The litter pick successfully returned to Ipswich on Monday night following it's pandemic enforced absence. Although numbers were smaller than recent missions, the attendees may have anticipated a tougher evening.

To our surprise the Riverside Walk was cleaner than expected and we may have had a recent Ipswich Wombles visit taking away the worst of the litter.

Needless to say we still managed to find enough litter and rubbish hidden away in the undergrowth and river banks to make our evening worthwhile.

And congratulation to Nicola Stevenson for winning the 'find a sock' competition (we made that up - it wasn't really a competition).

On a muggy and sticky evening the intrepid Ipswich GG gang got down to work lifting and shifting logs at Brickmakers Wood.

Team Sycamore and Team Elm (we had two large piles of logs to move) pulled on their gloves and grabbed a wheelbarrow each to begin a sweaty 60 minutes of piling high.

New faces Alex and hardcore regulars created a human chain, as wave after wave of wheelbarrows climbed the dizzy heights of 75m total elevation and 2 miles of barrow pushing. It's on Strava so it happened!

Site manager, Jo Brooks, was delighted to see us back, knowing her wood piles were soon to be restored, as the Trust continues to transform a quiet corner of Ipswich into a calm, and tranquil oasis for cancer patients and their families.

We will back soon to see if we can improve on our team performance stats.

Well done everyone.

It was a cool night for a pretty cool task.

On a clear (and once again dry!) evening the temperature seemed to drop as we made our way the 2+ miles across town to the 24 Ipswich Scout HQ with Daniela back marking.

Once inside Scout HQ everything we needed was laid out ready for us. The task was to paint as much of the lower half of the main hall walls - covering various scuffs and signs of wear & tear.

As well as being the main meeting area for the scouts the hall is hired for a range of other activities providing income to help maintain the building and provide activities for the scouts.

It was a pretty big hall, but with loads of paint, brushes and rollers provided - the scout motto "Be Prepared" and this was definitely the case - and the usual Goodgym energy we managed to complete more than half of the area. We also learned the technical term for the recesses between the bricks ( "Perps" & "Beds" - thanks Alex !) that were tricky to paint with a roller.

Had we had a few more bodies we probably could have completed the whole area, but we hope to return soon to finish the entire hall. It was great organisation from the scouts and a super group effort!

Back out into the chilly evening and the run back to base was marked with a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the optional interval efforts. However, with our total run distance coming in at just under 5 miles it was perhaps understandable!

Prior to heading out into the wind we celebrated the weekend achievements with a number of regulars having done the Tarpley 10 or 20 mile race locally and Colchester Nick completing the Brighton Half Marathon.

It was a very simple task tonight - litter picking a fairly small grassy area right on the edge of the river on behalf of Rivercare. It was dark and the "bat lights" were put to good use seeking out rubbish among the long grass. We managed to fill two large bags with an array of debris.

Once the litter was picked we headed to the floodlit Suffolk College grounds for a challenging pyramid interval session - only 30 secs recovery between each set of effort s ranging from 30 secs to 2mins 30 secs and back down the other side.

Everyone put in a great shift to maintain a good pace throughout particularly those who had 20 miles in their legs from yesterday!

Another fab Goodgym evening and, as Tom pointed out at the end of the night, there was something missing... it wasn't raining for the first time in weeks!!