This week we welcomed two newbies, Gina and and Sarah. The getting-to-know-you-question was middle names. The Vicar revealed that his name isn’t in fact Richard as his middle name is Richard, making him Richard Richard?!?! Charles refused to reveal his middle name so we’ve given him the lovely temporary one of ‘Winifred’, borrowed from another GoodGymer, until a suitable form or coercion can be found to extract the real one!

Tonight’s task felt like a marathon of TV shows and movies…..

The Walkie Taklie group, led by Sandy Sam was well subscribed. It was like a slightly muddled version of the Walking Dead where the runners were the ‘Walkers’ and the Walkie Talkies triumphed by making it in and out of ‘Murder Alley’, arriving at the task ahead of the runners and mutation free!

At the nursery, there was plenty of DIY SOS to be done. Fences needed painting – we started this task last August and we do like to complete a job! - and an insect hotel was built out of wooden pallets. There was a general sprucing up of outside spaces, and lots of our favourite ‘humping and dumping’ between the garage and the bins. We had our very own version of ‘To me….To you…’ where instead of Paul and Barry Chuckle we had Lily and Sharon moving what must be the biggest cardboard box in the west.

One of our tasks was to build a garden igloo for the kids - this was a super fun task! Although it was mind bogglingly complicated for the uninitiated to assemble a geodesic dome with about 1,000,000 parts, once it was up it was a thing of beauty! The kids are going to love it! It was just like the dome on Crystal Maze only there were no foil tokens filling the air, nor Richard O’Brien flouncing about in leopard print, but we did have midges filling the air and GoodGymers flouncing about in their red t-shirts. Photographic evidence also revealed that Kirsty, Sandy Sam and Jase the Ace had re-enacted a Star Wars lightsaber fight scene when nobody, except photographer Helen, was looking!

It all got a bit I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here when a large cardboard box descended from nowhere into the middle of the playground, filled with chocolate bars for our consumption! If we’d on been a bush tucker trial, Kiosk Kev would have no choice but to hand over the goodies after our epic efforts tonight. And why does Mike have a ‘bounty’ on his head – do we have a fugitive among us?

Just time for a quick group photo in the forest before the runners set off for a fitness session in the park in what looked like the GoodGym version of SAS Who Dares Wins. There was no head start for the Walkie Talkies as several were still doing battle with lightsabers, I mean dome poles, and some runners had some catching up to do. We were all reunited at the end though and there was some fun conversation at the post-run/walk coffee. We can’t reveal all of it but let’s just say that there are some members who have very particular sets of skills. Skills they have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make them a nightmare for people who have not Taken on board commonly accepted running etiquette. As always, names have been omitted to protect the innocent! There were lots of us tonight and after a bit more chit-chat about all things GoodGym, we were done for another week.

Next week we will be running approximately 9km in total to Prince Rupert Court in Freshbrook and back, to help with a gardening task. We have been here before and we absolutely loved the task, the place and the people! The residents were so impressed by what we did, they have asked us to go back! We will be doing another gardening task; this time to do some weeding and hedge clearing. The residents, who are 55+ years and have physical disabilities, are unable to manage the garden as it is. Our job is to make it easier for them to spend time in the garden. Sign up here!