It was a beautiful evening with clear blue skies and balloons flying over Bristol.

Five hardy GoodGymmers (we stole Russ from the painting Community Mission) took to sweeping lots of outdoor edges, with a little bit of weeding where the weeds are encroaching on the paths. And recovering the hand brush from the big bin, making sure no-one was breathing towards anyone else.

The car park was soon a bit bigger as cars could now get to the edges, the entrance was tidy and the playground was leaf-free - at least until the next gust of wind!

What a night! To join us for the first time in this even-more-crazy-than-normal addition of GoodGym Bristol were Toby, Charlie, Dulcie and Rory. It was great having you and we hope to see you very soon when we (probably) won't make you sing. Tonight's craziness was due to the very special occasion of the amazing Paul Becker having joined the 500 Good Deed Club.

Our celebrations for him included: * A giant running, litter-picking Pink Panther in the shape of Chris ft. a weird lump carried around the whole night which was, in fact, 500 pink wafers * An amazing PINK SEQUIN CAPE, now known as the Cape of Good Hope, crafted from scratch by the talented Mel (and suffered the sequin aftermaths of by Darren) * The YMCA and Macarena with Clo and Matt's incredibly crafted new lyrics to fit PB Senior, sung (and danced) beautifully by our crew * An incredible massive pink wafer cake baked by the talented Richard B * Pink Panther masks for the masses made by Julie

Phwoar! What a load of Pink Panther Goodness for our very own PB. However, this is GoodGym, so there is never too much good to be had. Before all of this got appreciated, we had 40+ GoodGymers to do two Good Deeds before all of this could be appreciated.

Dave did a last-minute lead of the first group to Emmaus where they were met by Xanne and set to work with a bunch of tasks in the huge warehouse. The group got lifting, shifting, donation sorting and, most importantly, top photo-shoot shot finding. As usual, they were met with a plethora of weird and wonderful goods around the warehouse, and had to be torn away to get back to Queen Square in time.

Paul-uted

Meanwhile, the rest of us headed to Riverside Park to do a litter-pick for Bristol Waste. We split into four litter-picker teams and tackled different sections of the area, managing to gather a massive 10 bags of litter in just 15 minutes. We then ran on to get a litter-pick, running relay in at - you guessed it - St Paul's Park.

A wonderful Sequin-ce

Following all this hard work, we headed back to Queen Square to have a (very long) stretch off and regroup to perform our incredibly well-rehearsed Paul songs, eat lots of cake and, not forgetting, celebrate the wonderful Mel who reached her 400th Good Deed earlier today. Well done Mel!

Pun Credit to Richard G!

It was great having Harry, Faria, Kerry, Lucy, Liz and Polina join us for their first GoodGyms tonight and to have Rosie join us for her first GoodGym Bristol session! We were also lucky to have Danica with us who was celebrating her birthday (woohoo! 🎉) and Alex and Emma returning from their recent marathons.

With 46 runners and walkers, we got warmed up with a game of Truth Or Lie with - like most of my warm-up games - a questionable level of understanding of what was going on by most of the group and only vague warmth achieved. We then split into two groups, with Dave leading a smaller group to Emmaus and the rest of us going to St Werburgh's Park Nursery.

Scrubbing up nicely

The Emmaus group were tasked by Xanne from the charity to clean the bric-a-brac ready for sale. They channeled their inner domestic gods and goddesses and did a better job than we do in our own houses of scrubbing up. As always at Emmaus, there is an underlying challenge of find the weirdest donation/prop/hat. This week's contenders included some butterflies and a classic lampshade hat.

Purplesfully doing good

Meanwhile, it was time to play one of our other favourite games at St Werburgh's Park Nursery: Who Can Not Get Paint On Themselves During A Painting Task. This week's added challenges: * The dark * The colour purple

We were met by Mandy from the nursery who had invited us there to help with painting the fencing of a reflection garden they have created in memory of one of their colleagues who passed away earlier this year. We were honoured to be able to be a part of this project, so we balanced a variety of spotlights, lights and torches in the dark area and 14 of our handy GoodGymers got straight to work.

The rest of the group weeded an entire planter at the front, and got stuck in with digging out bindweed, chopping back bushes and general tidying.

Soon it was time for us to head back, and we dragged the reluctant painters away from the final touch-ups on the fence to jog our way back to Queen Square. Great work everyone!