Once upon a time, on a slightly windy and far too cold Tuesday evening in April, 4 adventurous GoodGymmers, Richard, Tanya, Helen and Meyrick ventured out once again to help the British Heart Foundation in their annual book moving exercise.

To explain, there are two British Heart Foundation shops in Bath, you could almost call them Bookends to each other. One has a giant storage room in the basement, the other does not. I guess, over the year, book donations build up in the one that can't store much and a tipping point is reached. That is where GoodGym step in.

We've done this for them over the years many times, and all that is required is that we move books from one shop to another. It's a short walk for sure, but the books are heavy. Usually they have a logistical solution for us, and this year it was in the shape of a massive wheelie bin.

In truth, the mighty GoodGym could have carried all the books across by hand well within the hour we had to complete the task, but the wheelie bin helped speed up delivery time and we were done in half an hour. Client satisified, we made our way home and everyone lived happily ever after.

Sometimes at GoodGym we’re just too darned efficient here in Bath!

Today our mission was at the British Heart Foundation shop in town.

I say the shop … this was our second problem. There are actually currently two shops, and as we’ve done a couple of times in the past the task was to transfer a pile of books between one branch and the other.

The bulk of us arrived, checked in, and loaded up with our first bundle of books. Back outside the shop we met Stephen and set off over to the other branch a few streets away.

In the meantime Dan and Ellie arrived at our original rendezvous, and to compound our nightmare even more, as is it often the trouble in town telecommunications weren’t the best, and somehow we managed to completely miss each other. We’re really sorry guys!!

We only had a handful more books to transport, but by the time we returned to store #1 to get them we’d managed to miss them again.

Finishing up super early we retired to a nearby pub for a coffee/hot chocolate, and where Stephen and Meyrick had a long natter sharing detailed beard-care tips.

And Lo it came to pass, on the second to last Sunday morn afore Christmas, it did snow. The weather is fickle and arbitrary of course; little did it know GoodGym had a Group Run to a very important Christmas Mission organised that very same morn.

In a first for me as Run Leader this introduced a Health and Safety risk I hadn't had cause to consider before. However we have all the correct comms channels and before any of us had even left our homes we discussed and agreed to cancel the run, ensuring at the same time that everyone was safe getting to the mission in the snow ok.

Team Assembled! And what a team: Mary, Holly, Kate, Jer, Emily and Meyrick arrived bang on time despite the weather. "We're basically the Avengers!" someone said; (that might have just been me and I'm not sure anyone was even listening).

The British Heart Foundation need no introduction and we have worked for them before. Back in the Autumn we helped relocate a veritable library of books from their shop in Green Street to the one on Westgate Street. This time, the Mission was twofold. Firstly, we needed to go out and purchase Christmas decorations with which we could decorate their Green Street shop window. Secondly there was more book ferrying to the other outlet in Westgate Street also required.

We split into two groups. Jer, Kate and Holly side-quested to find decorations (petty cash was supplied by them for this). This left Mary, Emily and Meyrick to start 'Book Walking' (there is a Mannequin involved as well, I'll come to that later).

Not 15 minutes later, Team Awesome and Team Amazing reconvened in Green Street and we set to work on the decorations. Serious commendations go to the creativity of the teams, working with just £12.50s worth of decorations and some empty cardboard boxes we found whilst raiding the back office. We covered the boxes with wrapping paper to make them look like presents, and then we gave the three Mannequins in the window a festive makeover. Think Grand Designs meets America's Next Top Model.

There was just time for one more book run before we left, the British Heart Foundation Bath now ready for the Christmas footfall. Ho Ho Ho.

We were met at the British Heart foundation shop by the shop Manager and a large pile of bags and boxes full with books and clothes ready to transport to their other shop.

We filled the trolley with the heaviest items and Mary and Chris moved the heavy trolley through the city. At times we thought Chris and Mary had been drinking as the trolley went in all directions apart from forward and in a straight line :) Their story is that it had wonky wheels but do we believe them? Haha.
The other shop must have heard us coming a mile away as the trolley was so loud on the old streets of Bath that it was hard to hear each other over the noise. A resident even stuck his head out of his building to check out where the noise was coming from. Apologies Bath, it was the trolley, not us!

Rachel and Meyrick carried boxes and bags whilst Helen took pictures, laughed a lot and offered words of encouragement to the team.

It took just 3 trips back and forth to deliver all the books and boxes to the other store and we did it in just 40 minutes. I wonder how quick we could have done it if we moved like they do on supermarket sweep?

Another mission complete, another satisfied charity.