What a bumper crop of GoodGymmers under blue skies for a foray to Brunswick Cemetery after the inaugural presentation of Very Exciting GoodGym Bristol Badges for Run Leaders, TaskForce and extra special helpers. Watch this space for future developments!

We were joined by Jordan on his first good deed, Tom on his first group run and Freya back for her second Tuesday and looking totally different without her big woolly hat - fantastic to have you all on board. And yes, it normally appears a little bit chaotic at times but is definitely All Under Control.

With the tree popper/root puller on site and training demonstrations given by Top Tree Popper Marianne, Jordan was in his element tracking down protruding sycamores and brambles to be collected up into the Dumpy Sack of Doom, alongside Richard B's entrenching tool's victims.

Valè and Richard G took to the paving slab tidying, Richard missing his seasonal role as a lamppost already.

The bindweed/buttercup/sycamore club scouted out more widely - Caroline, Jason, Janka and Frances uncovered lots of ground and were very good at leaving the non-weed plants to grow, whilst Tom moved on to earn his Pathfinder status with the muddiness redistributed away from the golden gravel.

Ed and Nik grabbed the loppers and went in search of bigger things to chop - do much is now growing so fast!

And Janka's email address is nothing like kangaroo, in case you were wondering.

Until next week!

This evening's GoodGymmers were rewarded with a lovely sunset as we ran and walked to Faithspace in Redcliffe to collect the tools and trolleys for the night's path laying.

Last time we'd had days of heavy rain and were glad of the light drizzle, tonight was drier and didn't the turf know it! We seemed to have found a particularly rocky patch which Marky had marked (so Marky-ed, I guess) as the next path joining the planters. There's already been lots of positive feedback about how much easier it is to get to the planters and beyond.

The gravel is a special "self-binding" type which makes for marvellous non-shedding paths and, when its been left a few weeks, a solid lump in dumpy sack.

Once the edges had been marked and knived (?), we split into ground-chiselling and gravel-chillesing teams, definitely a tough workout tonight. Many different strategies were tried with the top methods proving to be stabbing with a big fork for gravel breaking and sitting uphill and spading downhill for turf lifting (called sods, for anyone wondering). We are so creative and adaptive.

Perseverence paid off, the new path was given its preliminary stomp, catwalk-style and flavoured water was enjoyed. Laura and Vaguely Northern Darren headed off for a longer run back whilst the rest of us finished off, tidied up and took the tools back to Marky's workshop.

Top path-making, team!

It was only drizzle - hooray! The morning had brought flooding to Bristol with the highest Spring tide of the year, saturated ground (talk of aquifer levels) and more rain - all the roads had reopened so Lexi could get into Bristol after all. It was great to meet Joel, too, dragged along by Valè as something lovely to do on every Tuesday from now on.

Runners (always at a social, chatty pace and stopping at ALL the traffic lights) and walkers set off in the reducing light with talk of the lighter evenings and soon arrived at Hannah More Primary School to meet Ruth and Lyra the dog and set about tidying up the edges of the school field and digging deep grass roots out of one of the raised beds.

There's a fabulous new mural on their Big Wall , no idea why they didn't get GoodGym to do it...

Tools were renamed (alligator/crocodiles and Wolverine hands being favoured) and chatter varied from memories of previous visits, climbing the apple trees and hula-hoop trees - a Hannah More phenomenon not seen elsewhere that plastic hula-hoops grow on their trees.

The art of hula-hooping was demonstrated and tried out as well as street skillz of throwing a hula hoop so it spins away and then back. Hours of fun in the 70s and 80s before computer games.

And this week's cultural/music education piece is Wap Bam Boogie. I'll be testing you next week.

Ruth had very kindly made flapjack so we finished on time, cleaned up and returned the tools to the staff room and continued reminiscing (this was the venue of our summer social last year on my birthday, which also had torrential rain) whilst eating the fantastically gooey treat and heading back. Another job well done!

A lovely but tad chilly morning greeted the GG folk today. Great to welcome Ashley today for his first GG. Awesome to everyone today. We did a brief tour of the animal enclosure, viewing the statue pigs and duck pen. Then to the shed to tool ourselves appropriately to take on weedy things near the paddock. But we took care not to borage our way over any comfrey. In no time the border was comfrey-litly cleared with a barrow of detritis. We emptied our load and took a traditional challenging chair pose selfie by the pig enclosure. Proper job everyone 👏

With no rain forecast and it even being still light when we met up in Queen Square, its was all smiles as runners and walking set off (via Workout to collect Marianne) to Brunswick Cemetery for our first visit of 2024.

Morgan was so impressed he even joined us for March's GoodGym Eats at Three Brothers Burgers where favourite animals (incl dinosaurs) was a hot topic of conversation.

A return in daylight to continue the pathfinding showed just how great its looking!