We have made so much difference to the winter view of the Burial Ground - lots of the previously-hidden gravestones can now be seen as soon as you enter the green space as the bramble forest has been cut to just a few inches - now to see what happens in Spring...

We were joined by Jen for the first time, a recruit from Greville Smyth junior parkrun volunteering, who quickly joined in the chopping mission to find the ground as well as the gravestones. Operation Find The Wall is now underway, having successfully cleared all the way to the far path.

Soundtrack for the evening was mostly experiences of volunteering at Glastonbury (trying to stop festival-goers contaminating the watercourses by encouraging them to use the provided loos) to childhood experiences of being blamed for things which a sibling had done, including sibling's graffiti-ing walls or windowsills in a less-than-sophisticated way. But also times the GoodGymmer had been the sibling causing the mischief...

Lots of chat and lots of chopping, Richard B as ever getting as much done in their Solo spot as the rest of us put together. The Whirling Dervish of Bristol GoodGym.

Time to pack up and move out, Vaguely Northern Darren went back to look for Melanie's missing non-gardening glove which was mysteriously found under the now quite soggy lights in her bag - if only there was a light on whilst putting the lights in the bag...

The rain and chill had lessened considerably for the journey back and we were lulled into a fall sense of dryness and warmth at Workout as we enjoyed our post-run/walk tea, hot chocolate, chai or pint. Until we were putting soggy hats, gloves and jackets back on. Roll on the bramble-growth of Spring but also warmer rain!

What a great Group Run/Walk to welcome three lively new GoodGymmers, back at one of our favourite tasks - and INDOORS!

We were chock-a-block at Workout to meet Nachiket, Tanmay and Joseph for their first GoodGym experience - we hope it's the first of many.

Runners strode of and the walkers were hot on their heels, joined by Richard B "fresh" from their Arc of Attrition exploits at the weekend through horrendous weather. It made for much chat through Castle Park. So much so that we forgot to turn left and walked a longer way to Emmaus than ever before... Well, it is the January Challenge :-)

Xanne was waiting for us and we were in the warehouse of joy for the first time in a while. its all change with the mezzanine being cleared for a fantastic project with St Mungo's running apprenticeships.

Weird and wonderful jobs including boxing and shelving unsorted donations in a tidy semi-organised ways, constructing beds to work out which pieces were missing, clothes "tat or treasure" and carpet tile piling that was more skilled than it looked.

We were busy bees as Xanne knows us of old and is the only task beneficiary that has a back-up list of tasks to keep us going when we've been so efficient to clear part one!

As ever, there were treasures to be discovered, old racist/sexist newspapers, figurines of old naked people cavorting, an evil clown-y figurine and Kingsley bagged himself a keyboard stand, as you do.

We were soon off sgain, many of us to Franco Manca to trade our kilometre Strava pizzas for real pizzas - fantastic Tuesday, everyone!

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!

We were well-prepared for the evening's session back at Hebron Burial Ground, or thought we were, with plans to conquer the social media worlds of Instagram and TikTok, except for not videoing anything.

But we got up to great chopping with first-timers Emma, Angela and Aaron getting stuck in despite the "light drizzle" making everything a little more slippery than we'd hoped but turning out to be good practice for the black ice in Queen Square on our way back.

There was a wall of GoodGym activity across the upper part of the burial ground as we get ever closer to the far boundary, snipping and slicing and chopping and raking away the brambles, doing our best to keep warm on a chilly night.

Chatting kept us going with Time Travel and rehabilitating tyrants by showing them love as children, flights to Barbados turning around mid-Atlantic due to goings-on in Venezuela, comedy clubs and gigs around Bristol and how lovely Bristol. And GoodGym Bristol especially.

All rounded off with a bit of skating on the black ice and warming up at Workout with tea or cider - same again next week?

As GoodGymmers arrived for the task, the news spread that our venue for our festive Eats was unexpectedly shut with what turned out to be a norovirus outbreak - officially not festive. So whilst the teams set out to scavenge, take photos and collect litter on the way, Richard B and Melanie set about finding a substitute venue (The Stable was also closed, no room there).

Photos were soon flying about the WhatsApp group of 12 Days of Christmas achievements, runners versus walkers with excellent examples all round.

With a table found at Rudy's, a new venue for GoodGym, smiles were firmly back on faces as we worked out the complexities of food and drinks whilst "enjoying" Richard's specially-sourced prizes of jelly sweets where some were pickle-flavoured for a Russian roulette style flavour experience - shall we call that a new tradition?