It’s been a while since I’ve come home from a GoodGym mission and immediately dived into a bath to get clean but it’s kind of appropriate since we were helping out at the former open air swimming baths in Bath.

The UK’s only surviving Georgian lido closed in 1984 but reopened in 2023 after a long campaign. Sadly, four months later flooding caused major damage and it has not been able to operate since. But there is hope that repairs will go ahead.

GoodGym was called into help keep the site looking spick and span and, while volunteers from the Cleveland Pools Trust were in charge of clearing undergrowth, Paul, Cosmo, Meyrick and I had the job of clearing the mud that had built up on site.

We removed buckets and buckets of the stuff. And, unlike the hippopotamus’ opinion in the old Flanders and Swann song, it was anything but glorious. It was gloop. It was sludge. It oozed. We got covered in it.

But it was a wonderful feeling to know we were helping such an important part of Bath’s leisure and heritage. We will be back!

There are many attachments that people have to missions. Some are a memory of that place from long ago, like fingerprints on a forgotten handrail, others are sparked by a sense of community, of what's right; this mission had both.

From some of us old timers who remember being here back in the 70's and 80's, to those younger GoodGymmers who perhaps never swam here but as proud Bathonians are fully bought into the wonderful story behind this location, there was a feeling of something special about this task.

It was a very autumnal morning when six GoodGymmers found their way to the Cleveland Pools - the UK’s oldest Lido - here to help with whatever they needed as we move towards the winter. Ruth, Emily, Amy, Kam, Meyrick and Paul were on hand to help, and we were greeted by the unexpected but always very welcome appearance of Jer.

Seriously, we would have done anything they asked to help, but it was weeding they needed us to do today, clearing a lot of unwanted growth from the flower beds and tidying up the edges. We did enormous amounts in the time we had, and a big shout out to Mary and Sally, Cleveland Pools volunteers, for giving us the grand tour of this incredible site, many thanks.