Pick up sticks & Tetris at the Nursery

Sounds like a bunch of kids playing games at pre-school? Well, not quite, but I was beaming like a happy child this evening as we headed to Braywick Heath Nursery. I was super excited to have a big group of GoodGymers signed up and to be helping this local charity for the first time.

Most plant nurseries just nurture plants, but Braywick Heath nurtures people too, offering employment, training and work experience for people with special educational needs and disabilities. We hope this session will be the first of many with this fantastic charity.

The task for the evening was to shift a huge pile of old wooden planks through a polytunnel and into a skip. The charity have expansion plans but lots of debris to clear and materials to move first.

We had a warm up and safety briefing and then, wary of rusty nails and splinters, we dived in. Picking up the planks felt like a game of pick up sticks or Kerplunk, whilst putting them into the skip was like Tetris. Fun!

I couldn't believe how quickly the pile started to disappear. We were nailing it! Nothing rusty about this team. Within half an hour, wood you believe we had shifted the lot. With help from task owner Kit we had also won our game of Tetris, creating the most neatly packed skip I have ever seen.

With time to spare, we decided to shift another pile through the polytunnel so it would be ready to fill the next skip. Kit would have been happy for us to head off early, but you might say we had tunnel vision for making as much impact as possible.

We finished at the task by taking our impressive 'after photo'. Kit gave us a lovely heartfelt thank you and we left with a skip in our step.

Now it was time for the run/walk part of our session. We normally do some of this pre-task and some post-task, but we decided to save it all for the end today to make the most of the light at the Nursery. This also helped out Kelley, Kate, Jess, Sara and Jen, who had to dash early.

Consensus amongst the remaining team was for a walk/run, so we set off with head torches for a 3km lap of the parkrun loop, alternating 1 minute running with 1 minute walking. As ever, it was great to get the heart pumping, have a natter, and escape into nature.

There's more fun to be had at the Nursery next week. Our Area Activator and Run Leaders are away, so it will be a Community Mission rather than a Group Run. All details and sign up by clicking here.