A post Covid record turnout!!! Five of us, that’s Caprice, Marianne, Char, Keith and Lea, turned up outside St Michael’s school… All eager to get on with our task, Caprice and Char had a surprise start to the session, having to climb over the accidentally locked gate 🤔🙃🤣! After Rachel pointed out the weeds to be pulled, and more weeds and some more weeds… the big question was: is this a weed or is this a flower? But we all got stuck in quickly and filled a wheeley bin with lots of weeds and probably the occasional flower or two🤭. Overseeing the process was our garden gnome all of 5 centimeters of him. And legs in shorts and hands without gloves… get very dirty! But… another good weed for the day done.

Six of us got together at our old gardening spot in BH2. St Michael’s school was our destination and this time we were going to do some painting in their pre-school area.

Rachel and Anthony met us outside and showed us where we were needed.

Their pre-school fence was a blend of orange and Rachel had started to paint it a more peaceful sage colour.

Oh man, we LOVE painting so much. And it was the perfect evening for it too. Lots of different conversations topics, soothing task, laughing and catching up in the sunshine.

We worked in pairs on each panel and moved along gradually, and after about an hour we had managed to do most of the fence with a base coat.

We will be back after half term to help with more painting and gardening next time.

Well done everyone, and I think a social in the sunshine is on the cards very soon!!!

Five runners meet at St Michaels Primary School It was nice to meet up with Vicky again Sarah Caprice Vicky John and Daryl where set the task of weeding the entrance to the pre school so with gloves and head torches on we set to work we soon had the entrance weeded and looking smart again another good task completed by Goodgym thank you guys The race to 300 good deeds is hotting up its almost neck and neck between Caprice and Daryl I hope to see you next week when we are back to Northey Road once again

Despite the soggy weather and facing a near task organisation "fail", 15 lovely GoodGymmers turned up looking to get their hands dirty with a spot of gardening at St Michael's School.

It was great to have Janet back with us, and I'm happy to say she managed to get back into things with no problem at all. Hope you fully recover soon!

I promised the group an easier run this evening and only had them go through one set of steps. St Michael's school is just up the road from our meeting point so usually we extend the run a little and find lots of hills. This time round we ran around 3km at an easy pace and all managed to stick together for all of it.

Chris was fluttering about taking a "couple" of photos and beating his record from last week by quite a bit....he was kind enough to only send me a selection this time which I was very grateful for!

At the school we needed to weed the areas we worked on last time around so that the soil would be ready for planting. The A Team consisting of Marianne, Hannah, Janet, Amber, Claire and myself took on the challenge of the elevated flower bed and left it looking like a Japanese Zen garden (Karesansui).

Team B consisting of Grace, Chris, Mark, Sean, Sophie, Phil, Alex, Fredrika and Caprice headed over to the other side of the playground and took care of the flowerbeds there....and played some baseball at the same time, showing how great they are at multitasking!

After about 45 minutes of constant gardening and trips to empty all the weeds on the other side of the fence, we had to call time on our task. The next challenge was to get back to Flirt in time for closing and then run to the pub for a much deserved drink!

No injuries, lots of laughs, getting to know each other a little better, spending time outdoors, doing some exercise, helping our community, having a drink together.....makes for a pretty perfect evening!

Next week we are at the Foodbank, one of our favourite tasks, so please make sure you don't miss out!!

Thank you Phil for the great pun this week, Caprice for looking after the back of the group and Chris for snapping great shots!

Another wonderful evening in Bournemouth, and with the promise of a bit of gardening for the first time this year as a task we had a great turn out.

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lovely people decided to come and do some exercise and make their a community a better place. If only there were a GoodGym in every city!

Tonight we welcomed Marianne to her first group run. She saw us at our meet up location one evening in our funky GoodGym shirts and was intrigued by us...looked it up and signed right up! Welcome on board, you were amazing and did a great thing this evening. Hope you feel good about it! See you next week!

Grace brought along her lovely flatmate Roshana to her first taste of GoodGym. Well done on giving it a go, we hope you come and hang out again next week!

It was also great to have Aoife back after some time off...please don't leave us again!

