A beautiful evening for a run/walk to a new task beneficiary - well, new for Tuesday evenings, it's one we've been visiting on the last few Sundays.

The Green House is owned by the Council but they'd had to pretty-much abandon the building due to costs. It's an eco-friendly, green-roof wooden building that's now leased to Xquisite Spaces who have big plans for community events as well as renting out the studio and other indoor space. They've spent the winter repairing the inside (including rotten wooden floor and many leaking pipes) and for Spring have turned to the outside space which had become incredibly overgrown.

Also part of the lease are six parking spaces and hedge line, two of which have been used as a dumping ground for building waste and the holly bushes have thrived on neglect. This bodes well for the future, just with a little more taming!

Lifting, shifting and brutal cutting back are GoodGym Bristol key skills and over 60 minutes the unloved-looking spaces were transformed into actual parking/utility spaces with plants that can thrive and years of leaf mulch skillfully chucked under the bottom of the hedging plants/trees. Lots of very old litter was also pulled out of the now-quite-a-lot-thinner holly and sorted for recycling or actual litter and the green waster was added to the pile for collection.

Then the rocks - from the builders' rubble dump, lots of bits of tarmac, concrete and a few bricks to lift and shift, some braving heaving lifts with spades (newly acquired by Lou from Xquisite Spaces from a second-hand tool search), others grabbing handfuls and the system leading to the Rock-Queue - thank to Frances for the pun, I'm sure Jason is jealous it wasn't him but pretty confident he'll find ways to get it into conversation over the next week or so.

Having wowed Lou with our ability to get weird things done whilst having a good time, we were off to Workout or, for those feeling a bit peckish, Rosa's Thai for our monthly Eats - a local eatery that doesn't mind a group of sweaty runners turning up for a quick bite and a lot more chat. Possibly the speediest service we've ever had, and NO RAIN AT ALL - more of this, please!

We had a sunset! We saw stars because there were no clouds! We had new GoodGymmer Shubham with is for the first time! How good could this get?

As the walkers arrived they could hear the chip-chopping of the runners, already socking it to the brambles as we try to find the wall on the far side of the Burial Ground, progressing across the entire width of the previously bramble-filled space.

With Richard B swanning around somewhere soggy, Richard G took ownership of the Shears of Destruction to make excellent progress to the wall, even if he did trap himself behind the new wall of chopped bramble.

Meanwhile Cameron and Nachiket created a tunnel to the back fence after Cameron had already helped Caroline to clear the tool shed of encroaching brambles.

Whilst Vaguely Northern Darren raked up choppage, the main team were working on the latest bulk-of-brambles zone, revealing more gravestones - the whole space is looking lovely, before the brambles and nettles get a burst of energy is Spring.

The day's discovery was a babyfoot table, though it turns out only Melanie knows thats what its really called, not table football.

We all tried to learn a but of Japanese but we're finding it really hard - anyone have any tips?

More opportunities for good deeds this week, and a walk around the Light Festival on Friday, too - see you soon?

More January to get through but lucky for us we have GoodGym Bristol to see us through - hopefully the only Group Run of the month with an outside task and the weather was KIND!

We were tasked with beautifying (OK, clearing the litter from) the areas around Redcliffe Nursery School/Children's Centre which gets a lorra litter (in a Cilla Black voice). We were only challenged by one local but mainly he was seeing if we were looking for a cat. No riot Police at all this time.

Working around the school, we also reported the flytip that Bristol Waste have since said is on private land (despite being at the back of the school, an emergency exit from the Council tower block and just off the road), excitingly across the Banana Bridge (sooo yellow (in a Sinita voice)) and tidily along the side of the river, finally finding Frances.

One more pile of flytip reported, we tied up the bags, stashed the litter-picking kit, washed our hands and headed for burgers at Three Brothers, lovely as always with the addition of a game of Mayo Top Trumps and league table of scores from the NHS Healthy Choices quiz which goes to show that 10/10 is achievable!

Having double and even triple checked we were definitely on for St Werb's Community Centre, its was time to get excited about counting cutlery for the Festive Friends event. Oh, and wrapping Christmas gifts.

It was a great first task for https://www.thecomedybox.co.uk/site/301.asp?catID=2508 to get stuck in to, with Ousmane proving his photography skills weren't a one-off last week.

As the runners sped (faster than the walkers) off across town, the walkers maximised their chat time on a delightfully dry evening, past the Christmas Fair in Castle Park and many-a group enjoying the evening.

Harsheh has developed a new skill of getting ins huge number of the photos, whilst Becky shared that attaching lengths of sticky tape to a technical T-shirt is a fabulous storage tactic as they peel back off wherever your ready for them, no fluff included!

The cutlery was speedily counted with Carolineon Quality Control to ensure no soup spoons were mixed in with the dessert spoons before moving on to ensure every price sticker was removed pre-wrapping.

The team effort of cutting paper and tape and wrapping the gifts, with only Richard B managing to make a parcel look rude, was a veritable hive of activity and soon the trays of unwrapped gifts were trays of festively wrapped ones.

The walkers had a head-start but soon saw the runners ahead of then at a road crossing enabling most of the runners to have already ordered at the bar and arranged a big enough table for us to enjoy the treat of mince pies from Richard B.

That was a great evening, shall we so it all again next week? Fewer* parcels to wrap though. *None.

Another task switch for the ever-flexible GoodGym Bristol team as the task beneficiaries couldn't make it - plogging to the rescue with different routes for runners and walkers.

The runners agreed (well, were persuaded under duress) to pop into Old Market Assembly if they were passing to checking they DO have a booking for the panto theatre-goers after far too much "Oh no, they haven't", "Oh yes, they have" email exchanges and unanswered phone calls and messages. Phew.

Ousmane joined us for the very forst time having already conpleted his TaskForce training AND had volunteered as photographer - thank you and welcome! And Becky was back, having not waited 5 years again this time.

Everyone chipped in with Caroline backmarking, Vaguely Northern Darren run leading, Jason choosing the runners' target zone, Richardpromoting GG to everyone with his merch-wearing and Kingsley keepy-uppy conversations about footballing. Or something. Ed and Melanie were even helped by a petrol tanker driver who brought litter to us so we didn't get too close to his tanker delivery. Excellent team effort, everyone.

Looking forward to the rest of our December sessions :-)