Richard G, Janka and I spent Sunday morning helping the friends of Eastville Park volunteers. Because of the 10.30 start time I'd been able to help at junior parkrun, and, because the parkrunners were so speedy, had also managed to fit in a gentle jog around the park!

In true GoodGym style, this gentle jog turned into an impromptu plog, as I came across various discarded cans, bottles and a carrier bag!

Between 10.30 and just before 1pm, we were kept busy with various tasks. Julie manned a sack truck, helping move books ready to be picked up by the local Amnesty bookshop, took spare cleaning materials up to the lock up, and helped clear up when tragedy struck in the form of a large catering jar of ketchup with a loose lid! Richard and Janka had the muddier end of the task helping relocate the compost heap to a secluded spot in a grove of trees, wheelbarrows were involved!

Time passed quickly and soon we heard the magical words "time for a cuppa"! Feeling refreshed, we finished up our tasks and had a group photo before heading home.

A visit to the Nissan Hut is never complete without a shared historical anecdote and it was also great to see Andy Gee up and about again.

The Christmas Grotto wants to fly to the North Pole..

It feels like every year when Eastville Park put up their Christmas Grotto marquee, we have galeforce winds and it tries to fly away. I think this proves the grotto wants to fly to the North Pole?!

Transforming netting into a Christmas Grotto

Inside the marquee we were asked to add Christmas decorations to the netting that had already been hung. Our directions were; use your imagination and transform it into a Christmas Grotto; we can do that! There were 3 trees to decorate too. We made it look alot more festive with a mixture of decorations; baubles, shoes, soldiers, fairies... Made easier with the hooks Richard found

Leaving before the grotto gets grotty

After debate between the Friends of Eastville Park, they thought it was best to let the wind through the marquee and opened some doors. We weren't so sure! Some of the marquee started tearing and we were quite concerned it might all break and so we left before it collapsed on us, with the offer of helping take it down if Santa couldn't make it tomorrow...

Eastville Park was busy on Saturday with a community event running at the pop up cafe, so after a quick check-in with Andy, we made our way down to the lake. Luckily the forecast rain held off and as can be seen from the before and after photos, by scraping, hoeing and wheelbarrowing we were able to make fantastic progress clearing weeds and moss from both sides of the lake, getting so carried away that we slightly exceeded the time scheduled for the task! We returned to the Nissan hut for a group photo and a cuppa and perhaps a slice of cake! Well done everyone! See you next time!

Our task was going to be weeding around the lake, but arriving at the hut and chatting to Andy it became apparent that our help would be much more valuable helping prep the nissen hut ready for the insulation to be applied later in the week. So we sprang into action wielding hammers, brooms and (I think Sara's and Art's new favourite tool!) a long crowbar to remove wood frames and with the aid of Henry the vacuum, the dust of 70+ years! Kind bars all round as a reward before we headed off. Before and after photos to show how well we did!

Seven hardy Goodgymers - including Jp who joined us for her first session - tackled some more lakeside weeding.

Over an hour the magnificent seven cleared another 100 odd metres of the edging stones. This stops weeds establishing and their growing roots from pushing the edging into the lakes.

An elite group of very select Good Gymmers (3 of us) were the only ones to sign up to this task so we had a change of plan and didn’t go down to the lake. Instead we dealt with biblical scenes, as over the weekend someone decided to burn a bush. We trimmed it back so it wasn’t so messy and sticking out sharply into the path then relaxed with some elderflower cordial on the bowling green.