What an amazing experience volunteering for 'Nourish', a new food provision service for verified rough sleepers provided by The Feed through the Pathways scheme in Norwich.

It provides food, support and signposting within a safe, indoor environment and started this week!

There were four Goodgymers volunteering last night including Lucy and Andrea from The Feed, along with Andy and myself. We joined another volunteer and learned the ropes for our first Friday shift.

The Feed provided great training and it was such a supportive environment.

We had busy shift with beef or vegetable bolognese along with teas, coffees, pastries and shortbread which proved very popular.

It was good to chat to the clients and provide warm food and drink in a safe space for them 🍲

(Photo by permission from Lucy x)

Tonight's run was the shortest for a while so it would have been rude not to take a detour to the task ;-)

A big welcome to new runners Tim and Jess.

We were visiting The Hamlet Children's Centre at the top of Grapes Hill to do some gardening tasks. A massive thanks to Grapes Hill Community Gardens for lending us some tools .

Now the reason we took a detour to the task is that Sam's (aka backrunner this week) husband made us a glorious looking Damson cake so I thought it'd be a good idea if we burnt off a few more calories, genius idea really. FYI the detour also included running up Grapes Hill.

It was one of those tasks that looked like there wasn't much to do but in fact there was loads. Mainly weeding and trimming bushes (no pun intended).

Some cleaned windows, Calum has a very fancy tool for this and them followed it up with a interesting technique when cleaning the gate poles... I won't repeat he described the so-called technique.

David kindly went home to get a broom and brush, which ended up being very useful to thank you for going to get them.

The team managed to fill lots of bags of green waste and cleared a lot in 40 minutes, especially on the road side where lots were overgrown.

Rumours started echoing through that there was an epic fitness session to finish up the night with... would I do such thing... YES I WOULD.

Alex tried to delay the inevitable by identifying another overgrown bush, apparently he likes them trimmed, again no pun intended. This bided about another 5 minutes but then it was time to head over to Chapelfield Gardens.

1st up was a running routing that involved groups of three. Two would run together a time and each loop they swap over with the runner waiting. That was done for 10 minutes.

Then to finish up was a pairs strength exercise. Person one does 10 squats, 10 push ups and 10 sit-ups. Once they completed those person two does the same and then keep changing over until both partners had completed 5 rounds. Apologies for any aching bodies over the next couple of days.

We headed back to The Forum, had a good stretch then ATE CAAAAAKKKEEEE!

Next week we're visiting Catton Grove Community Centre.

After a long winter we finally had daylight at the start of our run... roll on summer!

It was great to welcome Neil on his 1st GoodGym experience.

Well done to Hayley on doing the Wymondham 20-miler on Sunday.

Although she wasn't there tonight, a massive well done to Bek for doing her 1st ever Half Marathon yesterday... not bad considering she only started running about 6 months ago!

Also, some land marks tonight as Tom, Chloe, Sarah & Darren have now each done 10 GoodGym deeds!!!

A thank you to Elizabeth for being back runner tonight.

We had a rare indoor task tonight as we visited the Oxfam charity shop to sort through their book donations. There was a criteria sheet for which books can be kept and which ones had to be recycled... we were interested to hear what the definition of a 'dirty' book is.

Tom and Sarah took charge of the conveyor belt to take the recyclable books downstairs. However much they were tempted, they did refrain from taking a ride down it!

Alex was a little concerned he wasn't allowed in as there was a sign on the door saying 'No Studs Allowed' ... but then his head go bigger so he probably couldn't fit in anyway ;-)

The GoodGym-ers got so much done in 45 minutes (which equates to about 18 hours of volunteering time) and this makes a huge difference to charities like Oxfam who purely rely on volunteers.

On the way back we stopped to have a photo taken in front of a newly erected show piece outside the NUA.

Next week we are having an Easter Monday run to Grapes Hill Community Garden. This is the location of our very 1st Group Run in Norwich.