all labeled with a letter and while only one C is required for a bed, we seem to have completed 10 of them in our last workshop!)

The beds are designed to fold flat so they can be easily carried around and stored during the day. At night they slot together to form a strong rigid structure that allows a homeless person to sleep raised above a concrete pavement and both maintain body warmth and benefit from a somewhat softer surface.

We got to quickly down to work, but there were just too many of us to all work on the cutting and folding at the same time so we split into two groups, with one group litter picking around the church while the other assembled beds. Half way through we swapped and managed to also complete some weeding around the church car park. Its great that we were able to help out our hosts in this way as they regularly give us the use of the church free of charge - including turning the heating on for us before we arrive!

As we neared the end of our time in the hall, Elliot assembled a bed for us from the parts we had made. And as is now traditional, we tried it out for size!

After a very busy last few minutes packing the beds and used cardboard away in the car, we ran back to base and celebrated our latest milestone achievements. Liam has reached 50 good deeds and is now the proud owner of a black T shirt, while Matt'erhorn has reached 200 and receives his own personalised shirt as is the custom here in Bristol.

Sarah, our new 100 deeder from Saturday kindly bought vegan cakes and Matt brought pink wafers, so pretty much a perfect evening from my point of view!