Last night, GoodGym Nottingham headed to Sherwood Community Centre for one of our first properly dark tasks of the year.

Our mission was to clear a seriously overgrown patch of ground so a skip can be brought in, while also cutting back enough brambles to expose a gate which was totally unusable.

Meanwhile, Nigel took on a spot of mowing on the lawn next to the car park. However, this was abruptly curtailed when a yoga class began inside the community centre and it was decided that Nigel’s mower may disrupt the peace in the yoga room.

About 15-minutes into the task, the daylight started disappearing, so out came the head torches and a few portable spotlights and on we went.

As the brambles were gradually defeated, we made an important archaeological discovery – several large stone 'megaliths'. In true GoodGym fashion, we immediately began speculating whether we had stumbled across some kind of ancient Roman settlement or one of Nottingham’s greatest undiscovered historical sites.

By the end of the evening, we had cleared a substantial area, freed the pedestrian gate from its brambly captivity and made good progress towards getting the space ready for the skip, and, quite possibly, uncovered a piece of Nottingham’s Roman past.

Well done to Walter, Giovanna, Matt, Nigel, Leah, Peter and Rachel.

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!

GoodGym Nottingham took to the streets of Sneinton this week to help local community organisation, IMPACD CIC. IMPACD runs inclusive movement, participatory arts, and community dance sessions and they needed help spreading the word to the local residents.

We split into two groups on arrival and set about posting flyers into letter boxes, covering a surprising number of roads and houses in the vicinity (and spotting a surprising number of cats!). After an hour, we walked back to the Greenway Centre (where IMPACD are based) to debrief and discuss how many more tasks we’ll have before we lose the light evenings (head torches are ready!). Next week should still be light - why not sign up here and join us!

We welcomed new volunteer, Tim, to his first GoodGym session and Sian to her second. They were joined by Nigel, Peter, Leah and Rachel.