Weed Better Grin And Bearpit

Another fabulous Saturday morning with a big GoodGym welcome to Emma who was joining us for her first run today - hope you enjoyed your first session Emma!

Knowing that our host at the Bearpit was not going to arrive before we did if we headed straight there we had a decision to make. Should we head there anyway and enjoy some lunges, squats and the like while we waited or take a bit of a detour to take in a bit of Bristol en route?

Unanimously we opted for the latter allowing us to gently meander across Bristol Bridge and heading over the (now relatively) new Castle Bridge, before I discovered that I'd left my phone at Roll For The Soul, meaning a trot across Castle Park and back to base, so we could get some photo evidence of all the good we were going to be doing.

Having suggested that anyone not wanting to appear in the photos could have their face covered by a bear's head, you crazy lot actually thought that might be quite nice - well your wish is our command (thanks Richard!)

We then headed off for a second time, directly to the Bearpit this time, where we were greeted by the wonderful Hannah of Incredible Edible who had organised some brilliant stuff for us to do.

First up, out came two carrying vehicles which looked a little bit like wheelbarrows but obviously weren't as we would not even remotely consider using a wheelbarrow in Paul's absence! Wheeling said vehicles up to Hannah's van by the Holiday Inn, these were filled with bags of compost and wheeled back down to the Bearpit, whilst the remaining bags were individually carried by our very strong feeling group together with a heavy bag of weeds.

Setting up a compost bag conveyor belt all the bags were placed neatly into the growing shed, whilst the weed bag carriers emptied the contents onto the compost pile at the top ground behind the sheds, discovering a huge pile of poop nearby, leading to a discussion about just what it is that bears do in the pit - same as what they do in the woods by the looks of things.

By now, the lovely Sarah had arrived to join Hannah in hosting us and both got us involved in some weeding in the brilliant garden covering the area closest to the bus station. Working in small groups with forks and trowels, we cleared a huge amount of weeds and ferried these over to the compost pile, helped by the extra time afforded to us by having such a short run back to base.

Time still seemed to fly by however and finishing off with a variety of group photos and saying bye to Hannah and Sarah, who are always so grateful for what we manage to do for them, we headed back for much needed stretches (a good physical workout today) and some lovely lunch.

Thanks to you all for coming along - I hope you enjoyed your morning as much as I did and big thanks to David for once again backmarking today.

Shouts out to Will for running to Pomphrey Hill and back for parkrun before joining us for GoodGym and to Richard for smashing his 5k target and PB and Chipping Sodbury parkrun this morning also.

Thanks also to Darren for coming up with a great pun, which we're going to stick in the "pun bank" as I couldn't resist using one that Richard came up with a little later - just proves that I'm stalking you all on Strava!

Until next time!