The plan for the group run was to return to Holy Trinity Church to complete the Spring clean we started a couple of weeks ago. With the Dave on vacation, responsibility for leading the run was passed to Gill- but with a fairly direct route along the A6 it should be quite straightforward. With Gill on her bike she met up with Sam & Omar in the town centre and after a warm up led by Sam they were on the 3 of us were our way to the task. Part way through the run/ride a crazed ringing sound could be heard, getting closer and closer. As they tried to clear the path, the noise was added to by Gail's unmistakable laughter… and then there were 4. Before long the church was in sight along with another red tee shirt and another bike. Joe and Estherhad run and cycled to join us… and then there were 6. A good sized team to get the job done swiftly, or so we thought. However the church was in darkness, the door was locked and a quick phone call to the verger established that there had been a mix up and he wasn’t able to let us in. After some deliberation (i.e. standing around looking like the lost sheep from the parable 🐑 ) it was decided that, rather than abort our attempts at doing good, a spot of plogging was in order. But being unprepared was a problem. Targeting the Tesco local - Sam and Joe bought 3 pairs of Marigolds while Gill managed to blag some free bin bags from a member of staff. Marigold yellow with GoodGym red might not be the best colour combo, but with one glove each we were bobbing and weaving to pick up the litter on the route back towards the town centre. Plogging with a bicycle is not the easiest - but needs must and good team work meant we collected a fair amount of rubbish. Well done team.

Just a team of two this week taking on the task of giving Holy Trinity Church a spring clean. It hasn't had a deep clean for months so there was plenty of dust, dirt and spider webs to clean up from between the pews.

We recruited a third team member in Henry the Hoover, appropriately wearing GoodGym red and together with our task host for the evening, Malcolm, we got active. Floors were vacuumed all over. pews were polished, floors were mopped and the church was left smelling of fresh furniture polish ready for the Easter weekend services!

The war memorial Lychgate at Holy Trinity church needed a clean up and protecting with a coat of oily wood preservative.

A team of four, including new member Miki, arrived on a beautiful sunny morning and set to work. Firstly brushing down the spiderwebs and clearing debris off the roof. Then giving the wood a light sanding down before starting the painting.

A couple of hours later we had run out of paint but the lychgate was definitely looking much smarter!

In the last of a summer series of dual-task group sessions, our team was split with a walking/biking group heading to the Penrose Roots to Recovery garden and a running group heading to Holy Trinity Church.

The team's task in the garden was to tackle a patch of stinging nettles that had taken over a storage area behind the polytunnel. Kitted out with shears and rakes we worked from each end to meet in the middle, uncovering lost garden supplies in the process and filling two big bags with compost fodder.

Meanwhile the running group's task at the church was to give the railings a second coat of paint to finish the task we'd worked on over the summer stripping and repainting.

It's the time of year that darkness is creeping in so we had a dark journey back into town. Don't forget your lights for next week's run!

This week's group run/walk had two tasks. Runners were sent off to take on the long distance task, painting the hand rail at Holy Trinity church. Walkers took a more sedate journey to the Riverside meadow, hunting for invasive plant species.

Runners were met by William at the church who got the team set up with paint and brushes. Before too long the hand rail leading up to the church was green and so were many of the painters fingers!

Meanwhile over at the Riverside meadow, the efforts of previous years in pulling out the invasive canadian Goldenrod plants had paid off hugely, there was hardly any to be seen, native plants had regained their territory here. After a bit of hunting some young shoots of Goldenrod were found springing up from the roots left behind after a pulling session a few weeks ago. These were pulled up to stop them taking hold again and then a couple of small patches of tall goldenrod about to flower were spotted in the long grass.

Checking further along the river a lone stem of Himalayan Balsam was found and removed before it went to seed.

Calling victory in the battle for native wildlife and painting railings, we all headed off home quickly to catch the second half of England's Victory over the Netherlands 😄🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿⚽🥅🇳🇱🥲

The remarkably dodgy June weather relented for an evening while we ran out from the town centre to our task for the evening.

It was our second visit to Holy Trinity Church with the aim of stripping the old peeling paint from the handrails leading into the church, ready for a nice coat of fresh paint.

We picked up where we left off and although a smaller team than last time we managed to get the second half done and clean it all up nicely. We'll be back another time to be kitted out with paint brushes and take the next step, but we left the job of the day was well done and made our way back into town to complete our 8km journey.