I want a goat.

I want a white nanny goat called Lily that amiably wanders round, curious to see how each Goodgymer is doing on their section of a new water channel and then waits contentedly to be petted before moving on to the next person.

Sadly this seems to be destined to be a pipe dream as it might be a little impractical keeping a full grown nanny goat in a third floor flat.

I'd also make a terrible goat keeper as once again we failed to open the gates before shooing in the kids in our warm up today. I'll put it down to the distraction of the rather cold conditions, although we did at least manage to get to and from the task without any major snowfall today.

The run to the urban dairy farm allotment "Street Goat" is a challenging one, a good 5k of gradual climb where the hill isn't always perceptible visually but rather is progressively felt the closer you get to the destination. Everyone did really well though and we benefited from a quick rest half way through while Julie changed out of her parkrun pyjamas (or onesie).

We were met at the allotment by Amy who was fully prepared with an array of spades and mattocks - yes that's right, mattockS plural - not often you get that on a Bristol Goodgym task. These were to be used to dig a water channel from a water trough to the barn where the goats hang out. This was quite a distance but with 17 people spread out along the length it was fully completed by the end of our stay and there was still plenty of time to check out the goats and enjoy the delicious flapjack and refreshments that Amy had supplied for us. The hot drinks were especially welcome after an hour spent in freezing winds at the top of a hill - once again well done to all involved!

But wait, 17 Goodgymers? What about the other 4? Well one was as usual shirking the work and wandering around taking photographs (and making friends with goats). But the other three were working hard to reposition a line of fence posts - quite a challenge when you can't feel your fingers even through two pairs of gloves. Nice one Alex, Paddy and Tom!

Thanks to Dave for backmarking today.

Two destinations today:

The Haven

It may have been a bit drizzly today but our first visit to the Haven last month suggested we could at least be sure of a warm welcome there - and indeed we arrived to find Julia and Alistair smiling and ready to greet us. What's more, they had set up THREE tasks to keep us warm and busy.

Task one was to level off a newly dug patch of earth so it could act as a solid base for a yurt. Working with a wooden guide and spirit level, the yurt crew used spades and rakes to evenly distribute the soil. Meanwhile, as a bonus task, Caroline and Darren worked off to the side cutting back the surrounding brambles.

Task two involved cutting out a hole in the ground to site a compost toilet. The heavy clay based soil made this hard work, particularly when the group struck iron (corrugated iron) and had to fill it in and begin again. They did have some feathered company though as a resident duck and hen took a keen interest in anything edible that they excavated.

Finally, Alistair led a third group in constructing a dead wood hedge which I have to say looked quite beautiful when it was completed!

Well done everyone on working so hard, especially after a long run uphill - and big thanks to Haven for finding so much interesting stuff for us to do again.

Incidentally, the photo of Matt pointing shows how nicely tucked away the Haven water supply is now courtesy of the channel we dug for them last month.

Thanks to Matt for leading a group back and to Maria for back marking.

The Berry Maze

Raluca got in touch with me a week or two ago to see if we could send a team to help her make some repairs to the Berry maze after it had sadly suffered from a bit of vandalism just before Christmas last year. We spent some fun mornings helping to construct the maze last autumn so I was keen to help but we had already set a date for the Haven.

Luckily, longtime Saturday run leader Godfather Dave stepped in and agreed to take a craCK team of maze repairers over to help.

As it turns out, the poles had just been replaced by the time they arrived, but Dave's team were still able to repair the wire and then grab wheelbarrows to shift plenty of additional mulch onto the pathways