A small but mighty crew of four turned up to celebrate GoodGym Nottingham's third birthday at the Fox and Grapes in the city centre.

We were keen to replicate the heady days of winning the pub quiz at the Lion in Basford a couple of years ago, and made a sterling effort. Matt's geographical doodles gave us the edge in a round on longest country borders, there was an excellent collaborative effort in figuring out that one of the Bontempi organ remixes was Born Slippy by Underworld, and we had a good bash at getting some of the top 10 crisp brands in the UK (who knew Frazzles were so popular?)

The final bonus question was delegated to Matt – one person from each team comes up to answer a question written down on a piece of paper in front of the quizmaster. There was some sneaky trickery in the wording of said question, though. Matt knew that the last execution by guillotine in France was in 1977, and we were sure we had it in the bag, but the question actually referred to the last public execution by guillotine, which was in 1939. Bye bye, £60 bonus prize!

When the scores were announced, we were absolutely delighted to have come in third! However, another team, obviously having taken it very seriously, demanded a recount of their score. Unfortunately they had been incorrectly marked and we were demoted to fourth. Ah well, a £5 drinks voucher probably wasn't going to get us very far anyway.

Thank you to every one of you for attending our sessions over the past three years! Reinvigorated by meeting other GoodGymers from around the country at Shindig, we're working behind the scenes to help make GoodGym Nottingham the best it can be. If you have any feedback, things you want us to do, or want to get more involved by joining Rachel, Peter and Leah on Task Force, just get in touch!

It was a return visit to Sherwood Methodist Church for three Nottingham GoodGymers (plus Jane!) to cut back a well grown garden. Janice and Tony made sure we were organised so whilst Peter and Jane got stuck at one side of the church, Rachel and Leah took their loppers and secateurs down to the other. In all, four wheelie bins were filled (including literally briefly by Leah!) and much more could have been done. It should also be noted that no bees, owls or puffins were harmed during this task! We've been invited back in September so keep an eye out on the sessions page

Somehow, we've become the go-to team for "scrape and re-paint" tasks this year.

This time, we were back outside at The Lenton Centre (where we've previously been down in the basement sorting lost property and building shelving) to give some outside doors and railings a good going over.

As there were only four of us, we split into pairs to tackle the two sets of wooden doors first. The elements had done a fairly good job of getting rid of the bulk of the old black paint, but our scrapers definitely made a big difference.

Then we went round to the railings at the front of the building that had the added challenges of rust and more surface area. We all agreed it was extremely satisfying getting those little bits of paint to chip off, and discovered that they'd been painted blue and green once upon a time.

GoodGym Nottingham returned to the Sherwood Community Centre this week to assist with various tasks. We LOVE coming to this place for our sessions as our host, Louise, always has some interesting and varied jobs for us (as well as our on-going painting project in the basement which we’ve been enjoying over the past few months).

On this occasion, Dayna, Hollie and Paulina took on the painting, continuing to paint over the old yellow colour in the toilet and corridor downstairs.

Khiltee, Leah and Rachel washed down the walls in the main hall with sugar water to prepare them to be repainted. The room is used for various activities including a children’s playgroup, and the walls have seen many-a sticky finger, painty brush and rogue felt tip pen over the years!

Meanwhile, Nigel and Will had the fun job of remounting some of the borders around the display boards in the hall. The existing paper borders had become too tempting for little fingers to pull off and so were looking a bit worse for wear. After measuring up and trimming bits of hessian, Nigel and Will enjoyed using the staple gun to secure this on the boards and make them look neat and tidy once again.

Before tidying up and taking a few groups photos, Khiltee and Will also helped Louise reattach the welcome sign in the foyer of the centre which had fallen down. The team also hung up a few lines of bunting in preparation for Sherwood Art Week (there will be more bunting-hanging at our next task on Friday 5 June – see details and sign up here).

Another great evening’s work in the bag, and a big welcome to first-timers Hollie, Paulina and Will. We hope to see you again soon!

This week saw us return to the Meadows Food Bank. Did you know it was the venue for GoodGym Nottingham's first "proper" task nearly three years ago? Leah, Peter and Rachel were all there for it, and by the way the tasks fell, it turned out to be the venue for Leah's 100th this week. Most serendipitous!

We met up with Mark as usual on arrival who had plenty for us to get stuck into.

Leah and Peter summoned up their inner Dale Wintons for a round of Supermarket Sweep, boxing up two-person packages ready to be bagged and sent home with service users in the coming days. Meanwhile, Khiltee, Nigel and Florence were on clothes duty, hanging things up on rails and making it look a lot nicer. Matt, Sarah and Charlie were bagging up toiletry packs (somehow that stock of mini soaps is still going).

Finally, it was all hands on deck sorting out the dried pasta stocks, making sure everything went in the right date order so the older stuff gets distributed first.

We just had time to gobble a few celebratory muffins and flapjacks before heading our separate ways.

No task next week, but we're back at Sherwood Community Centre on 3 June!

When famous Ultra runner Damian Hall puts out appeal for help it felt like the GoodGym thing to do to volunteer.

Touring the country on a speaking tour, Damian needed an extra pair of hands at the end of the show. So, Peter stepped up and manned the book stall.

A really interesting night learning about how the body changes with age and how being active can help. Being active sounds right up GoodGym's street!