#GG10 - Barley & The GoodGym Factory

This run marked GoodGym's 10th birthday and for GoodGym Norwich, we've been around for nearly 1/4 of that time.

We like to do things a bit differently in Norwich at times so tonight we set a new record distance of over 12.5km!

This didn't stop many as we still had a turn out of over 20 GoodGymers who knew this would be a lovely task.

David C was celebrating his 10th good deed - it's all about the 10's this week.

Catherine and Leanne were back runners.

Here in Norwich we've developed a good reputation for visiting care homes to build friendships with the elderly. This is why we were invited for our first visit to Barley Court in New Costessey as the staff wanted the residents to experience more contact with the local community. They may not quite have expected the amount of us that showed up!

We set off on the 40+ minute journey, which wasn't necessarily the flattest of routes with a few uphills thrown in. To keep people occupied I suggested everyone shared their favourite GoodGym moments with each other.

On arrival, the residents were then arriving in the communal area, so we spread ourselves out across different tables and discussions began with residents. I'd kindly been sent a couple of copies of the new GoodGym book, so these were shared with the residents.

I don't normally come down for social events but I wanted to for this as it sounded great and it is great! - Barley Court resident

The residents were having a fantastic time chatting away, especially the lovely gentleman who got to be between Katie and Katy.

These tasks are always difficult when I have to call them to a halt so we can head home, but we did have a good 40 minutes with the residents and I know this made a big difference to them.

We finished up with a big group photo with the new Goodgym flag at the helm.

... it was then time for the 6km+ journey back to the Forum! Everyone who was going the whole way back made it back even after tackling Grapes Hill at the end! Well done everyone :-)

Next week it's a much shorter run as we do some gardening at Suffolk Square.