It was full-on Bristol after a weekend of Harbour Festival loveliness to see hot air balloons back in the sky with the International Balloon Fiesta a few weekends away (and a cancellation of Ashton Court parkrun - you've been warned!). The general GoodGym rule of "see balloon, must point" was well-practised by the group of 5 walkers and 7 runners who'd joined forces to help clear some Southville Ward streets of weeds and save them from Bristol Waste's glyphosate.

Roddy found us by searching for the red t-shirts, Frances caught us up by searching for the right red t-shirts (there's no pulling the wool over Frances' eyes) and we all found the wheelbarrow of tools and made a plan after only five or so minutes chatting.

We were soon tacking the weeds on Murray Street, off Catherine Mead Street (not necessarily names after this Catherine Mead, but she's in the Academy of Cheese so deserves the name-check), Cameron making great in-roads beyond the parked car and Tom (named after the first King of Croatia, obviously) was a pro with the long-handled weeder-knife-thing, putting Vaguely Northern Darren's short-handled weeder-knife-thing to shame. Roddy was great at scooping up the piles of weeds and dusty dirt pulled out and swept up by the assembled mass of GoodGymmers.

Despite what the photos might suggest, Richards B and G worked really hard, too and Caroline, Jason and Helen seemed to have a race to fill the bin bags as quickly as possible so we soon ran out of official bin bag space and resorted to domestic bags.

All the bags were moved to the normal Bristol Waste pick-up spot, where we took credit for a number of green bags already there, Bristol waster will be thoroughly confused as we'd used clear (recycling) bags for the green waster and some of the green (non-recyclables) bags were blatantly full of drinks cans and bottles. Such a dilemma!

A great, if once again slightly warm, evening, finishing with a drink by the harbour at Workout where Caroline had a HUGE jug of oat milk with her pot of tea, we established everyone's birth month except Frances who protects her privacy with aplomb, and wished Ed well on his adventures to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow for his wardrobe-enhancing volunteering stint (and he's no longer on the naughty step, if anyone's asking).

See you all next week?

A warm walk, a good weed of Jerusalem Sage, dill-looking Mare's Tail, Dock and dying Sticky Bud plus some skilled shaping of berberis and then back to Workout in time for the kick off with surround sound (delayed feed) TV coverage preempted by the crowds watching outside at The Apple.

And bumping in to Richard G for a chat - all lovely.

A bit of a warm one (something of a habit this year) meant, once again, everyone joined the walking group across the city to Brunswick Cemetery for the removal (destruction) of the beautiful Jerusalem Sage and Acanthus Mollis before they spread their seeds and take over even ore of the gardens - anything that's described as a "vigorous" plant and, in this case, also "robust" make for good planting and robust, vigorous GoodGym-style weeding!

i don't think we've ever had a pile of green waste that's taller than our GoodGymmers, but we have now! We know we'll have a short-lived feeling of being in more control of the wildness in the Cemetery for a couple of weeks after all that effort, and rewarded ourselves with the July edition of GoodGym Eats at Rudy's ridiculously speedy pizza place - great food, lovely cocktail-style soft drinks with slightly furry fruit plus the usual, weird, GG Bristol chat. With air con. Perfect.

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 :-)