Despite the un-forecast rain this evening, Team GG were undeterred and made a big difference to the winter weeds that had popped up at St Michael's Church garden.

With the help of some hoes, spades and a curious edging tool, we were able to neaten up the paths around the church entrance and vegetable patch.

We've been invited back to help with some planting next month!

What an end to the January Challenge! Dave finished a whopping month of good deeds, hitting his 200 deed milestone this evening. Very poor show from me, forgetting the cape on such a prestigious occasion, but he will get to celebrate in style next week, I'm sure!

Father Hugo put us all to good work moving furniture around the parish offices. Many hands made light work and we were able to get extra tasks done, such as folding and organising church linens - Sammy was certainly living her best life stashing things neatly on the cupboards.

Val never did find out who had a fear of pancakes, but the acoustics in the church certainly made out fits of giggles sound very impressive.

After a rather sweaty run up from the Lido, we were greeted by Val and Louis with some refreshing glasses of iced water.

As well as our planned garden tidy up, Louis from St Michael's said he had a bit of a random job for us, and in true GoodGym Portsmouth fashion we agreed before finding out what it was! The team sprang in to action and did an epic job of splitting a large donation of dry dog food in to smaller bags for local residents to use. I'm not sure how the very specific 2.45 mugs of kibble per bag came in to being, but the end result looked very professional.

The other half of the team undertook some litter picking and weeding around the church site, and the flower beds were looking much neater and tidier by the end of the session.

Duncan has proved himself to be a master selfie-taker this evening, I might need to allocate him this role every week!

Tonight we had a hill to climb.... just our old friend Portsdown Hill, to get to St M's for our good deed.

Tonight Katie got to wear the magic cape of 200 good deeds. Well done Katie! And great displaying skills by Aoife for the pics!!

We met the new vicar, Hugo, and then set to work. 6 of us were on shed duty, emptying and refilling the shed in a tidy and ordered manner.

The remaining 4 were on picking duties, removing the litter that had blown / been thrown around the church grounds, including a Christmas Greggs bag and the usual bits of plastic and a few cans.

Once we'd got round the back of the church (still nicely cleared of ivy from our previous visits) the shed workers joined us to see how many GoodGymers you can fit in an alleyway and whether it's possible to photograph them all in one take!

Our work was done pretty quickly so we headed back down the hill with a spring in our step.

A Goldilocks task.... not too long, not to short, just right. Just like all our GoodGymers eh?!

Thanks to Katie L for the report title.

A small number of us headed up to St Michael's in Paulsgrove this evening using various methods of transport then ran/cycled to the venue to avoid the heavy traffic due to local firework display. The plan this evening was to help clear up the cellar but due to an issue with a boiler the cellar wasn't accessible for us this evening.

Not to worry as there were some leaflets that needed delivering to the community in the vicinity of the church. We had two different types of leaflet to deliver, one was advertising Fishcake Friday starting this Friday and the other advertised their Community Garden and also a Heat Hub that is being hosted throughout the winter.

We split into two groups and headed off into different directions, we soon got through the leaflets and successfully posted through doors nearby. We also noted that a few houses had their Christmas Trees and decorations already up! We met back up in the warmth of the church where we wondered whether to turn up on Friday for Fishcake Friday.

We're hoping to be back at St Michael's to clean the cellar once its accessible again.

Tonight's good deeders were all out to cacth a breath of fresh air, run/bike up a hill and end the day on a positive note. We were welcomed to our start point by a rainbow 🌈 and saw a beautiful sunset.

Due to a meeting, we were left to our own devices at the community garden so, while it was still light, we weeded the raised beds, flowerbeds and pathway. We also deadheaded the sunflowers, rescued one green tomato and forgot to pick any chard (if anyone is passing by, there is plenty there to help yourself).

We put the world to rights as we always do covering education, counselling, promotion, IT, online training (not a favourite!) and attention deficit.

We ran back down the hill and made it safely back to the Lido despite the lack of street lighting on the Western Road.

Another evening spent in great company.