Dayna, Florence and Nigel were joined by new comers Saul and Joel for the latest session of painting the railings at the ICCA Centre. Saul shared his memories of the building from the days it was owned by Sunblest and the resulting daily aroma of freshly baked bread. He also produced a steel brush and paint scraper that improved the preparation process significantly. Definitely good learning for our future sessions at this task as we work patiently towards its conclusion.

Well done to Chris who went along to the Windmill Community Gardens Little Shoots Garden Party to help them tidy up after the event.

Our community garden tasks have been a little thin on the ground this summer, so we were very excited to be invited back to Arkwright Meadows this week.

Katie had a few different tasks for us, the first of which was rejigging their shop area. With the hot, dry weather we've had lately, a lot of the plants in it had seen better days and it was time to consolidate them to fewer shelves and move the empty units out of the way.

Next, we split into two teams. Those who weren't around for last week's bramble attack (Leah, Rachel and Charlie who was celebrating his tenth GoodGym task!) headed over to the area normally used by the children's group to clear some more of the spiky fellows and make the amphitheatre space safer for them. It was tough but satisfying digging them out and I think we made a lot of good progress. They definitely hadn't grown back to the levels we saw when we first came to the site a year or two ago.

Over on the other side of the gardens, Peter, Natalie and Nigel were on compost duty, moving the oldest compost into containers ready to be used and jumping up and down on the newer stuff to tamp it down. Good use of the GoodGym muscle, I'm sure you'll agree!

Three GoodGymers made their way down to Forest Rec to help out at this weeks Junior parkrun. Elspeth and Peter donned their yellow hi-viz and collected their arrows and cones to marshall around the two lap 2km course. Rachel meanwhile, put on the orange hi-viz, ears and tail for the important role of "tail" walker, brilliantly assisted by daughter Nefeli. 27 enthusiastic runners and walker made it round and Peter reached his 25 volunteer milestone. Just goes to show, not all heroes wear capes!

Ever had one of those tasks? It was a return to the Sherwood Community Centre for five Nottingham Goodgymers. Louise from the centre showed us to a different part of the site and, wow, definitely overgrown! Apparently, there used to be a path leading to a gate. The big question was, where was the gate! A lady called Carol waved a broom in the air to give us clue and so, armed with loppers, cutters and skip bags Chris (attending his first task - welcome aboard!), Peter, Nigel and Natalie set to work whilst Matt went round to the gate to set to from there. Eventually in Channel Tunnel style we met in the middle and there is now a path! Plenty more still to do to clear what is potentially a fantastic community space but if anyone can......

We were back at the ICCA tonight for some more railing painting.

It started a little differently, though, with Leah and Sarah meeting up for dinner at the ICCA's Dosti Club. Fully carb-loaded on noodles, chips and rice, plus a bit of mango kulfi where Natalie got in on the action, we headed down to get painting.

Charlie welcomed first-timer Jen, and we unpacked the kit. Leah finished off a tiny bit of the fiddly double gate we didn't get to last time while everyone else got cracking on the next section. We managed to get a decent chunk done in an hour, but we're seriously considering a hack Sarah had seen where you apply the paint with socks to get more done with a swipe.

So if you're joining us for one of these sometime soon, maybe raid your sock drawer on the way!