The sparks were flying high at Hannah More Primary School’s annual bonfire celebration on a warm evening with hundreds of pupils and their families enjoying the crafts, food, sparklers and the bonfire itself.

Butterflies were crafted with Helen, Jason and Freya helped get the hoot food to where it needed to be and Dave and Melanie stood guard at the bonfire having topped up the wood pile (and reserved some handy bits for Melanie’s DIY projects).

Lots of fun was had, top marks all round!

V hot indeed for a Bristol GoodGym Group Run and a first good deed for Roddy - welcome!

The walking group set a gentle pace on a not-very-direct route taking advantage of the underpass to stay cool on the route with the runners already hard at work when we arrived at School.

Litter picking, sand sifting, planter wandering and leaf sweeping were the orders of the day with lots of us taking advantage of the shade offered by the trees and buildings on a sweltering night. Lyra the dog was in top supervising mode and not letting anyone take the ball from her mouth, as usual.

Having discovered that the Daily Mile is a whopping 16 laps of the painted track, we opted to eat cake instead before being forced into the evening sunshine for a pretty photo.

Not so much taking in this heat but we made up for it back at Workout's ClubHaus, out by the river and watching the Olympic swimming on the big screen, celebrating Ireland's Wiffen's Olympic Record performance in the not-at-all boring 800m freestyle and watching the rowers pass on the New Cut - picture perfect GoodGymming.

It was back to Hannah More Primary School this evening to have a tidy up of the playground, field, front of school, chalk boards and veg patches during the "Spring" half-term in predictable rain showers.

We welcomed James to his very first GoodGym task and he joined the walkers whilst Richard B led the runners over the bridge and (not very) far, far away.

Ruth was there to greet us with litter picking, chalk board cleaning, veg patch weeding (is this one a weed?) and sand sweeping all happening with GoodGymmers scampering all over the school's outside space.

As ever, we were on the hunt for treasure and before long top picks were a buried dinosaur (top archaeological excavating or litter picking, whichever it was) and a plastic cake which was added to the general sense of celebrations for Melanie's 1000th good deed - all surpassed by the amazing 1000 badge hand made by the lovely Richard G who'd had the foresight to waterproof it to save us all being covered in glitter. His graphic design skills are, as ever, second to none.

Vaguely Northern Darren set about capturing photographic evidence of all that was going on...

It turned out most of the chalk boards were undercover - surely being exposed to the rain would make them self-cleaning, if utterly impractical for ever drawing on - Valè and James made short work (they were having to kneel down to get the bottom of the low boards) of turning them very black indeed, whilst nearby Caroline was sweeping with the small broom which she much preferred to the bigger one on offer.

Runners turned litter-pickers Richard B, Ed, Gareth and Ryan resisted the urge to play on the outdoor equipment whilst scouring the grounds - how do they do that? Multiple bags were collected ready for the skip later and added to by Team Weeds - starting with the quite obvious couch grass (although that did prove not so simple by the onions) before progressing onto flatter weeds, Jason, Frances, Jo and James left the beds looking much tidier than when we'd started, and most of the actual vegetable plants still in place.Richard G moved on to the edges of the planters and expertly replanted some cornflowers to a raised bed instead of clinging on to the planter edge for dear life.

We were soon wrapping up as the rain re-started and moved on to the newly painted and furnished staff room (courtesy of some corporate volunteers) where we had the luxury of wash-hand basins before Ruth delighted us with coffee and walnut cake, more chat and a celebratory photo to mark Melanie's 1000th.

Running and walking back, and finding no speed dating at Workout, we were able to enjoys pots of tea (other drinks are available) and more celebratory cookies and our traditional party rings with Paul and Danica who'd called in to say hello. James was well and truly inducted into the random conversations of Bristol GoodGym.

See you next time?

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!

Much merriment was had with take-home sparklers being expertly assisted by Joanna on her very first GoodGym task (with a glowing report from Ruth) whilst Darren pointed out Jupiter and with the help of the visiting astronomer and Melanie spotted litter glistening in the firelight - pretty perfect!

Four goodgymers met.
To pick apples, you bet.

Up a ladder they climb.
For those apples sublime.

On the floor there were more.
They were quite poor.

Some hoops we found.
They were quite round.

At the end we had cake.
Then a spring roll we did make.

Nothing more to rhyme.
Until next time…