It was a mild night, too mild one might say. We gathered in Queen Square for a short saunter over to Redcliffe for a litter pick. Do you have an oronnnnjary? If so what do you grow in it? We litter picked the car park by the school, we picked by the community garden, we picked like picky things that just liked to pick. A number of bags were filled and we made our merry way back to have a rather civilised pot of tea, little finger out everyone please! Now when is a plate a bowl or a dish? Can you stack bungalows? Not sure what was in that tea. This report was written by RG and may include themes of fiction.

if anyone else wants to add their recollection of events:

https://www.goodgym.org/admin/reports/bumper-pickings-nice-one/edit

For the second week on a row we had a late notice task cancellation but the stars aligned perfectly for an urgent visit to Redcliffe Nursery School and Children's Centre who were being visited by Ofsted the next day and wanted the outside spaces looking as good as possible despite the downpours of the last few days. They also mentioned trusting us with the power-washer that was confiscated from us on a previous visit as we made too much noise whilst a governors' meeting was also going on.

With the walkers taking a direct route and the runners setting off in the opposite direction, the walkers sneakily ticked off a couple of extra unicorns on the route and are beating the runners 10-9. The runners don't know about this ongoing competition yet so we'll see who reads this report...

With a small courtyard and a larger playground, we were soon busy sweeping, weeding, composting and power-washing between moving large pieces of play equipment and small trucks for transporting sand back to the sandpit. Sonehow it stayed dry for the entire task except for Matt and Vicky power-washing!

A lot of staff were in preparing for the Ofsted visit and we hope we brought a smile or two to their faces as we productively larked around in the playground, having a great time ourselves. It was a fantastic visit to list the school's spirits as we declared them Outstanding.

And then we went for lovely pizza (or salad) to Franco Manca as we hadn't chatted enough yet - thanks for organising Eats, Clo!

Who'd have thought collecting leaves could be such a challenge?

The Nursery had an initial plan for the Autumn and Winter of collecting all the leaves to the edges of the playground so they could do their natural thing of rotting down to feed their former owners, the trees but had been scuppered by the wind keeping blowing the leaves all over the playground making the place quite slippery and dusty for the Nursery children. Sam, the Headteacher, and Brian, the Caretaker, have big plans to reduce the size of some of the trees, meanwhile the leaves are to be turned into fabulous mulch.

Sam thought we had too many people for the task, but lo and behold we were so efficient that we needed two more rolls of bin bags for the growing pile of leaves to be bagged.

Sarah and Craig both got stuck in on their first task whilst returners John and BRIAN! showed they're now old hands - less of the old, though!

Oodles of leaves were brushed, raked and forked into piles and leafy-handed into the 30-plus black bags (thanks to Phill for counting) with small white-boards being re-purposed as extra "resources" (see, we can so school-speak!).

Tyres were rolled, planks lifted and platforms propped up to get at as many leaves as possible and leaf* the playground neat and tidy, ready for more play times. There was even time for a quick slide and to see how very tall Vaguely Northern Darren is, sitting on a totally normal-sized chair.

<* see what i did there?>

There was time for a different route back and a catch up drink at Workout for good measure.

Bye bye, January!

Bristol is no GoodGym group which only gets out to hit their new year's resolutions and January challenge goals: on our first run of February we had a massive 62 people join us to run and walk to do good. It was great to have a massive 10 new runners join us - welcome Chloe, Becky, Owen, Aidan, Steve, Beth, Reuben, Barnaby, Dom, Emma and Sophie! It was also great to have Ivo pop by on his travels to the South West - thanks Ivo!

Brooming marvellous

Alison stepped in to lead a group to Task 1 of the evening to Hannah More Primary. The group were tasked with making the place look spic and span, so it was all hands on brooms and all brooms on deck to get the place sweeped up and then everyone did a mass litter-pick of the grounds until it was spotless. They got this done so quickly they had time to do some relays on their return to get their heart rates up!

Meanwhile, Richard led the hardcore mob up (and up) to Task 2 in Clifton to do some leafleting for Children's Hospice South West's Rainbow Run. Not only did they conquer the hills, they also delivered 400 leaflets around the area - phwoar.

I introduce you to: The Red Barrows

Melanie was leading the walking group to do some additional jobs at Redcliffe Nursery, where we had helped last week. The group had a huge long list of tasks to get through, but there was so much sand from the sandpit which had been blown all over the playground in the recent bad weather, that they spent their whole session clearing this all back into the sandpit. Oh, and importantly setting aside some time to choreograph GoodGym's very own aerobatics display team, the impressive Red Barrows.

Sally is waiting for you

The rest of us headed up the cycle path for Task 3, helping The Matthew Tree Project with our regular donation sorting. The team were split into groups for tin-sorting (or sor-tin more like), crate washing and separating the food donations into food type. Everyone was also lucky enough to get a chance to meet Sally for a quick (but who knew 3 minutes and 25 seconds could feel so long?) session of Sally Up Sally Down. Gary admired how well Matt scrubbed up, and we all headed back on our way.

Once back, it was time for a good stretch off and for our GoodGym Eats for this month to Turtle Bay organised by Clo - thanks Clo!

It was great to have lots of new faces join us for the final Tuesday Group Run of January: welcome to Richard, Harriet, Isabelle, Pawel, Sara Sona! And welcome to Frankie joining us from GoodGym Hackney for the next few weeks!

We tested everyone's brain power with a game of Shona Says (back by popular demand). Everyone's brains were ticking pretty nicely and there was only a few forfeit sprints. We split the group into three to complete our tasks for the evening:

1. Donation sorting at the British Heart Foundation
2. Tree pulling for Up Our Street
3. Painting at Redcliffe Nursery

Skirting the issue

Richard led a team of 10 to British Heart Foundation to help with donation sorting. Divided between sorting donations, tagging them and getting a new found love of steaming, the group got through loads of donations and found some hot new outfit items for their wardrobes (see photo evidence).

No beating about the bush

Meanwhile, Gary led a group to The Dings to help Up Our Street in their garden beds their. The team were surprised at the task of all of them removing a bush in the middle of the bed. Surely it wouldn't take them all to do that? But half an hour of them rotating and shovelling later and the group got the satisfaction of getting the whole thing out - well done gardening team!

Painting the town Redcliffe

The rest of us headed to Redcliffe Nursery with Mel leading a walking group there. Once we had all convened (with some detours), we got inside and split between painting the corridors and offices, moving all of the pebbles back into the pebble pit, sweeping and litter-picking the garden and doing the Squat & Lunge 200 Challenge. After half an hour of rotating around the different jobs, the nursery had a new feature wall in their office, a tidy playground and a coat of paint on the entrance to their hall and we had sore thighs and bums and surprisingly un-paint covered clothes. We will be back again soon to continue the job!

Once we were all back from our different corners of Bristol, we were able to celebrate the wonderful Alex hitting 200 (and 14) Good Deeds - she hit the big 2-0-0 a couple of weeks ago but this was her first Tuesday run to be presented with her t-shirt. In the meantime, she has managed to rack up 7% more deeds than what was being celebrated, wow.

Good-deeded and celebrated, that was it for another night of GoodGym Bristol and the last of the January challenge Group Runs!

Pun credit to Gazza