Double trouble for our first daylight Bristol GoodGym Group Run with two tasks - BEAUfort Road Allotments and BEAUley Road for the Southville Centre.

Sweeping and digging, forking and brushing, tidying and prepping plus oodles of chat and a bit of football for good measure.

Here's to more daylight evening tasks!

Three GGers helped to clear an unused allotment. There was lots of old wood and a tarp to pull up, revealing lots of critters living underneath including what were identified as slow worms (technically a legless lizard) by Julie. We then started digging up some of the grass and turning over the soil for planting, getting quite a lot done for three people in an hour.

It was great to have Ben and Maz join us for the first time tonight, and to see Robin and Will again after breaks!

Once we had warmed up, Patrick led a small super speedy group to Strawberry Lane Allotments to finish the job we started there a few weeks' ago. Tonight, this was the big task of shifting one hundred 25 kilogram bags of sand and gravel down the steps at the allotment. With just seven pairs of hands willing to take on the challenge and a tough uphill 5km run to get there, it was a huge job. However, the guys still did it in record time before doing some more record timings back down to get back just in time for 8pm. Impressive stuff!

The rest of us started on our own long run to Zion Bristol. This was a new task, so it was great to meet Jess there and get stuck in (even if we had to tackle a big hill of our own to get there!). Jess from Zion explained to us that they are a super busy community hub, with the cafe during the day and 200-300 events per year on there in the evenings. This means there are a lot of odd jobs and cleaning jobs which the small team do not have time for. She was incredibly organised and had a list of tasks and laid out equipment for us to get our hands on.

The outdoor team got to work weeding, brushing pavements, clearing gutters, litter-picking, cleaning outdoor furniture and Mair and Olivia showed their artistic skills while giving the outdoor toilet a repaint.

Meanwhile, the indoor team had a big cleaning job on their hands from all the tinies who had been there over the past weeks. The chair team screwed all the legs fully back on and gave them all a good clean. All the surfaces were scrubbed and Dave got to work cleaning the toilet. Russ led a team with a long felt contraption and three pairs of hands to clean the metal beams.

Before long, it was time to eat the pastries Jess had kindly provided for us and get jogging (thankfully downhill) back home.

Tonight's pun credits to Shreena (as does the Task Finisher award of the night - thanks Shreena!).

Welcome to Ross and Paul who joined us for the first time tonight - great to have you!

Dazzled by Darrens

After we fed the escaped chickens (don't ask), we split up into two groups for tonight's tasks. Patrick led a group of to Strawberry Lane Allotment. Darren from Strawberry Lane was met by the group and our two Darrens, so they quickly set up a Darren-area (with Paulin becoming a temporary Darren) so they could answer all Darren-queries in unison and self-prescribe themselves as the plural terms of Darrens - a Hunk. What a treat for the Strawberry Lane allotment crew...

A slab in the face

Amid all this Darren-ness, the group were challenged with the task to help move 80 cement slabs across the allotment. After already doing a 5km (uphill) run there, legs were tired but the team were not to be defeated. They worked overtime to get it done and it has now been classed as the most hard-work task in over a year. Well done to everyone who helped with that tonight - we will be returning to Strawberry Lane next month to continue the workout!

Mulch to do?

Meanwhile, we took things at a much more leisurely pace along to Holy Trinity Church to help the Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group. The team split up into four tasks: *Clearing an area and putting down non-slip matting *Bagging all of the leaves and mulch on the pathways *Cutting back an overgrown area to build a future vegetable patch *Leaflet the local area to advertise the gardening group which meets at the church

The team powered through these tasks, then set to work on an additional task of sawing two Christmas trees which had been stranded since December to small pieces to clear the walkway. More importantly, we still had time for the important task of making light work of the juice and biscuits kindly left for us.

We headed on our way back along the harbour with a cheeky stop for a planking Mexican Wave (so much more fun than a regular Mexican Wave...) and got back in time for Alice to do lengths until we perfectly hit a Strava 5k. Great work!

A perfect sunny day for a run along the river to St George today.

We were due to help Wellsping Healthy Living Centre with their allotment but since there was only really enough to keep 12 people occupied today and since we hate to waste a potential doing-good-opportunity we picked up a few litter pickers from Bristol Waste and put together a small task force to 'plog' around Netham park.

Strawberry Lane

The allotment at Strawberry Lane was particularly beautiful today - with the little pond looking very appealing in the sunshine. It was well worth the steep climb to get there from the river (or at least I though so). On arrival, Louise tasked our first group with moving a variety of pieces of timer and pallets from around the sheds into a pile at the other side so that they can all be burned to make more useful growing space. This involved a variety of techniques including the well-loved human chain, a few wheelbarrow loads and some pair work with the heavier sleepers.

A second group worked to move a pile of stones - some of which looked pretty heavy! The group got through this in no time and proceeded to help out with the timber and get cracking on a little digging.

In the 40 minutes we were on site the timber and stone was all moved and we look forward to returning to help fill the raised planters in a few weeks time!

Netham Park

It turned out that there wasn't actually all that much litter to be found around the park, but I'm pretty sure there was none to be found at all by the time Charlie and her team were finished. The team also found time to make friends with the group playing football there who I believe were involved in an outreach initiaitive to Ghana - even getting themselves invited to a BBQ! Thanks to all of you for agreeing to take on this less glamorous task - its always massively appreciated when everyone willingly distributes themselves where they are needed when we have multiple tasks like today, and its why I love this club so much.

Thanks to Charlie for leading the Netham group and to Jack both for back marking mine - and also for todays pun (swipe left if you like it).

Have a great Bank Holiday weekend everyone!

A double task Saturday today both involving some good wheelbarrow action, amongst other things.

Paul got us nicely warmed up, before taking a crack team of 4 over to St George to the Wellspring Healthy Living Centre community allotment with a tidy up.

This appeared to involve clearing out a bath full of mud and lots of other mucky stuff over into a big pile and the treat of meeting a big bird en route to the task.

Big thanks to Paul, Julie, Paddy and Alex for taking on the longer run and mucky task!

Meanwhile the rest of us headed over to the Malago Berry Maze, the scene of many a GoodGym task over the past year or so and unfortunately, the most recent of these seem to have involved helping to repair damage done by vandals who seem to be doing their utmost to destroy the brilliant work done by Raluca and her team of volunteers (including our good selves) - very sad.

So we had two teams weeding the Berry Maze plot who managed to get the area looking fabulous in no time at all. And a trip to the Berry Maze wouldn't be the same without ferrying lots of mulch in barrows over to the maze and spreading this along the paths. And there was the small matter of replacing the damaged and not-too-sturdy stakes with bigger, thicker models - some very enthusiastic and energetic pile driving going on there! With the new, more solid feeling stakes in place, it was then time to reattach the wires, marking out the route of the maze.

It was a warm morning so we were very grateful for the fruit and water that Raluca had provided that not only kept us going on the task but also sustained us on the route home.

Lovely morning, two tasks well done, nice one!