There was a break in the weather for the GoodGymmers who met up in the darkening warmth of Queen Square, armed with gloves, headtorches and issued with litter pickers and bags.

Off we set, the running group led by Vaguely Northern Darren in one direction and the walkers in another, with a plan to arrive at Redcliffe Nursery School and Children's Centre at the same time - which worked surprisingly well!

Three jobs to manage:

1. Clear the litter from the car park that's used by local residents and was already full of cars, so some interesting stretches (possibly yoga at a push!) and a top find of an actual (probably actual fake) Dior bag (OK, little paper gift bag)

2. Into the outdoor play area to shift sand into the sand pit - we couldn't find the sand that wasn't already in the sand pit, so claim full credit for this although it was already shifted.

3. Sweep and bag the leaves from everywhere they'd collected - this was the main event and, of course, involved climbing ONTO the equipment to check for and sweep leaves, especially by Frances whilst Roddy and Jason targeted the High Leaf Fall area of the side slide. Richard, Darren and Caroline struck paleontology gold with dinosaurs in the sand/leaf mixture.

Discussions of the evening led to punny versions of childhood songs from our resident Choir Leader Frances, especially "Dior Ears Hang Low" which is a pun we're saving for the next time we find Dior (-ish) items.

A great evening and we almost beat the rain!

As well as lots of good deeding, the group run was once again the venue for deep philosophical debate involving the past tense of strimming and therefore the present tense of strumming. Hot topics indeed for the four walkers to start debating whilst the runners, led by Richard B, snuck (sneaked?) in a harbour loop before arriving at the Community Garden of Redcliffe Children's Centre.

We think the tasks were * top soil onto 8 of the planters after weeding * woodchip onto 6 tree planters and top of 8 weeded, top-soiled planters * strimming raked * litter picked * path weeds hoe-d * path swept * tools placed in school playground WITHOUT PLAYING ON THE ADVENTURE PLAYGROUND * key returned * padlock locked

The main issue was remembering all the tasks...

It was a bit of a step workout as GoodGymmers opted to climb over the seating bench rather than via the highly secure gate, with Small Spade or trowels full of woodchip whilst the Big Spades, mainly moved top soil within the gated garden to the planters. There was quite a lot of it.

The Centre can now continue their work with UWE's Bee-line to increase pollen for pollinators across the city to encourage, erm, bees. Bristol Bees.

Having avoided being burned by lit cigarettes discarded from the balconies and windows above, and only one GoodGymmer being hit by spittle from above (fortunately onto glasses not straight into an eye, the area was tidy until kids started throwing litter from a balcony - hopefully they'll join in with the Community Garden becoming a lively space to spend time.

More litter was picked (pucked?) on the way back to the bit of Queen Square we could still see whilst the Comedy Garden takes place. Then the beat bit of all - the found Maths Word Search challenge whilst we carried on chatting at Club Haus in Workout.

Anyone know that film - the one with the man in the hat and the doors?

It was a mild night, too mild one might say. We gathered in Queen Square for a short saunter over to Redcliffe for a litter pick. Do you have an oronnnnjary? If so what do you grow in it? We litter picked the car park by the school, we picked by the community garden, we picked like picky things that just liked to pick. A number of bags were filled and we made our merry way back to have a rather civilised pot of tea, little finger out everyone please! Now when is a plate a bowl or a dish? Can you stack bungalows? Not sure what was in that tea. This report was written by RG and may include themes of fiction.

if anyone else wants to add their recollection of events:

https://www.goodgym.org/admin/reports/bumper-pickings-nice-one/edit

For the second week on a row we had a late notice task cancellation but the stars aligned perfectly for an urgent visit to Redcliffe Nursery School and Children's Centre who were being visited by Ofsted the next day and wanted the outside spaces looking as good as possible despite the downpours of the last few days. They also mentioned trusting us with the power-washer that was confiscated from us on a previous visit as we made too much noise whilst a governors' meeting was also going on.

