Eighteen excellent GoodGymmers ran 6km to help the gardener maintain lovely Stephen's House and Gardens.

Meeting at the Phoenix, we welcomed Ed for his first GoodGym run: welcome! We also saw Rachel and Beattie for their first run with us in a year. Good to see you again!

We set off with Abi backmarking. It's about 3km so we took it at an easy pace to start with and we scooped up Fay on the way.

On arrival, we met with Peter who explained our tasks for the evening: picking up the branches and leaves lining the path after cutting earlier today and, of course, litter picking! Abi, Charlotte and Rob volunteered for litter picking while the rest of the team got stuck into grabbing branches and leaves. They had all been cut back from the pathway earlier in the day so picking them up tidied the place up and saved the gardener loads of time.

Using gloves, grabbers and sequiters the branches were chopped, grabbed and squashed into bags and into the tractors trailer. After half an hour we had cleared all the leaves and branches and dragged the bags back to the depot. We said our goodbyes to Peter and set off.

It was time for a fitness session. We did a quick abs circuit: mountain climbers, bicycle crunches, then burpees. Tiring work but a great effort. Then it was the finisher: a plank! Everyone did well managing between 30 seconds and 2 minutes.

From there it was a nice relaxed run back to the Phoenix for stretches. Great work everyone - looking forward to next week already. Wishing luck to our runners heading to Sofia: have fun!! 🔥

Ps finally an excuse for a Simpsons clip 🤜