Thank you to our lovely team of GoodGymers for helping out with a bit of an odd task this week!

Part 1 was an adventure into our loft to bring down some old CD racks that are being transformed into planters for a local charity. Dave and Andy seemed to have some pent-up rage as they ripped off the backs with their bare hands!

We then walked the racks in a rather unusual convoy through the streets of Buckland, then set them in place and started loading them with compost ready for planting in spring.

As we were finished in plenty of time, we tidied the shed and had a little basketball challenge. Dave also tested out the pirate ship slide and declared it a good experience, "except for my spine". That is certainly a review from someone creeping closer to 40!!

We enjoyed a casual 2.5km run along the seafront this morning, with the rain fortunately holding off whilst we were running. The wind was a little bit forceful along the front though - and we also had to carry on a little longer so Andy's run hit a round number on his Strava!

We did manage to get most of our coffees down before the rain tried to come back, but did get slightly wet bottoms whilst we sat at Coffee Cup!

We ventured out of the city this evening, with a slightly shifty-looking rendezvous in Sainsbury's car park. Walking and running groups made their way uphill to St Andrew's Church, where we met up with Chris, the church's volunteer gardener.

An impressive array of tools made their way from Chris' car to the compost area, where we set to work loading the contents of a make-shift compost heap into bags. This will allow Chris to build a functioning container for the compost, keeping things much tidier.

In her enthusiam, Judy somehow managed to upturn a whole shovel-full of compost over Ness, who in turn nearly took David's head off with a pitchfork. I wonder if I might need to work on my risk assessments! Wilson unearthed a 10ft python* whilst digging, which Ness kindly and carefully moved to a safe new home.

We certainly worked up an appetite, but luckily Val provided some tasty brownie bites to fuel our run back.

*it was a slow worm

Our team was small but mighty this evening, joined by the legendary Barb for a night of brass polishing.

We'd made great inroads with the cleaning last week, but with the aid of toothbrushes and the creatively named "Pink Stuff" even in the most intricate portions of the brass knuckles came up a treat I even polished so hard I made a hole in my rubber gloves!

Finishing off with a Brasso rub-down, we got the task finished just as the clock struck 7.30pm - timed to perfection.