No one was deterred by a bit of warm rain and Kingston was delighted to welcome back the damsels from Bristol Uni and Steve who came all the way over from Greenwich - amazing!

Thanks to Brian and Ben for letting us pick from the luscious damson trees to put them out of any distress! We left with a bag full each. Maybe even enough to make our first batch of GG damson gin?

We also made light rope work of putting to bed for winter the netting round the gooseberry bushes and anchoring branches of an errant plum tree to ensure they grow low for easy fruit picking next year.

And if anyone has any good tips for damsons please let us know!

13 of us…. A theme is happening it seems and whilst it is said to be unlucky it appears to be our lucky number as apart from a chaotic meeting room to which no explanation could be suggested we had a belter of an evening and could ask for no more other than more time at the task perhaps.

Tonight, we were helping the Community Brain team and their Shedx project in Tolworth allotment area. As if this wasn’t lucky enough we then got to welcome Shrey, Grace and Jasper on their first Kingston run and then Dan on his second - well done on making it folks and welcome to GG Kingston! Next, we had the chance to remind ourselves how lucky we are to have Laura running in the team and congratulate her on 50 good deeds and each one with a fresh smile and energy every time!

Now some could say there was an element of our luck shying away in the warm up as some burpees finally squeezed their way into the ingredients but it’s all down to perspective surely and how lucky we are they rarely appear you could say too!! Either way the runners made them look easy and so, onto the run which was fairly straight, squeezed in a slight incline and made us all so grateful to our task owner for greeting us with Capri Sun drinks!!! Yippee

"To the left...to the right..."🎵🎶 pic.twitter.com/Vq9IdLAk5G

— GoodGym Kingston-upon-Thames (@GoodGymKingston) July 16, 2019

Thanks Georgia, and so to work after marvelling at a huge silver Trojan horse casually stood in among the plants and sheds at the allotment … Its presence somewhat of a mystery at first all made perfect sense once we heard what is planned for it. Well played ShedX team! There was talk of us getting to move it, but time was against us and with so many brambles and nettles to chop through the horse was not going anywhere this evening – A stubborn mule some did say!

We worked like Trojans, focusing on chopping, pruning and bagging to clear a pathway for it though and made great in roads to open up some space so once the horse bolts it is free to roam around the allotment as needed. Whilst this was happening others had divided to tackle the weeding over some fairly rocky terrain using every tool at their disposal and Dan was busy filming/ interviewing to promote all the great work Goodgym do in Kingston. Could we be doing anymore in one night?

Before we left, Georgia gave us a quick look at the fantastic self sufficient eco system developed between some gold fish and plant life – known as an aquaponic system, whilst we sipped our fruit drinks readying ourselves for a warm run back. Time definitely went to quick and we look forward to returning already!

Meanwhile back at Guildhall there was no horsing around with puns tonight as Kate had nailed some corkers in the first five minutes so a solid stretch and debrief was on the menu.

Super time had and roll on next Tuesday already ; - )

Enjoy the Shindig Martel and Caroline!

It was great to have Sophie, Fiona, Lydia, Shrey, Grace, Johanna and Rahul join us for the first time tonight on another busy evening with lots of people joining us as part of Week 2 of the Bristol SU's Mind Your Head campaign.

Before we got going we had a long list of well dones for this active crowd who had been running around the country over the bank holiday and were feeling tired tonight for very different reasons to why I did. Not only that, but we got to celebrate Paul's birthday and 5 Year Group Run Streak!

Art Attack

Then we split into two groups for tonight's good deeds. Alice wonderfully led a group to Southville to do some last minute awareness raising for this weekend's Southville Art Fair on behalf of BS3 Community. It turned into quite the social affair as several GoodGymers bumped into people they knew along the way and from behind the letterboxes! Before long the group had distributed the pile of hundreds of leaflets and made a massive difference for the group ahead of Saturday's event.

Camouflage

The rest of us headed to Holy Trinity church is Hotwells where we were helping Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group with various tasks. The main task for the night was clearing an extremely overgrown area to create an area for a vegetable patch for the local gardening group to use. As this area is often used for anti-social behaviour then this will have a big impact on the local area. The group also did an incredible job of lopping back all the brambles, branches, weeds and nettles sticking over the pathway to the side of the church, deweeding the path itself (including lifting a massive moss jacket which Liam made look like an outfit from last night's Met Gala and was rivalled only by Shreena's weed-dress), refreshing the raised beds for the summer and putting a new raised bed in place (by Team Strong). Not only this, but some of the group also made a crack at delivering some of their 900 leaflets advertising the gardening club and other activities happening in the area.

In 30 minutes all of these tasks had been completed beyond Suzanne from the charity's expectations. We had time for juice and biscuits before hitting the road, with a cheeky plank stop and sprint home to spice things up on the way.

We headed back and then celebrated May's GoodGym Eats with pizza and cider at The Stable - thank you to Danica for organising!