After a very heavy downpour, the sun came out just in time. I met Andy and Joel at HQ and we had a chatty run to the church, where Sallyann was waiting for us. We grabbed our tools and started pulling up the grass that was growing between the cracks in the paving. The rain had at least made it easy to get the weeds out, and we got a couple of sections of the path clear.
Good job everyone!

Next week our task is cleaning windows at Beaulieu Community Centre.

A team of 5 of us set off towards the new Hawthorns School, with an idea of where we were going, but in the knowledge that our maps may not get us to the right place. Our task was to assist with assembling tents on the school field, to provide shelter for the students in the hot summer months.

We made our best guesses and got to the right place, where we found a mix of tents that our host Louise had found locally on a social media marketplace.

Russell (best tent builder on the team) and David (best at keeping team morale up) started by helping the other assemblers, and managed to put a tent up successfully.

Jane (best at monkey bars), Ben (best tent building confidence) and myself (best at...supervising?) chose one of the other tents, and whilst we started out with a lot of enthusiasm, that waned once we realised the poles were so damaged that it wouldn't be possible. We decided it wasn't salvageable and went with the choice of Russell and David, and rallied together to build a six mesh sided tent. It was getting more ominously windy as the tent went up, but it didn't stop us.

Great work team, and lets hope the Hawthorns School have us back again!

See you all soon,

Laurie

Ten GoodGymers managed not to melt while helping look after the community garden in Broomfield. Nine of us arrived in the heat to find Jess already slaving away at our mission of moving a tonne of bark and watering the flower beds. Sallyann, Joel, Richard, Jess and Laurie were soon shovelling the wood chippings into buckets, while Andy, Rich, Leanne, Ben and Martin spread it over the ground and watered the plants. By the time we finished the smouldering mound of bark had been reduced to a mere mole hill. Well done everyone!