Five of us began at base and Jane insisted on leading out. As we are like to share responsibility I let Joel choose his favourite lights on Moulsham Street for a photo. He chose....Taco Bell. It did mean I could do a pretty good Jingle Taco Bells joke though. Oh deer (that makes sense if you look at the photo of me with the deer lights).

We got to the village hall and Fay shouted 'Ahoy!' for some reason which confused me immensely. Anyway, we got to work filling five bins with many leaves (between 200k and 700k I would say) being led by the literal professional in Richard. We discussed Christmas dinner, our host David has one a week in December, Christmas desserts, mince pies and more. Sallyann bragged about retiring next week (congrats!!!) while I cleaned paths and wept at the prospect of 50 more years until retirement.

We ran out of bin space and took a serious photo for our serious business. Well done all!

Next week we are getting a pint and maybe takeaway after the group run, come along!

10 GoodGymers made quick work of preparing a bumper crop of leaflets ready for our leaflet drop next week. The leaflets were sorted and folded in no time, which meant we could have a chinwag as we finished our drinks before the run back to HQ!

We will be leafletting along the avenues next week, you can sign up here:

After a late message to see if anyone else wanted to join us, it was great to end up having ten of us at the task!

We welcomed Bronya and Lucy for the first time, and Leah and Jess for their first GoodGym session for a while.

Ben led us out down the High St for a slightly longer route to Sanctus, and we arrived to our task surprisingly sweaty for a November evening.

Our lovely task owner Sarah showed us the hallway and toilet that could do with a fresh coat of paint, ready for Sanctus' Christmas meal in a few weeks. As we had such a large group, some of the team painted and some gave the chairs and tables a good scrub.

Richard E showed off his professionalism by giving the high corners a quick dust with a paintbrush, whilst the others went straight for pouring paint out. After speaking to Sarah about how many people Sanctus support everyday and seeing the cleaning team working hard, I returned to the painting area to find that Ben had somehow shut Jane, Jess, and Richard P in the toilet, but this clearly helped as they managed to get the whole room finished.

Whilst the last areas of painting and cleaning up were finished, Sarah showed a few of us round and told us more about everything Sanctus does for those who need its help. A great charity and task, and we look forward to returning!

Refreshing to have some different energy in the group this evening, everyone actually wanted to do the same way back to ARU to get a bit more distance in!

Next week, we have leaflet preparations at The Oddfellows.

Also, let's not all be TOO jealous of Sallyann going to San next week.

See you all soon,

Laurie

We got on very well! From funnel time checking, to marshaling, to barcode scanning, to tail walking, to stuff I’ve missed, to…whatever it was Andy did… we did a pop up Goodgym at parkrun.

It also had a number of police officers highlighting the important issue of women’s safety on runs, with lots of survey responses collected. And even a woman getting the coveted 001 Parkrun. Incredible pace.

Remember - Goodgym does also do night safety training for men, to better help understand the issues that women have to go through. 97% of women have been harassed while out running and that is unacceptable.

Even though the evenings have started to darken that didn't deter myself, Jen , Richard and Russell from meeting at HQ for a slightly longer run to the Beaulieu community centre to help them with a spot of painting.

Arriving in no time we made our way upstairs where we found Sallyann and Nic already hard at work painting the walls of one of the ladies bathrooms. We all managed to squeeze in and hopefully give it a new lease of life.

Finishing up we washed brushes, posed for a photo and said our goodbyes. With Nic and Sallyann walking home and Russell and Richard running back a different route home than we came, Jen and I had a lovely chatty run back to HQ before saying goodbye.

Thanks for coming guys, hopefully we will be back there soon to continue the good work..

This weekend we will be volunteering at Chelmsford parkrun ( and then breakfast after)

If i don't see you before then please...

RUN HAPPY

Rich

All the best runs end in the pub but this time our purpose was the pub.

Richard was early and ready to go while Andy was briefly stuck in traffic. We decided to take the long(ish) route of a whopping 1 mile through town rather than taking the direct and even shorter route.

Fay and Sallyann were already at the pub with leaflets prepped and folding underway. We made short work of the folding, once Rich got going I don't think he was able to stop. Andy managed a further 1.2 miles while leaflet folding from his chair.

Cold pints are an excellent substitute for damp sponges and/or the old school finger lick for shuffling paper.