We had a fantastic turn out at the berry maze this weekend, with 9 goodgymers rocking up to help Barney and Jackie at the berry maze. Only due to some last min issues arising, there was no Barney or Jackie! They left me some instructions and given how well we've been taking care of the place, they had faith we'd do okay without their weed identifying powers.

We had some lovely spurts of sunshine accompanied by some great goodgym chatter, and within one hour we managed to de-weed a good third of the maze. We also settled a debate I've been wondering about for a long time, as I had been mistaking bluebells for Hyacinth(don't ask), so thanks to David and his wonderful AI App skills for working that out!

Props to Emma who not only managed to mow the majority of the maze in one session, but did a great job of rescuing some bulbs that that started to grow in to the path. Nice one!

Also, we welcomed some new goodgymers to the berry maze, thanks for coming Nadia and Arron! Loved that you both got stuck in. Arron has also suggested that we named the unofficial berry maze mascot 'Horace the horse' whicjh I'm on-board with.

Cheers everyone! There's another berry maze session later this month, check it out here

A fantastic turnout today to help Mark at surfers against sewage in these wet conditions. Thanks to everyone as you made a real difference. Meeting under the skate park we paddled our way and even did a spot of boldering to keep our tootsies dry as we walked along the peel path to meet Mark and his 2 barrows. We then climbed down into the grassy verge and scanned the plain collecting as much pesky litter as possible in the hour. We handed 5 general waste and 3 recycling bag fulls. Key finds of the day was a coconut with a happy facial expression. We then barrowed our way back to the rubbish drop of point and a final photo with the fab team and Mark. We then had a lovely coffee and bite at the Garden centre. Awesome place. Great job 👏

Our second daytime foray to Sparks as traders are moving in, out and shaking it all about.

This time we were refreshing the area that had been hosting Emmaus and had been touched up by “someone who had made a hash of it”, setting the bar quite high for GoodGymmers!

We were given creative responsibility for choosing (or mixing!) from the paints available and didn’t expect the biggest challenge to be getting the lids off - Dave committed a good 30 minutes to his favourite tin and was rewarded with a fabulous matt dark blue for the big wall whilst Nadia found a lovely lively green for her first ever decorating.

Three hours in, we had a good first coat (and rollers that worked plus paint brushes that almost did) and a lot of chat completed 😀

Another dry January evening welcomed over 20 GoodGymmers for the biggest group run for a while, including Mike joining us for the first time and all three of last week's newcomers returned!

It was optional fancy dress for the run, see who you can spot in the photos, but considered very normal in Bristol.

Xanne welcomed us to Emmaus with news that they're currently van-less so there was space to move and to move things, very excitingly.

Let the sofa-shifting, mattress-moving and bed-breaking commence!

Huge progress was made although headgear was hard to come by, so the end photo shows more variation of item than usual, if it can ever be considered usual?

Another run back and some stretching and chatting - it almost felt normal.

For once the weather forecast didn't lie and it was raining buckets on this Saturday morning. Not intimidated by the floods, we had a surprisingly great turn out for another mission at the Northern Slopes. Scything was nearly impossible in this rain but David gave it a go anyway and cut his way through the thick bramble. Others opted for loppers, probably a safer choice, but nonetheless still useful to remove branches at eye-height and making the "tunnel" (aka a narrow way between to hedges) more easily accessible to passersby and dog walkers. The tunnel also got a much-needed flooring/drainage upgrade to turn its muddy surface into a shiny new "yellow gravel road". The best way for gravel installation turned out to be "tap dancing" to smoothen out the new path. A selected group of GoodGymers couldn't get enough of dancing in the rain and stayed on a bit longer to make sure the final bags of gravel were securely installed. ...or maybe is was the combination of rain, mud and rhythm that got people to channel their spirit animal - seagull - since as a behavioural biologist I couldn't miss the parallels between the dancing Goodgymers and gulls which perform a very similar kind to tapping behaviour to attract rain worms (definitely NOT looking at you Christopher but you might want to youtube "Seagull riverdance" ).

The final crew did an excellent job in litter hunting and pulled out some seriously dodgy things from the hedges, including some graveyard flowers and a lawnmower. Massive shout out to Leo and Martin for attending their first ever GoodGym task despite the rainy madness.

Well done everyone for showing up that day!