It was a winning night for team GoodGym Nottingham at Green’s Windmill and Science Centre in Sneinton. We love coming to this hidden oasis each summer to do a bit of weeding and tidying to help out the regular volunteers during their busy season.

On arrival we spotted the windmill all wrapped up in white – not in anticipation of the later England match, but because it is undergoing an extensive restoration project involving mending the cap, repointing the exterior of the tower, stripping and repainting the interior of the tower, refurbishing the sails.

The site’s Heritage Development Officer, Jamie, met us on arrival and took us through to the gardens. He set us to work clearing the pathways of weeds and fallen apples, and we spent the next hour enjoying the calm summer’s evening, chatting away as we worked.

GoodGym tasks often bring out the most bizarre and unexpected of conversations. This task was no exception, somehow ending up with an insightful chat about mummification between three of the group. No idea how that started, perhaps inspired by the windmill’s current bandaged façade???

Well done to this week’s volunteers - Leah, Nigel, Natalie, Matt, Sarah and Rachel.

Next week we're back at the ICCA with the very exciting addition of some delicious Indian street food on offer - sign up here.

Wooooah, we're (roughly) halfway there! Woooooooooooooah! And paint is in our haaaair!

This week we were tackling the most intricate part of the ICCA's railings so far – the double gate!

We were wondering what the letters in the middle of each gate were and I'm pleased to tell you that I found out. The building was originally a factory for Thomas Forman and Sons – apparently inspired in design by Buckingham Palace. Every day's a school day.

I'm not sure if it was the heat making it super gloopy or what, but the paint was still as unwieldy as it was back in the dark and windy nights we were here in the winter and spring, so we all came home sporting various levels of paint coverage ourselves. Rachel had to bathe her legs in white spirit to get hers off!

We also welcomed back Florence and Elspeth after some time away. Hopefully see you all again soon!

Between a certain football match taking place and various other reasons, today's task was down to the dynamic duo of Dayna and Leah.

The always-lovely Hya kitted us out with spades, rakes, baskets and a shopping trolley and asked us to work along the edge of the kerb, getting rid of all the weeds that were sprouting up.

Much to the chagrin of the various bugs and beetles who'd been lurking in and amongst them, we made some really decent headway and moved a good chunk out of the ground and onto the compost heap.

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.