Southville Ward have opted out en masse from the Bristol Waste glyphosate "opportunities" so are choosing the weed by hand rather than obliterate the gutters and gaps on their roads. Many of the roads have group of residents able and willing to help with this initiative but some are struggling so GoodGym Bristol jumped at the chance to help out. Even though it was blisteringly hot.

With walkers from Workout and others meeting us at the task, we were soon hard at it (well, gently and calmly dissuading the weeds from their temporary locations) with scrapers, hackers, slicers and brooms all playing their part. In the shade.

With frequent swaps and slops (of water to drink), we soon moved from Warden Road across to Church Lane, by some sheltered housing and private housing. So much grass, dandelions, other-weeds-we-don't-know-the-names-of and a few stones/rocks. Honestly, only a few rocks. They just felt extra heavy in the heat.

With a final sweep (both visually and physically), we were on our way with a secret stop/mutiny to ASDAl's frozen treats aisle to choose a pack of 4 fake Cornettos in mint and another 4 in salted caramel, the wrappers were off as soon as the "Your Payment is Approved" banner appeared on the screen. With only 6 of us eating the ice-creams we than had the surprisingly difficult task of giving away two Cornetto-equivalents - one to a now-happier security guard and the other to the SIXTH person we tried - how is Bristol not snapping up the offer of a free Cornetto?

Fingers crossed for a cooler one next week, off to Hebron Burial Ground with it's extremes-of-weather reputation...

OK, thats a really shoe-horned pun title but you know what I mint.

Another glorious Tuesday, the first trip of the year to Dame Emily Park's fabulous Community Garden that's grown so much since we started helping out years ago. Nowadays were helping manage the space and plants that are there rather than mass clearance or compost shifting in preparation and hope that things would grow.

Poppies that had already set seed were being pulled out, fragrant herb beds were carefully weeded, willow was woven into the new hedge (and a tiny bit of trying to help the willow dome and the all-important tasting of biscuits and fruit Ursula had kindly provided to keep us going. An unexpected treat was small bits/fruits (?) of wasabi that lots of GGers were brave enough to try.

The main feature, though, was celebrating Jason's 501st good deed - a huge achievement and so much good and happiness and wellbeing shared in Bristol - well done! And there were cakes, obviously, though decamped to Bar + Block as Club Haus in Workout was closed for the evening. It felt like a really fun picnic even though we were indoors instead of overlooking the water with pots of tea. And the team at Bar + Block took it in their stride, luckily for us :-)

30 degrees. Not just one of my favourite triangle angles, the temperature at the 6.30 set-off for GoodGym Bristol with Plan C - a gentle litter pick to remove the mess left by people "enjoying" the very hot weather.

Armed with litter pickers, bags and ice-creams from the lovely lady who delayed her journey home to reopen her ice-cream van for us, we wandered around shady (as in not-in-the-sun, not less salubrious) areas of Harbourside, designing the ice-cream network for Bristol's on demand, multi-flavour on-tap cooling system. Just normal stuff.

Ice cream van, litter plan, can we catch the rubbish man? Sunshine, can of wine, should the sun have a curfew time? Litter pickers, bags are full, sweat in places no one should, time to go, drinking time, I can’t take it anymore…

Rain may have prematurely stopped play but that gave us the opportunity to make some plans for the future.

We had a great chat about what attracts people to GG Bristol, how we can improve general outreach and specifically 18-25s both within and outside the Uni sector. Visibility is key so maybe some sessions in busier places with red t-shirts on show to encourage people to chat with us, maybe with QR code so people can instantly look us up.

And the tea/decaff cappuccino/coke was good too, plus Melanie and Darren's photos from Japan parkrun adventures, of course.