We couldn’t go to Sparks but we could celebrate an evening of NO RAIN by getting out and making our streets sparkling, or at least litter-free.

Runners set off for the Malago Greenway to help the watercourse and the walkers strides away to the edges of the City Farm (Friday morning Community Mission venue) to tackle the litter-catching hedges then along by the very swanky looking new student accommodation which seems to be by a culvert none of us have ever seen before.

As well as hauls recycling (clear bags) and litter (green bags) the walkers added a pair of boots, a pair of very soggy trainers and a sodden hoodie/hoody (?) and a shopping trolley which was duly returned to ASDAs/ASDAl and discussion ensued about Sainsburgs.

Everyone regrouped at Workout for pots of tea and an egg incident. Just your standard Tuesday evening

More January to get through but lucky for us we have GoodGym Bristol to see us through - hopefully the only Group Run of the month with an outside task and the weather was KIND!

We were tasked with beautifying (OK, clearing the litter from) the areas around Redcliffe Nursery School/Children's Centre which gets a lorra litter (in a Cilla Black voice). We were only challenged by one local but mainly he was seeing if we were looking for a cat. No riot Police at all this time.

Working around the school, we also reported the flytip that Bristol Waste have since said is on private land (despite being at the back of the school, an emergency exit from the Council tower block and just off the road), excitingly across the Banana Bridge (sooo yellow (in a Sinita voice)) and tidily along the side of the river, finally finding Frances.

One more pile of flytip reported, we tied up the bags, stashed the litter-picking kit, washed our hands and headed for burgers at Three Brothers, lovely as always with the addition of a game of Mayo Top Trumps and league table of scores from the NHS Healthy Choices quiz which goes to show that 10/10 is achievable!

Sub-zero temperatures and out litter-picking kit being being locked up for new year couldn't stop GoodGym Bristol from doing good.

Armed with trowel, hand forks and black bags, we left a patch if the New Cut much tidier and saved two bags of rubbish from being blown into the river.

Hooray for GoodGym Bristol!

As GoodGymmers arrived for the task, the news spread that our venue for our festive Eats was unexpectedly shut with what turned out to be a norovirus outbreak - officially not festive. So whilst the teams set out to scavenge, take photos and collect litter on the way, Richard B and Melanie set about finding a substitute venue (The Stable was also closed, no room there).

Photos were soon flying about the WhatsApp group of 12 Days of Christmas achievements, runners versus walkers with excellent examples all round.

With a table found at Rudy's, a new venue for GoodGym, smiles were firmly back on faces as we worked out the complexities of food and drinks whilst "enjoying" Richard's specially-sourced prizes of jelly sweets where some were pickle-flavoured for a Russian roulette style flavour experience - shall we call that a new tradition?

Well we laid down our burden but not in the African-American spiritual song … instead, 6 full bags of litter collected by the three amigos from the grassy verges of the riverside. We had to leave a challenge for next time in the charred form of a burned out motorbike … brrrring it on …

The website may be working - I'll come back and write more of a report about our amazingness.