Refreshed from a bank holiday a massive group of ravishing runners met at Vivo to help tidy up Spring Hill with Incredible Edible and the yard at Emmaus.

20 runners came with me (Gary) to Emmaus. We ran around a mile to get there before being greeted by the ever smiling Xanne. She gave us an introduction and explained that our task would be a little different from the usual. Today we were to sort through all of the donated items that were put into the yard as they were deemed trashier than a romantic airport novel cover being read aloud by Oscar the Grouch. We were put to work smashing furniture, tearing fabric from mattresses, smashing electrical equipment to separate the plastic and metal parts and tool sorting.

New runners Roanna and Guido worked alongside veteran and recent conqueror of the Matahorn Ultra Madahorn Matt to sort a plethora of tools. While the electronics team had a smashing time a really swept the floor with their dance routines. But biggest shout goes out to the team taking on the task of removing the fabric from a mattress that had every spring individually wrapped. Needless to say they did not quite have enough time but we will be back to finish the job.

After finishing up and leaving Xanne happy with our work we ran back to Queen Square for a game of Chicken Otter Badger before stretching out.

On root to snow berry who's boss

The remaining 10 runners joined Hannah of Incredible Edible to mercilessly destroy the (superficially appealing) snowberries that were taking up valuable edible space that could be used for planting tasty food.

The 10 surely did the work of 20 and after haf an hour snowberry remains littered the path. Special kudos to Sophie who managed to break off one of the prongs on her fork in her enthusiasm and to the Godfather who totally laid waste to a particularly tough snowberry root.

Farewell from Goodgym Bristol to Louis who is heading home after finishing his job in Bristol. Hope to see you on the Birmingham run report soon, Louis!

Thanks for a great evening guys. It was hot and humid but you smashed it putting the jobs to bed no problem a-tool. Snow runder our task hosts reallly dig what we do and root for us all the way!

See you next time!

It was a warm and balmy night (or should that be barmy?) in Brizzle when 30 runners met to take on two tasks spanning the length of the city centre. After meeting and running through some warm ups we split into two teams. Dave's team headed to the Bedminster Patchwork Project to help tidy their South Street patch. My team we more inclined to go further and headed up to the Golden Hill Community Garden (or Golden Balls as I called it in the warm up) to promote their Harvest Fair on the 9th September.

Team Golden Balls

With my trusty back marker Nick team Golden Balls rolled through the streets and really shined when it came to tackling the hills. When we arrived at the community garden we were met by Clare. She gave us an introduction to the great work that the farm do offering people from all walks of life the opportunity to try their hand at gardening. To fundraise for their work they are having a Harvest Fair on Saturday 9th September. We will also be heading back their to help on the day too. We split into 5 groups, 4 flyering the nearby streets and 2 putting up posters to grab the attention of the passers by. Maps were handed out and instructions given before everyone took on the task. Due to long run their and back the time we had was short but that didn't seem tomato to these keen runner beans.

After 15 minutes most of the groups returned and were given a tour of the garden before we left. One group remained AWOL. Neil and Georgina were far too keen and wanted to put up all of the posters they could. Eventually we were all back together and ran back down the hill to Vivo for a stretch off.

The Patchwork Plummers

Dave's Patchwork Plummers fig-ured a shorter run would be a nice option. Taking a fine nine runners over to Bedminster we met up with the lovely Laura from the Patchwork Group, for the second week running, this time on South Street to help tidy up a small garden of land just on the approach to North Street.

Here we were greeted with a fig tree, plum tree, Fat Hen weeds and some bushes to trim plus some grass to cut. A pair of shears were in great demand with Petra tending to the grass, Guido tackling some weeds and Alice (combining shears and loppers, such a pro!) on bush duty.

Ed, Molly, Roanna (a combination of her mother and father's names apparently), Gulnara and Mel made a fine job of clearing the weeds and secateuring (?) the bushes, before we sampled the plums which in the main were a little sour for our liking but Petra seemed to enjoy them as she came back with a stash!

Our shorter run gave us more time on the task and so managed to leave the garden looking much nicer and neater than it had been when we arrived.

Massive well done to everyone who ran along tonight. It was warm, it was tough but you all delivered.