Forget me not cafe are finally meeting again at St. Edward Community Hall and so we are also returning to help them tidy up the gardens with the larger tasks they have been unable to complete.

I felt more than half asleep when I arrived at Roald Dahl Plass early on Sunday morning to help man the baggage area for the Cardiff Bay 10k. I didn't spot the other two runners who had signed up to the mission, so made my way to the volunteer area, picked up my Extra Milers T-shirt, and listened to the morning briefing.

When it was time to head over to the bag drop and my fellow GoodGymers were still nowhere to be seen, I began to question things. Was it definitely this race that we were meant to be helping? Did the community mission even exist at all, or had I just dreamt it? Was I dreaming now?

I decided that questioning my own reality could wait until later, and in the meantime I might as well get on with the job. The process sounded quite simple in theory: the long tent was split into multiple sections based on race number, and each section would be attended by two people. Runners would hand in their bags and we would put them in some kind of sensible order ready for speedy retrieval after the race.

Clients of the 1001-1500 range were initially quite slow to appear, but a major surge as we approached race-time meant that our section ended up less like a neatly ordered repository and more like just a big pile of bags. Luckily we had plenty of time during the race to sort everything out, and by the time the runners were back to collect their belongings, we had settled on an efficient retrieval process. The fact that so many people took the time to say thanks despite being exhausted from the race made it all worthwhile. We were also very happy that everything was claimed by the time we finished. The last thing we wanted was an unidentified item in the bagging area 🤖

As for my fellow GoodGymers, it turns out they were both unfortunately unable to attend at the last minute. I guess I wasn't dreaming after all!

A great return to times gone by with 20 goodgymers joining for tonight's Tuesday session.

Welcome back to Siki for your second group activity, great to see you back with us again.

First timers, Hayley, Jamie and Hannah welcome to your first group run with goodgym Cardiff and the Vale.

A shorter run tonight meant only one thing, time to insert an exercise routine... YES I hear you cry. We bid farewell to the walk / joggers and made our way to the park to start a quick routine, the music began and so did the pain, but it felt good. All of a sudden the time had flown by and we realised we had to make our way to the task, so off we went.

By 19:00 we had all arrived at Samye ready to get going with a list of tasks, we had a white board made up instructing us for the evening.

• Painting one of the rooms.
• Emptying out some items from the attic.
• Weeding the front entrances to the buildings.
• Weeding around the back in the community garden space.
• Moving the Buddha water feature from the back to the front seating area.
• And finally, removing the crocosmia (montbretia) from the front planters.

It was a good job we had 20 of us tonight, so we split into our groups and got to work.

Straight to work were team 'crocosmia', ripping out the plants and bunching them for anyone that wanted to take some home. Whilst a beautiful plant when they flower, they can soon take over a plot by spreading, I will be putting them into planters ready for next year.

Next to get in were the painters, grabbing rollers, trays and paint they made their way into the building to start the transformation. The colours were bright and very Tibetan Buddhist, the room will look wonderful once finished.

Weeding teams got to work at the front and back of the building, getting the paving looking tidy once more and making the whole centre much more welcoming.

Lorraine took up the team to open up the attic and talk them through what needed to be removed, whilst I went over to the final few to start moving the brilliant Buddha water feature. It was by no means a small thing, with the pedestal being made of concrete slabs and blocks, once the attic team had finished they joined up to help move the Buddha and rebuild within our time.

Tools down, get some grub.

Lorraine was a wonderful host tonight and made up some snacks, so it was time to clear up and take some time to chat, laugh and eat. However, it took far too long to get the painting team to put down their rollers and enjoy some food. We will return soon to finish off the painting and get through some additional tasks, don't you worry about that TEAM.

A quick photo and suddenly it was dark and time to get back to our start location. It's time to get your lamps ready........

Wrong LAMP!

Head or body they all work well, but they will most certainly be needed over the next few months so have a look online as we all need to stay safe with our exercise.

Due to reasons beyond our control tonight's task had to cancel at the last minute, not to be stopped we decided to put on a plog of the park.

Nathan cycled down to provide us with plenty of litter picking bags, even though he wasn't joining us for the session (what a STAR) and whilst waiting we welcomed back Peter after a whole YEAR and to the FIRST ever session we welcomed Siki.

All gloved and bagged up we split into two group, one for the walkers and one for the runners and off we went. First, we made our way to the fields of Junior parkrun to see if they needed a tidy up, along the way hitting the rugby club car park and trying to figure out how you can lose your socks?

After 20 minutes it was spotless and time to move on, so we got together and ran ourselves over to the start of the Blackweir parkrun (I'm sensing a theme here). We found a dog or three along the way who seemed as though they wanted to join as our mascots, chatted to some locals about goodgym and what we do whilst also obviously cleaning the well-used pathways.

As we got close to the beginning there was just enough time to quickly hit the balance trail and test our skills, from rope bridges to springboards it was certainly a test and great fun.

A quick photo for the end and our evening was complete, thanks to everyone for helping to keep the park the beautiful place that we all need it to be.