...Oh, light

It was great to have Catherine and Ingrid join us for the first time tonight - welcome both of you! We headed back to Holy Trinity Church tonight who were lending us their space to help The Marmalade Trust to prepare their hampers which each of their guests attending a Christmas lunch will receive.

When we arrived (with Maria's brilliant back marking safely getting the whole group there), Amy told us a bit about the incredible work they do: some of the people they speak to when arranging the lunches have not spoken to anyone in 3 months, and the hampers they get on Christmas day are the only present any of their guests have received on the years they have been running. The lunches can spark a change in the older people's lives and the charity direct them to social routes in the new year.

Crafty bunch

Our task for the evening was creating wrapped candles to add to the hampers. We divided ourselves into Very Crafty, A Little Bit Crafty and Not Crafty and got to work with distributing and wrapping candles and making labels to add to them. As time went on, the Not Crafty group even got a bit more crafty! (or at least gave it a shot and put the tables away very well...). 40 minutes later and we had a table full of beautifully wrapped candles ready for the hampers. We pretended to be candles for the group photo (see evidence above), then wished Amy from Marmalade Trust and Maria from Holy Trinity goodbye and ran back (with a short stop for planks, of course!).

What better way to finish off the night than with a candle-based joke?

When is a candle not a candle? When it's a-light!

Thanks Tim 😉

Celebrations galore

Another massive night of celebrations at GoodGym Bristol - MASSIVE congratulations to our latest Centurion, Caroline, who earned her 100th Good Deed tonight! It was a pleasure getting to celebrate it with you (sorry, Sheffield!) and you sported the Centurion outfit with grace! Not only this, it was Danica and Mair's first day of celebrating a new year (Happy birthday both!), and it was Paul's first group run since he hit his 400th Good Deed at the weekend (what a hero)! Between all these celebrations, it is amazing that we managed to get a task done. But, do not despair, I have tales of not one, but two Good Deeds we successfully completed tonight...

Welcome to the new runners, Georgia, Lawrence, Jack and Deborah who joined us tonight! It was great to meet you all and we hope to see you all back soon.

A puzzling task

After a warm-up - which primarily got the GoodGym brains cooking but also managed to get their legs pumping - the Walking Group set off on their merry way and the remaining huge group of runners bunched our way across Castle Park with fab back-marking from Dave.

The team split into two and Alice led a bunch of 20 GoodGymers inside Emmaus. Emmaus help homeless people to get their lives back on track with housing and employment opportunities. Tonight, the group were helping sort out the warehouse. This largely included sorting the puzzles and games donations, which resulted in the GoodGymers brains being further exercised - what a mental workout of an evening!

Alice finally managed to pull the team away from their puzzles to say goodbye to Emmaus until next time (where there is some talk of smashing concrete, stay tuned...).

Don't leave any doors a-jar

Meanwhile, the rest of the group were being briefed on the brand new sport Marmalade Orienteering. The Marmalade Trust is a wonderful small charity in Bristol which puts on Christmas lunches for older people who would otherwise be alone on Christmas day. As they are a tiny charity, they rely on volunteers to help them as much as possible. Our Good Deed orienteers split into five teams to hunt down community hot-spots to post referral letters and posters to. Along the way, they dropped even more posters off at places in the community where older people might see the opportunity.

With points and prizes up for grabs, the teams ran quickly and worked fast. They chose different tactics - while the Green Team stayed close to get the first-back points, the Red Team went big on the additional community spots points. It was all to play for, and then some delayed returns and an incredibly questionable points system meant to Green Team won with a whopping 1150 points! The other teams ap-peeled the points system and the prizes were shared by everyone (apart from the marmalade, which will be fueling Dave's mornings for the comings weeks).

After all that sticky work, the group ran back with only one stop for squats and lunges and were soon settled in to a pile of 100-winged cakes baked by Caroline's fair hand.

Well done everyone and well done again to Caroline for her 100th Good Deed!

Oh, the ongoing Battle of St Werburgh's Primary School Fences. It is the rain dance of the modern world. It is the task we crave so badly, yet the weather gods continue to do their upmost to keep us away. With the black cloud symbols with those pesky little rain drops shining out of Bristol's weather forecast, we once again had to postpone the task for later in the summer.

On the bright side (of a sticky, grey night), this freed up 20 Good pairs of hands for leafleting for two very good causes in Bristol. The Felix Road Adventure Playground, where we are going to help in the near future, have a whole bunch of half-term activities for local children. The Marmalade Trust, a charity tackling loneliness, are spreading the word of Loneliness Awareness Week which is in three weeks' time.

The group ran up to Easton where we split up to start our mass leafleting task. In smaller groups, the group lumbered up their legs between houses and popped their nimble fingers through many a door. A swarm of red ants soon ticked the streets off a high-tech list (Shona's Google Maps), leaving the residents of Easton much more informed about the wonderful charities working in the area and still looking baffled at the sea of red tees.

After a speedy run back to Queen Square, we had 10 minutes spare for a competitive wheelbarrow relay. Once the teams had mastered remembering how to wheelbarrow a human rather than a bit of garden equipment, the competition was close, and while there was a clear winner, I am sure the other teams will be back for a rematch before too long...

It was great to welcome Ed and Katie on their first Group Runs with GoodGym tonight - you were both brilliant additions to the leafleting (and wheelbarrow) teams! Also a big thank you to Sally for her excellent back marking bringing everyone safely home.