With the walkers taking a direct route and the runners setting off in the opposite direction, the walkers sneakily ticked off a couple of extra unicorns on the route and are beating the runners 10-9. The runners don't know about this ongoing competition yet so we'll see who reads this report...

With a small courtyard and a larger playground, we were soon busy sweeping, weeding, composting and power-washing between moving large pieces of play equipment and small trucks for transporting sand back to the sandpit. Sonehow it stayed dry for the entire task except for Matt and Vicky power-washing!

A lot of staff were in preparing for the Ofsted visit and we hope we brought a smile or two to their faces as we productively larked around in the playground, having a great time ourselves. It was a fantastic visit to list the school's spirits as we declared them Outstanding.

And then we went for lovely pizza (or salad) to Franco Manca as we hadn't chatted enough yet - thanks for organising Eats, Clo!

Who'd have thought collecting leaves could be such a challenge?

The Nursery had an initial plan for the Autumn and Winter of collecting all the leaves to the edges of the playground so they could do their natural thing of rotting down to feed their former owners, the trees but had been scuppered by the wind keeping blowing the leaves all over the playground making the place quite slippery and dusty for the Nursery children. Sam, the Headteacher, and Brian, the Caretaker, have big plans to reduce the size of some of the trees, meanwhile the leaves are to be turned into fabulous mulch.

Sam thought we had too many people for the task, but lo and behold we were so efficient that we needed two more rolls of bin bags for the growing pile of leaves to be bagged.

Sarah and Craig both got stuck in on their first task whilst returners John and BRIAN! showed they're now old hands - less of the old, though!

Oodles of leaves were brushed, raked and forked into piles and leafy-handed into the 30-plus black bags (thanks to Phill for counting) with small white-boards being re-purposed as extra "resources" (see, we can so school-speak!).

Tyres were rolled, planks lifted and platforms propped up to get at as many leaves as possible and leaf* the playground neat and tidy, ready for more play times. There was even time for a quick slide and to see how very tall Vaguely Northern Darren is, sitting on a totally normal-sized chair.

<* see what i did there?>

There was time for a different route back and a catch up drink at Workout for good measure.

Bye bye, January!

Bristol is no GoodGym group which only gets out to hit their new year's resolutions and January challenge goals: on our first run of February we had a massive 62 people join us to run and walk to do good. It was great to have a massive 10 new runners join us - welcome Chloe, Becky, Owen, Aidan, Steve, Beth, Reuben, Barnaby, Dom, Emma and Sophie! It was also great to have Ivo pop by on his travels to the South West - thanks Ivo!

Brooming marvellous

Alison stepped in to lead a group to Task 1 of the evening to Hannah More Primary. The group were tasked with making the place look spic and span, so it was all hands on brooms and all brooms on deck to get the place sweeped up and then everyone did a mass litter-pick of the grounds until it was spotless. They got this done so quickly they had time to do some relays on their return to get their heart rates up!

Meanwhile, Richard led the hardcore mob up (and up) to Task 2 in Clifton to do some leafleting for Children's Hospice South West's Rainbow Run. Not only did they conquer the hills, they also delivered 400 leaflets around the area - phwoar.

I introduce you to: The Red Barrows

Melanie was leading the walking group to do some additional jobs at Redcliffe Nursery, where we had helped last week. The group had a huge long list of tasks to get through, but there was so much sand from the sandpit which had been blown all over the playground in the recent bad weather, that they spent their whole session clearing this all back into the sandpit. Oh, and importantly setting aside some time to choreograph GoodGym's very own aerobatics display team, the impressive Red Barrows.

Sally is waiting for you

The rest of us headed up the cycle path for Task 3, helping The Matthew Tree Project with our regular donation sorting. The team were split into groups for tin-sorting (or sor-tin more like), crate washing and separating the food donations into food type. Everyone was also lucky enough to get a chance to meet Sally for a quick (but who knew 3 minutes and 25 seconds could feel so long?) session of Sally Up Sally Down. Gary admired how well Matt scrubbed up, and we all headed back on our way.

Once back, it was time for a good stretch off and for our GoodGym Eats for this month to Turtle Bay organised by Clo - thanks Clo!