We had a big group with us tonight and it was great to have Sian, Lizzie and Alice join us for the first time - welcome! It was also lovely to have Alice D back from her mega-ultra last weekend, and she led a walking group on a litter-pick for Bristol Waste with Martha.

Putting our eggs in one basket

The rest of us played a game of Star Jump Tig to warm-up then headed to The Matthew Tree Project distribution centre, where we were helping for the first time. We met Amy there who had lots of tasks for us to get stuck into. These were:

• Sorting donations into the donation boxes
• Checking sorted donations and weighing them
• Loading the van with all of weighed trays
• Cleaning a big pile of trays ready to be re-used
• Sorting eggs into egg boxes

The group split into teams and got started. Clem and Russ felt confident with the technical skills required for the checking and weighing, "because they had SAT level Maths" so claimed that they were the pros for the job. Hopefully they have lived up to their strong claims...

While the team got to work, half of the us headed outside for a tough 10 minute fitness session (still 10 minutes, despite Dave trying to sidetrack me...). They swapped over and the rest of the group got their heartrates up, admiring Russ's speedy jump lunges as they went.

The team worked efficiently (all without dropping any eggs) and 30 minutes later, all of the jobs were complete and the warehouse was looking spic-and-span. Amy was delighted with the outcome and said it would make tomorrow so much easier for her team. Great work!

It was a very rainy Shrove Tuesday tonight. While the people of Bristol sat in traffic jams to get home to their cosy pancakes, we donned our waterproofs and got ready to run.

We were helping two tasks tonight: Group 1 set off to help Emmaus and Group 2 to help Up Our Street.

Emmaus had just got a big delivery of donations from another charity shop which was closing down. They therefore had a choc-a-block warehouse which needed sorting. Many bodies squeezed between each other and all of the donated goods to get as much sorting as possible to organise the warehouse going forward.

The second group (after having a long press-up, chair hold and squat stint on the way) were met by Khalil from Up Our Street who manages the Lawrence Hill area. He armed us with litter pickers, hi-viz and bags and the group split into teams of 4 to tackle each of the allocated streets in the 30 minute time frame. The group had soon cleared the streets and gathered over 8 bags of litter to be collected by Bristol Waste. Khalil was delighted with our efforts and has already asked for us to come back and help again.

The two groups ran back to base in the increasing rain and gathered for the second most important activity of the night (good deeds always come first, obviously): the Pancake Race 🥞. Each team was equipped with a frying pan and a pancake and instructed to sprint and flip until their whole team had successfully ran. Some questionable flips, some very muddy dropped pancakes and some downright mush later, I think we can truthfully say that we should probably stick to the running...

We rounded off the evening with an alternative circular, beige snack with our monthly GoodGym Eats to Franco Manca, where we warmed up stuffing ourselves with hot sourdough - delicious!