Southville Ward have opted out en masse from the Bristol Waste glyphosate "opportunities" so are choosing the weed by hand rather than obliterate the gutters and gaps on their roads. Many of the roads have group of residents able and willing to help with this initiative but some are struggling so GoodGym Bristol jumped at the chance to help out. Even though it was blisteringly hot.

With walkers from Workout and others meeting us at the task, we were soon hard at it (well, gently and calmly dissuading the weeds from their temporary locations) with scrapers, hackers, slicers and brooms all playing their part. In the shade.

With frequent swaps and slops (of water to drink), we soon moved from Warden Road across to Church Lane, by some sheltered housing and private housing. So much grass, dandelions, other-weeds-we-don't-know-the-names-of and a few stones/rocks. Honestly, only a few rocks. They just felt extra heavy in the heat.

With a final sweep (both visually and physically), we were on our way with a secret stop/mutiny to ASDAl's frozen treats aisle to choose a pack of 4 fake Cornettos in mint and another 4 in salted caramel, the wrappers were off as soon as the "Your Payment is Approved" banner appeared on the screen. With only 6 of us eating the ice-creams we than had the surprisingly difficult task of giving away two Cornetto-equivalents - one to a now-happier security guard and the other to the SIXTH person we tried - how is Bristol not snapping up the offer of a free Cornetto?

Fingers crossed for a cooler one next week, off to Hebron Burial Ground with it's extremes-of-weather reputation...

30 degrees. Not just one of my favourite triangle angles, the temperature at the 6.30 set-off for GoodGym Bristol with Plan C - a gentle litter pick to remove the mess left by people "enjoying" the very hot weather.

Armed with litter pickers, bags and ice-creams from the lovely lady who delayed her journey home to reopen her ice-cream van for us, we wandered around shady (as in not-in-the-sun, not less salubrious) areas of Harbourside, designing the ice-cream network for Bristol's on demand, multi-flavour on-tap cooling system. Just normal stuff.

Ice cream van, litter plan, can we catch the rubbish man? Sunshine, can of wine, should the sun have a curfew time? Litter pickers, bags are full, sweat in places no one should, time to go, drinking time, I can’t take it anymore…

Rain may have prematurely stopped play but that gave us the opportunity to make some plans for the future.

We had a great chat about what attracts people to GG Bristol, how we can improve general outreach and specifically 18-25s both within and outside the Uni sector. Visibility is key so maybe some sessions in busier places with red t-shirts on show to encourage people to chat with us, maybe with QR code so people can instantly look us up.

And the tea/decaff cappuccino/coke was good too, plus Melanie and Darren's photos from Japan parkrun adventures, of course.

We couldn’t go to Sparks but we could celebrate an evening of NO RAIN by getting out and making our streets sparkling, or at least litter-free.

Runners set off for the Malago Greenway to help the watercourse and the walkers strides away to the edges of the City Farm (Friday morning Community Mission venue) to tackle the litter-catching hedges then along by the very swanky looking new student accommodation which seems to be by a culvert none of us have ever seen before.

As well as hauls recycling (clear bags) and litter (green bags) the walkers added a pair of boots, a pair of very soggy trainers and a sodden hoodie/hoody (?) and a shopping trolley which was duly returned to ASDAs/ASDAl and discussion ensued about Sainsburgs.

Everyone regrouped at Workout for pots of tea and an egg incident. Just your standard Tuesday evening

More January to get through but lucky for us we have GoodGym Bristol to see us through - hopefully the only Group Run of the month with an outside task and the weather was KIND!

We were tasked with beautifying (OK, clearing the litter from) the areas around Redcliffe Nursery School/Children's Centre which gets a lorra litter (in a Cilla Black voice). We were only challenged by one local but mainly he was seeing if we were looking for a cat. No riot Police at all this time.

Working around the school, we also reported the flytip that Bristol Waste have since said is on private land (despite being at the back of the school, an emergency exit from the Council tower block and just off the road), excitingly across the Banana Bridge (sooo yellow (in a Sinita voice)) and tidily along the side of the river, finally finding Frances.

One more pile of flytip reported, we tied up the bags, stashed the litter-picking kit, washed our hands and headed for burgers at Three Brothers, lovely as always with the addition of a game of Mayo Top Trumps and league table of scores from the NHS Healthy Choices quiz which goes to show that 10/10 is achievable!

Sub-zero temperatures and out litter-picking kit being being locked up for new year couldn't stop GoodGym Bristol from doing good.

Armed with trowel, hand forks and black bags, we left a patch if the New Cut much tidier and saved two bags of rubbish from being blown into the river.

Hooray for GoodGym Bristol!