Fantastic turnout this morning to clear the yard at the back of The Gap Community Centre. Despite the drizzling rain, we were not deterred! And Gary (the Gap’s resident chef) did us proud with a lump of cake to go with our steaming hot coffee afterwards! Lots of rubbish removed, leaves swept and pathway cleared, in preparation for some much loved Spring/Summer activities at the centre. Massive thanks to Maisy, Mitch, James, Sandy and Emily for your smiles, hard work and enthusiasm 😊

The first of hopefully many monthly gardening sessions!

We found out that this community centre is a beautiful place for so many people. They do eye tests, seniors and youth clubs, they have a new cafe, karate, and so much more. We were very happy to be helping keep the face of it looking more welcoming!

Some gloves, a tiny bit of hail, and some good effort later, we cleared a lot of edges, cut down overgrown vines, swept leaves and litter, and made so much of the front a little clearer.

The weather held really well for us, and we had some lovely chats with the staff at the centre. There's plenty to do for us next time, and we might even be able to do it on the weekend next time, once we organise having someone let us in!

Looking forward to meeting more Good Gymers and working out with brooms and leaf piles.

See you soon!

3 Goodgymers managed to dodge the drizzle on Sunday afternoon to help The Gap with making their fire exit route easier to maintain.

When we arrived at the centre it was clear that the plants lining the centre's fire exit route had benefited from the rain over the past week as they had developed into their very own rainforest. This was making it very difficult for the centre to maintain the exit route, particularly as it needs to be wheelchair accessible.

After Bronwyn had explained the task, we set to work with spades, forks and loppers to try and clear all the brambles, weeds and some larger plants that needed to be cleared from the borders lining the path. Despite the recent rain, the ground was relatively dry with some of the roots being determined to stay in place, so this was a good work out for everyone. Once all this was cleared everything was transferred into hippo bags for disposal.

With the first part of the task completed, we were rewarded with lemon drizzle cake to go with a nice cup of tea. It was lovely to get the opportunity to chat to everyone that was helping with the task during the break and learn more about each other.

With batteries recharged we took up our tools again for part 2 - digging out and removing some of the soil from the borders to make room for the bark chippings that will be put down to keep weeds under control in the future and provide an area for some of the play groups that use the centre to play outside.

Unfortunately we ran out of room in the hippo bags to dispose of all the soil that needed to be moved, so the task came to a natural conclusion, to be continued...

It was great to meet the lovely staff at the Gap Centre and we welcomed back Madusha after a break from Goodgym - hope to see you all again soon!

Ok so it wasn't a tub, but a very small community centre that needed a deep clean tonight.

We took over the pub this evening as many runners came out of the dark to light up the night, welcome to our new runners Andy and Cherry, and some returning runners as well as our stalwarts. We must be fun if they come back....

Tonight Becky promised us a surprise, instead of running up a massive hill we took a more gentle route to Packmores Community Centre, not quite the Gap but run by the same volunteers.

On arrival, once we found the hidden gem, thanks to Iain for navigating the door lock, we found a pile of cleaning equipment and a list of lovely jobs to do. Dividing into groups, there was a rush for the soft play area, everyone got their marigolds on and started to clean.

Emptying shelves, cleaning potties, mopping the floor, scrubbing the cupboards, sweeping the mess, wiping the tables, and seeing how many people you can fit in a tiny kitchen.

Mel gave us a cracking joke - What's the plumbers favourite tree? Toiletrees!!! - Think she might need to work on her jokes.

We had to have a count down to leave as everyone wanted to leave it spotless. Hopefully we did them proud.

On the return run we had a challenge - the handicap hill sprint. Setting off in intervals of intensity we raced back up the last hill, some brilliant use of arm drive and high knees was seen, and a lot of hardcore effort by our newer runners. We've been working on High knees so this was a great test to see how much we had learnt.

On return to the pub, big thanks to Iain for leading the cool down and Holly for collecting more numbers for the Whatsapp group.

News was shared and some of the group stayed on to carb load, or thats what we're renaming it now.

Till next week - thanks for coming.