What a bumper crop of GoodGymmers under blue skies for a foray to Brunswick Cemetery after the inaugural presentation of Very Exciting GoodGym Bristol Badges for Run Leaders, TaskForce and extra special helpers. Watch this space for future developments!

We were joined by Jordan on his first good deed, Tom on his first group run and Freya back for her second Tuesday and looking totally different without her big woolly hat - fantastic to have you all on board. And yes, it normally appears a little bit chaotic at times but is definitely All Under Control.

With the tree popper/root puller on site and training demonstrations given by Top Tree Popper Marianne, Jordan was in his element tracking down protruding sycamores and brambles to be collected up into the Dumpy Sack of Doom, alongside Richard B's entrenching tool's victims.

Valè and Richard G took to the paving slab tidying, Richard missing his seasonal role as a lamppost already.

The bindweed/buttercup/sycamore club scouted out more widely - Caroline, Jason, Janka and Frances uncovered lots of ground and were very good at leaving the non-weed plants to grow, whilst Tom moved on to earn his Pathfinder status with the muddiness redistributed away from the golden gravel.

Ed and Nik grabbed the loppers and went in search of bigger things to chop - do much is now growing so fast!

And Janka's email address is nothing like kangaroo, in case you were wondering.

Until next week!

This evening's GoodGymmers were rewarded with a lovely sunset as we ran and walked to Faithspace in Redcliffe to collect the tools and trolleys for the night's path laying.

Last time we'd had days of heavy rain and were glad of the light drizzle, tonight was drier and didn't the turf know it! We seemed to have found a particularly rocky patch which Marky had marked (so Marky-ed, I guess) as the next path joining the planters. There's already been lots of positive feedback about how much easier it is to get to the planters and beyond.

The gravel is a special "self-binding" type which makes for marvellous non-shedding paths and, when its been left a few weeks, a solid lump in dumpy sack.

Once the edges had been marked and knived (?), we split into ground-chiselling and gravel-chillesing teams, definitely a tough workout tonight. Many different strategies were tried with the top methods proving to be stabbing with a big fork for gravel breaking and sitting uphill and spading downhill for turf lifting (called sods, for anyone wondering). We are so creative and adaptive.

Perseverence paid off, the new path was given its preliminary stomp, catwalk-style and flavoured water was enjoyed. Laura and Vaguely Northern Darren headed off for a longer run back whilst the rest of us finished off, tidied up and took the tools back to Marky's workshop.

Top path-making, team!

As well as the (now standard) path edge finding and sycamore sapping pulling. Today was the day that the bindweed had started to show and can start being tackled for another flipping year!