It was great to have Simon, Martha, Miriam and Maria join us for the first time tonight! We treated them with a game of Whoosh to get warmed up (I promise our warm-ups are not normally that mentally challenging) then split into our two groups.

A bunch of us headed off, navigating our way through the Extinction Rebellion protest, to St Werburgh's City Farm Gardens. We met Sarah and Emily who had a whole host of tasks for us to get stuck into. We split into groups and swarmed off around the gardens, weeding all of the paths, cutting back overgrown bushes and trees, removing bindweed from the grounds, watering plants and turning compost. In just 30 minutes, the group did an amazing job of getting all of this manual work done - apparently the compost alone would have taken the team two weeks!

While our trusty clan of barrow-returners went off to the farm, the rest of the group were lucky enough to have a Lunge Off in their two teams. Who knew there was quite such a height difference in the group until this challenge?!

A marrow-thon effort

Meanwhile, Maria led a group up the steep hill to Bramble Hill Farm. They were met by Kim and Adi, our youngest GoodGym helper. They all set to work with various tasks around the farm. This was mainly taking photos of the pigs, but also included lots of weeding, watering of the veg, collecting eggs from the chicken, post-bashing and bindweed removal. Their hard work was rewarded by getting to pick and take home some massive courgettes. Queue the marrow puns...

A marrow escape

They finished all of this just in time to pull themselves away from the hilltop view of a hot air balloon-filled dusky Bristol and make a run for it down the hill, newly equipped with some summer squash. After cooling off and discussing Darren's rocker days over Ross's delicious birthday macaroons (thanks Ross!), the only other key subject on the cards was this week's menu because...

Tomarrow's dinner is courgette to be decided

No pun credit is taken by the author: thank you to Gary, Mel, Clem and Richard.

Welcome to Vale, James, Amber and Andrea who joined us for the first time tonight! It was great to have you along and we hope to see you again soon. It was a big one as we celebrated...

The Centurijon

as Jon hit his 100th Good Deed! He was sorely mistaken in thinking he would let it slip under the radar. See the photos to see an up-close action shot of him actually doing his deed and pulling a notably unsightful weed out. Great deeding Jon!

The group split into two so we could help our two tasks for the night. Alice led half the group to Bramble Hill Farm where they got to work doing various tasks around the farm. Darren was soon running around with a wheelbarrow in tow while the rest of the group were filling the barrows, sorting netting, gardening and pretending to be the animals... All in an evening's work.

The rest of us went to Zion in Bishopsworth (with a few impressive folk doing some hill sprints on the way) where we were met by the ever-organised Jess who had written all of our tasks on a list. The group then spent the next 30 minutes crossing off as many of those as possible: Kait had her first run-in with a mop in over a year, Darren, Vale and Mel got into some therapeutic blackboard painting and Shreena got herself into a rabbit hutch while the rest of the group weeded and groomed the outside and scrubbed and cleaned the inside and all of the toys.

Jon with the wind

We filled up with oranges and almonds before starting the downhill run back. The two groups were reunited in Queen's Square where we watched Jon put on his centurion outfit. This centurion then headed to Chilli Daddy where the staff looked on as the warrior battled with a spicy noodle soup.