It was almost not raining, and then only drizzly mizzly on the 15 GoodGymmers who artived in Queen Square for a lovely Group Run or Walk.

Not only were Gaia and Genevieve back for a second deed, Will and Seb were the first to arrive for their very first visits to GoodGym - we hope to see you both again very soon, in your matching outfits!

The runners outnumbered the walkers this week and 9 GoodGymmers were sandwiched between Run Leaders Vaguely Northern Darren and Richard B as they set off to St Werburgh's Community Centre and the four walkers set about hunting litter on a walk across the city centre.

The runners navigated the flooded subway via the handily-placed Bricks of Dryness (BoDs) and set about tidying the play area in St Werburghs. We definitely didn't touch the plant that had the 'Do not touch' sign on it, but we did clear all of the soil, remove the weeds, and tidy toys up, as requested.

Meanwhile, litter-picking and tidying were happening on the walk up to and around Brunswick Square and, once that was tidier, through parts of the Cemetery where Richard G, Jason and Frances were introduced to the wonders of Renée and Renata by Melanie. The 80s were odd.

8 runners (backmarked beautifully by David) and 3 walkers left Queen's Square 5 minutes apart and met exactly 1 kilometre from our starting position. Melanie stayed local as shes being unusually sensible with her broken foot.

For this week's homework, I would like to know how fast each group walked/ran and the first to correctly answer, will win a prize!

On with the task, we found the tools for the job behind reception and set to work on clearing up this amazing (and very well used) community space.

11 hands made light work of the weeds while dodging pre- and post-Pilates people (a novelty, we're more used to Yoga people), and attempting to translate the French lesson from the PowerPoint slides (Vaguely Northern Darren's 'F' in French A-level in 1990 did not help!^)

Richard G diversified and as well as proving adept at light holding, showed us his super sweeping skills, Gareth showed us his knife skills for those hard to reach wall weeds and Frances told a pirate joke that Laura (as our resident Cornish pirate) hadn't heard before!

When there were no more weeds to remove, the Walkers headed in to the night and Jason joined the runners for a change and showed us he can run if he really really really has to!

^Melanie's "A" at A-level Maths in 1991 thinks this was probably also 1991...

It was a double-header group run for Bristol GoodGym with the walkers heading to a different task than the runners!

The runners sprinted (at a jogging pace) over to St Werburgh's Community Centre for the first tidy up of the outside space this year - we're hoping to make this a regular task this year to get on top of the more pesky weeds. We think there was a yoga/relaxation class going on as people in one room were lying in the dark, otherwise we should probably have alerted someone...

The runners did say they could so with more tools there - asked for info to pass to the task owner, the on-chorus response was "snippy-snips" at which point Melanie realised that, much like parenting toddlers, its sometimes not useful to have used nicknames for items. It's both short and long snippy-snips desired - or secateurs and shears to is gardening professionals.

Meanwhile, the runners returned to the day-time Community Mission task beneficiary at Sparks to get a second coat of paint on the newly green and blue walls. With rollers and dodgy brushes, it was a much quicker start which was great as we'd have been needing to leave before Dave had managed to get the lid off the paint at lunchtime!

With both areas looking fabulously smart, it was time to RV back at Workout where there was speed-dating happening but we were all talked out.

So much daylight for the GoodGymmers who met at a buzzing Queen Square in the sunshine - numerous (2) volleyball games, a drum and base solo party and lots of after-work socialising. There wasn't a spare seat to be had at King Street as we walked or ran past the drinkers.

Vaguely Northern Darren was run leading through the streets and parks and already had the team on the task by the time the walkers were crossing the bridge over the motorway.

There were various areas needing weeding and sweeping and we were soon differentiating between nice plants to keep and weeds to murder, made easier when they were growing on the path or in the wall! We found watering cans, a water butt and, just too late, a hosepipe.

Sneaking into the shady huts for our end of task photo, Paul managed to be in the photo twice using his wily cunning. Or something.

The runners set off for the return to Queen Square after a quick rendition (ish) of Here Comes the Hot Stepper, everyone getting excited about Phill's vegan millionaire's shortbread to celebrate his 200th good deed which was actually on Saturday but he forgot to offer them round so the Tuesday Group Run Club benefitted instead.

We enjoyed sitting outside at workout with a Very Funny new member of the refurbished bar staff (the bar was refurbished, not the staff, they're just new), chatting away until there was only one piece of shortbread left. We're all so polite in Bristol.

It was great to meet Josh whose first good deed was last week when I was poorly - only a few of last week's attendees were here this week so Josh had a whole lot more faces and names to get used to, helped by having two Davids/Daves - just like GG Central where we hear our Godfather Dave is not Techy Dave, who has been working tirelessly to get the website functionality back up and running!

We were VERY pleased when St Werburgh's Community Centre asked for help indoors rather than outdoors this sub zero Tuesday night.

We were set to help them get 100 place settings washed and stacked for their Christmas Welcome lunch for older isolated people - right up GoodGym's street.

They had new cutlery and other items from IKEA, to free the forks we had to find BIG SHARP knives to get theough the packaging and no fingers were lost at all.

Counting was a little haywire as we didn't have 100 big plates, small plates, bowls or sets of cutlery, but other than that we left a tidy, counted selection of almost matching crockery and tools, plus some very soggy tea-towels.

If you can access it, here's the timelapse video showing our skills - I'm sure the guests will appreciate it!

11 Goodgymers set off in the bright early spring sunshine, all talk of shirt sleeve weather, factor 50 moisturiser and Chris not even wearing a hat it was that warm, and headed off to St Werburghs to do good. We welcomed Madeline on her first ever GoodGym run and hopefully convinced her that all other running clubs pale in to comparison ( Maddy has already proven herself as an able arachnid analyser (see photo's, (warning, contains a photo of a spider!)). the raised bed/something or other (i didn't pay attention if it was actually named something?) needed to be dismantled, however, that was easier said than done, even with a spade and a 3 inch crow bar (maybe a Chaffinch bar?) we did manage to take one plank off, so it was a success really! A relay team of soil shifters and movers and some excellent weeders left the place looking great (when we turned our head torches off) and after the obligatory photo shoot ably managed by Alistair from St Werburghs, we headed back to Queens Square. thanks to Richard G for the pun and thanks to Darren for writing the run report as Mel was already asleep when he got back and he doesn't know what he's doing :-)