Five GoodGym Nottingham volunteers headed out for a special evening that combined two very different Nottingham traditions: litter picking and Goose Fair!

After meeting up in Carrington, Leah, Florence, Tim, Walter and Rachel worked their way around the local streets filling a whole bag of litter on the way. Good deed done, it was time for a well-earned reward...a trip to one of Nottingham’s most iconic nights out!

The group made their way to Forest Rec where the bright lights, terrifying-looking rides and enormous soft toys of Goose Fair were waiting. The first priority was refuelling with some tasty fairground food. Leah and Tim decided to try out the infamous Goose Fair mushy peas – as you can see from the photo, Leah seemed more sold than Tim! Afterwards, the group wandered around taking in the sights and sounds, ruling out any desire to try any ride that involved spinning wildly in the air or a stomach-churning drop.

After waving goodbye to Tim, the rest of the group decided that the Ferris wheel would be a suitable activity worthy of our time and money. As the wheel climbed higher, the group got a bird’s-eye view of the dazzling rides below, with Goose Fair glowing in all its colourful glory. And to make the evening even more spectacular, a huge, beautiful moon appeared to be hovering in the distance over the fairground (the photos don’t do it justice).

From filling a bag with litter to floating above the lights of Goose Fair, it was a brilliant evening of community, teamwork and a little bit of fun.

That's one way to describe blood donation, I guess!

Conversation always seems to take an odd turn when we're at the ICCA. Perhaps it's all those railings frazzling our brains like the static snow on an old TV (showing my age there).

It was a night of newbies last night, with Victoria and Walter joining us for the first time and Steph Ducat joining us from Ealing for a spot of tourism – thanks for the photos!

Our Team Scrape and Team Paint strategy is still working, although we might need to bring along some new scrapers next time due to some very exuberant work! I think this will be the last time we do it in the light for this year though, so I'll get charging the headtorches! Nothing will stop us getting to the end of these railings. Except rain. Rain is bad for paint.

THINK DRY THOUGHTS THIS WINTER!

...and did we need them!

We were back at Sherwood Methodist Church for some follow up gardening maintenance as, despite the summer heatwave, things have just kept on growing!

Splitting in to two groups, Matt and Charlie channeled their inner lumberjack/tree surgeon and got stuck into some serious heavy duty pruning (not enough wheelie bins to contain their efforts!

Meanwhile, Rachel, Rachel, Leah, Florence and Peter (ably assisted by Peter's wife Jane) were clambering among the shrubs (and trying avoid the spiky plant things) to cut down the tall labernums and, yes, the spiky plant, so the church sign was visible again. With a lot of tamping down two wheelie bins were filled to the brim - how we got so much shrubbery in them is a mystery!

Thanks as always to Janice and Tony from the church for organising us so efficiently - we'll happily come back whenever you’ll have us!

Another week, another night of chipping away at this monster of a mission!

This time, Nigel and ~Nat~ turned up early to get a head start with the scrapers, our new favourite tool as recommended by Joel last week.

Doing it this way really does seem to help speed up the painting process and I'm sure we got through more of the railings last night than we have done on any of the nights before. Although some of that might be due to painting in almost sub-zero temperatures earlier in the year… Team Scrape have prepped a good chunk ready for us to get cracking with when we come back in a couple of weeks.

Welcome to Chloe who joined us for her first task! Hopefully see you again sometime soon!

Dayna, Florence and Nigel were joined by new comers Saul and Joel for the latest session of painting the railings at the ICCA Centre. Saul shared his memories of the building from the days it was owned by Sunblest and the resulting daily aroma of freshly baked bread. He also produced a steel brush and paint scraper that improved the preparation process significantly. Definitely good learning for our future sessions at this task as we work patiently towards its conclusion.