Tonight we were helping the Mothers Who Make Coventry group with their new community garden project. They held a planter making workshop earlier in the year but they need more to be built to fill the space so GoodGym were called in to assist!

We were welcomed by Emily and Adele who led us through to the Old Grammar school yard, which is mainly pebbles and paving, but the vision is to fill this space with flora and fauna for people to enjoy. The planters that have already been made and planted up were looking great and we were eager to get to work to make some more.

We all got straight into it, tackling the pile of pallets with our crow bars, screwdrivers and hammers while James went back to the van to get out his power tools. Everyone managed really well as it really is a very time consuming job and difficult to do without the wood splitting. James’ circular saw was the best thing ever and made easy work of cutting the wood, like a knife through butter. After a while we all got into a bit more of a rhythm and found our feet. Talking of feet, I hope yours are ok Steve - ouch!

Collectively we made a good start on 2 planters and we will be booking in another session to finish them off. Was great to be a part of actually making something, looking forward to going back!

This evening 10 Goodgymers made their way to the brilliant charity that is Clothing Coventry and for a few it was their first visit.

We met at Coventry Boys and Girls club, chatted about the weekend and then split into a running and walking group. Louise and Sharon set off with Jackie leading on the walk whilst the rest of us warmed up with Laura. Laura had been researching some new warm up moves which got us really loosened up ready for the run!

The walkers arrived first and Joe met us there. Once we were all present and ready to go, Joanne set the experienced volunteers to work right away with some sorting whilst she gave a safety speech to the members on their first visit to CC. The main tasks tonight were sorting bras and shoes Georgia, Louise, Laura and Lilian were upstairs sorting bras into size order and packing them in boxes. Jackie, Allan, Joe, Deb and Graham formed a human chain to carry crates of shoes outside ready to sort into size and category, i.e boots, school shoes, sandals etc and label the boxes.

There were rather a lot of bras and other bits of underwear and bikinis to sort and the team spent the whole session getting them all organised with a bit of sweeping up in between . Once all the shoe crates were labelled up we formed a human chain again to stack them back up in the warehouse.

Everyone worked shoeper fast (see what i did there) so it was nice to leave with a job completed. Once we were ready to leave, the walkers set off on their way back and we said farewell to Joe who was also going straight home from Clothing Coventry. Making our way to Coventry B&G club, the runners stopped off for a fitness session of uphill pyramids making us work a bit harder seen as its such a short run to CC.

Didn't manage to get a team photo but got plenty of pics of this fab lot getting stuck into the task. Great team effort!

Next week we are off on our monthly visit to Charter House - hope to see you there :)