Those runners were as fast as lightning! In fact it was really exciting, and we gardened with expert timing!

On a lovely bright Saturday, 11 runners met up at The Greenway Centre in Southmead to run to Southmead Hospital where we helped to make the neuropsychiatric ward's courtyard garden a little more inviting for the patients there. Some of the GoodGym people drove there (like me!). One cycled (after doing Park Run!), one caught the bus, and the others decided to run there instead, covering some serious ground and the relentless hill which is Gloucester Road! Serious kudos to those folk!

It was that undecided weather - did it want to be cold or warm? Was it a run to wear a coat or not? We certainly warmed up well as we ran through a nature reserve called Badocks Wood, replete with smell of wild garlic and the sight of spring bluebells (and a chap picking up litter - I almost stopped to help!). We left the wood and took back streets almost all the way to the hospital, and then wound our way up the hill through the maze of the Bristol Brain Unit and the Bristol Speech and Language Therapy Center, passed the delivery ward and ending up at the Rose Burden Center where we met with Penny and Rhona who both work there.

The garden was very overgrown with bamboo, to the point where some of the patients could only see that and nothing else of the garden, so armed with gloves, a variety of chopping implements, and the usual GoodGym enthusiasm, we attacked the overblown baneful bamboo with bamb-oomph! It was a fiddly task to get the overgrown grass in to bags, so a bright spark came up with the idea of tying it in to bundles instead, which worked really well.

Our gusto was aided by a lovely selection of biscuits, jelly beans and squash, which made the whole experience very civilized, and everyone agreed that they'd more than happily return another time, especially if there were more snacks on hand!

Due to the scale of our task, we spent quite a while there, and probably could have spent much longer, but after a good hour of hard labour, we cleaned up and ran off, leaving some very happy ward managers behind us.

It was a really lovely task and made a great change to be away from the city centre for once - hopefully the start location worked well for all concerned as we'll certainly come back to the hospital if they'll have us back! Great job, gang!