We were also very lucky to have a sneak peak into Poole GoodGym and the lovely lady who will be leading things there. Esther is amazing and we may not let her go....you guys over in Poole are very lucky. That will take place on Tuesday evenings and should kick off possibly in 6 weeks...maybe...possibly. Welcome to the family Esther!

Our task was just up the road so the gang begged for an extended run rather than taking it easy....such super motivated people, always great to run with them. They never complain, love a challenge and always take the difficult options. After a warm up to get us ready for things to come (including working on our people dodging) we headed down the gardens at a gentle pace, catching up with those around us and looking forward to what lay ahead. Rather than continue along the prom the gang were desperate to run up the Zig Zag onto the Overcliff, so we did that with ease and then posed for photos at the top, even though we could of kept running of course. Then we headed down the hill and Sarah, Abi and Neil did some downhill flying jumps cause they had that much energy. We hit the bottom of the hill and rather than taking the easy option along the flat prom the gang begged me to let them run up the BIC hill that takes no prisoners....I of course obliged.... At the top after taking in the views, and totally not being out of breath we headed to the next Zig Zag only this one was downhill and allowed for Caprice to take some great snaking shots with the Pier in the background.

At the bottom we headed along the prom and over to the Harvester where the gang again decided to push themselves....they ran up the long stairs to the top of the cliff....there's quite a lot... After all that it was time to run to the school and do some actual work.... Lorraine and Emily were there to meet us with all the tools and smiling faces. We hadn't seen them since last year around this time where we helped them in their garden. The school ended up winning the GOLD award in the Bournemouth in Bloom competition!

We were tasked with clearing out one flower bed completely....and there was a lot in there. The other one just needed some weeding. After handing out some gardening gloves, the gentlemen were....gentlemen and let the ladies have first dibs of them. Who says chivalry is dead???

The team split up into two groups, armed with spades, forks, shovels and good looks they cracked on. With only 40 minutes to get the job done they were on a mission. Tough ground that was dry like Neil's wit, was not obstacle for them. Ripping out dead plants, massive bushes and finding spoons, tennis balls and little play cars. Weeding in the other flower bed wasn't much easier as plants were growing in between in each other and that needed a little more dexterity. But these guys are GoodGym Bournemouth and they mean business...40minutes later and as you can see in the photos they had made those flower beds their b... own.

After a quick tidy up we all headed the short route back to Flirt for a stretch and debrief.

Well done everyone! Hope you had a great time. Well done on those hills and stairs, your butts will thank you for it this summer! hahahha

Thank you Caprice for backmarking and taking photos too....all after a 13 hour shift and 3 hours sleep. We love you!!!

See you all next week!

Good luck to Nicola and Aoife in their Triathlon this weekend! Try not to make others feel bad mmmkay...

A beautiful day in Bournemouth enticed 16 of us out on World Running Day to celebrate Volunteers Week!

We welcomed Esther who has run with GoodGym before in York, and is now studying at Bournemouth Uni. We hope to see a lot more of you from now on Esther!

Millie was also nice enough to bring Michele and Mathias along and they did great. Got involved and chatting to people straight away. Just how it's supposed to be.

As our task was very close we extended our run a little and headed to the beach front to dodge all the people going for a walk...Our route back towards the school happened to take us up the Harvester steps of pain....and we all managed to get up them and ruin a couple's photo shoot in the process by repeating it a few times!

It was really warm and we had made up for the short run with increasing the intensity and were happy to make our way to the school. The children had made some great progress with planting certain section up with herbs and adding colour. It looked great compared to last time were there.

We did some weeding,some with gloves, some without, everybody was beavering away!! Laura and Miffy painted the top of some logs a nice red colour, John and Neil loaded up a wheelbarrow with mulch to spread around the flower beds and really we could be hired to work in Japanese gardens, we're that good. We even had time to pose by the basketball courts and look super cool whilst doing it!

Well done to John for running the Half Marathon in Poole last weekend...on a very hot day, and beating his previous PB by 6 minutes! Machine!!!

You guys are great! We'll be back in a couple weeks to finish off the job before the school is visited for their entry to the Bournemouth in Bloom competition. Next week we are visiting the Foodbank at their new location, so very exciting!! Come along!!