Fun in the sun

Picture the scene, sunny skies a late summer bank holiday with record temperatures and a sea of red and black t shirts rocking up to Splashpoint Leisure centre for our fun evening combining doing good with some fun in the sun. It was an absolute delight to welcome everyone but especially our newbie Natacha, who our very own Superman Steve had encouraged to come. We hope that you enjoyed yourself as much as we did meeting you and that this will be the first of many happy Monday GG experiences together.

We also welcomed Graham to his first task and run with us who had been encouraged by Gill to come along and join in the fun. We had first met this very fast runner at parkrun together with when he came to our GG picnic in June. It’s so lovely that the GG love is being spread around our nearest and dearest!

Special mention to Sue who joined us again after being caught up with work and life recently It was lovely to have you back.

Completing the team tonight was Barbara, Tamsin, Emily, Paul, Lucy and Duncan together with Cakeman Jay. There was definite air of excitement that a swim in the sea would be replacing the fitness and a social drink on the beach replacing the run. It felt a bit like ‘school’s out for summer’

We all started with a leisurely walk / run around the pier where the team split into two groups with one turning left for a slightly extended run followed by clearing the GG flowerbed whilst the other turned right to return to Splashpoint for some parkrun finish funnel pole painting ( try and say that quickly! )

This is how we roll

This was the third coat of paint for the poles and whether it was the talent of the team tonight or the previous two base coats that had been applied on previous bank holidays the results tonight were really excellent with glowing white lines of poles. The painting team were joined by the gardeners who had successfully cleared the seafront flower bed ready for some autumn pansies to be planted. They even remembered to save the model figures and mini tools that John and Barbara had supplied. Jay, Steve and Duncan headed off on some boy stuff related to collecting Steve’s swimming gear whilst the rest of us packed up and disappeared to collect our gear and equipment for swimming and socialising.

Life’s a beach

We all convened 10 minutes later on the beach. Tamsin introduced us to her significant other, Neil who it was really great to finally meet and also lobby to join us one week! We also did try and convince him that this popping of corks, raising of glasses and eating cake is not typical of a GG Monday (even though it is becoming more frequent!)

It’s always a delight to see Paul’s husband John and this week was no exception. It was lovely that John brought their two gorgeous dogs Pepper and Milo too. Happy holidays to you both and come back and see us again soon John :)

So nearly everyone stripped off and plunged into the sea for the annual GG Worthing photo shoot. Just love this!

Every picture tells a story

I hope that the photos sum up quite how much love and good vibes there was out there tonight. It’s difficult to get everyone together all at once and shout outs must go to our missing friends Mr and Mrs R, Anne, Paula, Ros, Nick,Daisy, Andy and anyone else that I may have forgotten too!

In other news

• Well done to Natacha and Graham for surviving and hopefully enjoying their first Monday night with us

• Next week we have a change of task and will be meeting at Splashpoint LC .We will be returning to St Botolphs church garden to see if we can unearth some more of the old chapel.

• Don’t forget the September challenge Remember that you can also do your own version of this and record it on strava.

That’s all for this week! Let’s hang on to summer and keep those happy feel good vibes going for as long as possible.

Lots of GG love

Julia X