17 GoodGymmers ran 9 km to the Bristol Children’s Playhouse to tidy, build, plant and weave in a variety of tasks.

A new task for us today, organised by fellow GoodGymmer, Cathy, and you can generally tell as soon as you arrive how good a task is going to be. On arrival at the task today, we just knew that this was going to be a great one.

A big welcome to our newcomer, Jane, for today’s run and to Steph, our awesome GG Bath trainer and welcome back to Bris to Sion, who has recently moved up to Sheffield (almost perfect timing with the fairly recent launch of GG Sheffield).

Our run, on a lovely, sunny Spring morning took us up the Bristol Bath Railway Path through Easton towards Eastville, to the Bristol Children’s Playhouse, a voluntary pre-school which provides a supportive and stimulating environment for the whole family. It’s aim is to safeguard and promote the welfare of children within the family and provide quality preschool education allowing children to gain positive experiences to improve their confidence and self-esteem.

Cathy welcomed us in to the outdoor play area on a piece of land that had kindly been donated by the school next door and outlined a variety of tasks, set to test the versatility of the group:

David, Sarah, Steph and Fi set about building a compost storage pen out of pallets, using their collective know-how to wire this together and make it sturdy using tree branches as stakes and reinforced with a wooden block.

Caroline, Becky and Sion were tasked with creating an area in which to then design and build a planting box from wooden planks – with expert sawing advice from Sion, sterling organisational direction from Mel, and a bit of expert drilling from Cathy.

The appearance of a wheelbarrow (along with it’s very little brother) allowed Paul (naturally!) and Maddy to transport two apple trees into the play area, where they, Dave and Mel, dug holes to plant them in – some stubborn roots to get through here.

Chloe, Nick and Jane were busy collecting leaves that had been blown into the play area, and moving these to the compost pen, ready for storage. I don’t think Paul noticed that Jane had swiped the wheelbarrow for this task :-)

Last, but very definitely not least, Lisa and Will coppiced a tree, then using the thinner branches that they had liberated to weave through the railings at the entrance to the play area, which not only looked fantastic, but would apparently stop one particular young fellow from getting his head stuck between the railings!

The sun shone throughout, which just added to everyone’s enjoyment of the task – the only sad part was having to leave after a very productive hour.

Huge thanks to Cathy for arranging such a wonderful set of tasks for us, requiring as much brain power as muscle. We very much hope that we can come and visit again soon!

Also big thanks to multi-tasking Mel for not only coming up with some great suggestions on the task but also for getting Steph safely back to base as injury struck – very much appreciated. And to David for backmarking today, ensuring that we all got back safely, particularly through the protest marches, police and dogs – it was all going down in Bris today!

Finally, very many thanks to everyone for making this such a fun and rewarding morning and also for looping back on the run from time to time so that we could all stick together. Teamwork throughout!

All the best

Dave