It was a winning night for team GoodGym Nottingham at Green’s Windmill and Science Centre in Sneinton. We love coming to this hidden oasis each summer to do a bit of weeding and tidying to help out the regular volunteers during their busy season.

On arrival we spotted the windmill all wrapped up in white – not in anticipation of the later England match, but because it is undergoing an extensive restoration project involving mending the cap, repointing the exterior of the tower, stripping and repainting the interior of the tower, refurbishing the sails.

The site’s Heritage Development Officer, Jamie, met us on arrival and took us through to the gardens. He set us to work clearing the pathways of weeds and fallen apples, and we spent the next hour enjoying the calm summer’s evening, chatting away as we worked.

GoodGym tasks often bring out the most bizarre and unexpected of conversations. This task was no exception, somehow ending up with an insightful chat about mummification between three of the group. No idea how that started, perhaps inspired by the windmill’s current bandaged façade???

Well done to this week’s volunteers - Leah, Nigel, Natalie, Matt, Sarah and Rachel.

Next week we're back at the ICCA with the very exciting addition of some delicious Indian street food on offer - sign up here.

Wooooah, we're (roughly) halfway there! Woooooooooooooah! And paint is in our haaaair!

This week we were tackling the most intricate part of the ICCA's railings so far – the double gate!

We were wondering what the letters in the middle of each gate were and I'm pleased to tell you that I found out. The building was originally a factory for Thomas Forman and Sons – apparently inspired in design by Buckingham Palace. Every day's a school day.

I'm not sure if it was the heat making it super gloopy or what, but the paint was still as unwieldy as it was back in the dark and windy nights we were here in the winter and spring, so we all came home sporting various levels of paint coverage ourselves. Rachel had to bathe her legs in white spirit to get hers off!

We also welcomed back Florence and Elspeth after some time away. Hopefully see you all again soon!

A small but mighty crew of four turned up to celebrate GoodGym Nottingham's third birthday at the Fox and Grapes in the city centre.

We were keen to replicate the heady days of winning the pub quiz at the Lion in Basford a couple of years ago, and made a sterling effort. Matt's geographical doodles gave us the edge in a round on longest country borders, there was an excellent collaborative effort in figuring out that one of the Bontempi organ remixes was Born Slippy by Underworld, and we had a good bash at getting some of the top 10 crisp brands in the UK (who knew Frazzles were so popular?)

The final bonus question was delegated to Matt – one person from each team comes up to answer a question written down on a piece of paper in front of the quizmaster. There was some sneaky trickery in the wording of said question, though. Matt knew that the last execution by guillotine in France was in 1977, and we were sure we had it in the bag, but the question actually referred to the last public execution by guillotine, which was in 1939. Bye bye, £60 bonus prize!

When the scores were announced, we were absolutely delighted to have come in third! However, another team, obviously having taken it very seriously, demanded a recount of their score. Unfortunately they had been incorrectly marked and we were demoted to fourth. Ah well, a £5 drinks voucher probably wasn't going to get us very far anyway.

Thank you to every one of you for attending our sessions over the past three years! Reinvigorated by meeting other GoodGymers from around the country at Shindig, we're working behind the scenes to help make GoodGym Nottingham the best it can be. If you have any feedback, things you want us to do, or want to get more involved by joining Rachel, Peter and Leah on Task Force, just get in touch!

This week saw us return to the Meadows Food Bank. Did you know it was the venue for GoodGym Nottingham's first "proper" task nearly three years ago? Leah, Peter and Rachel were all there for it, and by the way the tasks fell, it turned out to be the venue for Leah's 100th this week. Most serendipitous!

We met up with Mark as usual on arrival who had plenty for us to get stuck into.

Leah and Peter summoned up their inner Dale Wintons for a round of Supermarket Sweep, boxing up two-person packages ready to be bagged and sent home with service users in the coming days. Meanwhile, Khiltee, Nigel and Florence were on clothes duty, hanging things up on rails and making it look a lot nicer. Matt, Sarah and Charlie were bagging up toiletry packs (somehow that stock of mini soaps is still going).

Finally, it was all hands on deck sorting out the dried pasta stocks, making sure everything went in the right date order so the older stuff gets distributed first.

We just had time to gobble a few celebratory muffins and flapjacks before heading our separate ways.

No task next week, but we're back at Sherwood Community Centre on 3 June!

For this week’s task we returned to the Sherwood Community Centre where our host, Louise, always has a range of fun jobs for us. However, before we started work, we had another important job to do…have a photoshoot!

We were joined by two photography students, Damon and Deanna, from Nottingham College who are working on a project about sustainability. They wanted to take a few snaps of us before the task, so the Nottingham Taskforce - Leah, Peter and Rachel - pulled out their best litter picking poses in the woods to get the shots that were needed.

Once everyone else arrived, we set to work in and around the centre. Peter, Shauna, Annie and Jo were out in the grounds weeding some of the beds and clearing leaves. Jo was joining us from Exeter where she is a GoodGym regular, so it was lovely to have a tourist in our midst.

Inside, Charlie, Matt and Nat did a bit of moving and shifting, and also built a shelf/trolley contraption for extra storage in one of the cupboards. After this, Matt had the important job of mopping all the signs in and around the carpark to remove all the dirt, bird mess and general muck that was covering them.

Finally, Khiltee, Leah and Rachel returned to the basement to carry on with some of the painting that we had been working on over recent weeks and months.

After an hour, we had a photo with one of Matt’s freshly mopped signs and went on our way.

Damon and Deanna's photography project will be on show at the Surface Gallery in Nottingham very soon, and we hope to go along to check out our photos and learn more about sustainability projects in the city.