It's hot. Again. But we were headed to a shady spot. So shady, the planting is suffering in the heat and needing mulch around them to help keep the roots from becoming even more dry.

A lively surprise before we set off, Matt found us through Meet Up and got stuck right in even though he lives in Kent and was only visiting Bristol for work - we're hoping you have many more work trips to Bristol, Matt!

We were soon mulch-moving from Hedgehog* Hotel to bags to scattering around plants, which might have been weeds, but we'll give them all a chance. The lower the mulch level in the Hedgehog Hotel, the deeper the trowel dive to fill the bags and the plants closest to the Hotel seemed very popular compared to the ones up the steep steps, funny old thing.

With the Hotel now vacant, we topped it up with leaves from the furthest store, making extra space by some vigorous jumping from Vaguely Northern Darren to squeeze in just a few more, scraped from around the edges of the old leaf pile by Tom, litter extracted by Jason and de-twigging by Richard, Jason and Francesbefore the return to Workout and more bonkers chat overlooking the water. How lovely.

*No actual hedgehogs were harmed at this task

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?