Led by the wonderful Edith, the Ideas Hub has been supporting underrepresented communities in Chelmsford since 2011, and after moving from temporary location to temporary location, they finally have a permanent home where they can grow roots.

Rich lead Richard and Ram there on a 2km run, and arrived a minute after Jane and Sallyann, who walked there the short way.

Tilers were coming the next day to fit a new floor, so the first job was to prepare the ground, peeling off old bits of carpet underlay, and chipping off rough pieces of concrete. Richard immediately asked if there was a hammer, and started on the concrete, joined by Ram. In the other room, Sallyann and Jane had a go at the old bits of carpet.

Before we left, Edith gave us a tour of the building and told us some of her plans for the place, including cooking workshops and movie nights featuring food cooked by the refugee communities. There is a lot of work to do before they can open, the old kitchen needs gutting, and there'll be lots of cleaning and decorating. We'll be back here next week to see the new floor, and to help with some more jobs.

Thanks all for coming and we will back their again next week to continue the good work.

8 GoodGymers went to Hearing Help Essex to give their garden a tidy while the builders are in doing renovation works. It was great to see Ram back, joining us for his second group run.

After a chatty run, we met Sallyann there, and were about to get stuck in when we realised we didn't have the code to the key safe. Luckily Rich found the email with the code so we didn't have to break in.

Martin and Ben got the tools out, Sallyann got stuck in clearing the path, and Joel took all the weeds round to the compost bins.

While we worked, Andy told us he was looking forward to the Clacton airshow; hopefully it won't be cancelled due to thunderstorms, but if it is, maybe he'll do the run leader training instead 🙂

This week we had a social after the task, so for once we didn't run back to HQ, but ran to Brewhouse instead, where we met Fay. We arrived just as their quiz night was starting, and (after much debate about rivers and county boundaries) came a creditable 5th out of 20.

Well done everyone 💪 Next week we are delivering charity leaflets around Melbourne.

PS Ram gets a Social Media credit for showing group admin Rich how to add his name to the WhatsApp group 🤦‍♀️

Under what felt like an extra warm sun, we welcomed Ram for his first GoodGym Session. I had mis-read the distance, it was actually 2.5 miles rather than kilometres, but Ram was unphased and ran the most out of the four of us by a long way. Thankfully, Jane actually had checked the distance and directed us so that it wasn't even longer.

We found Sallyann already in the Beaulieu Community Centre with a bottle of Flash lemon. The conversation dominating partial eclipse was due to peak at around 7.15, so we gave the sinks and surfaces a good scrub before heading outside to not look at it as none of us had special glasses. It wasn't eclipse-y enough for Andy, there was still too much sun.

The kitchen was left smelling fresh and looking shiny, a task well done!

Next week, Martin is leading our pub leaflet fold.