There's not a lot that will stop a GoodGymmer completing a task.

We've litter-picked in -3°C, we've weeded instead of watching an important World Cup match, we've painted railings and cut down bushes by the light of a headtorch…

But this week we were foiled. Unfortunately, a group had gone on a coach trip down to Birmingham and left a tonne of cars in the car park at the ICCA. They'd told the staff they'd be back by 5, but at 6:45 they hadn't arrived. As any of you who've been to one of these tasks knows, that paint gets EVERYWHERE and we agreed with the staff that we couldn't risk getting it all over the cars. And even scraping would have caused the flakes to get all over everything.

With no backup litter-pickers in the car after a pre-holiday boot shuffle, we had to abandon the task.

Thanks to Peter, Nigel and Leah for trying! We'll be back at the end of November to try again.

Better late than never!

The painting continued at the ICCA, this time assisted by head torches.

It was a bit of a smaller group but we made some decent headway along the railings – all that scraping is really paying off as the paint goes on faster!

Let's see if we can finish before the summer!

That's one way to describe blood donation, I guess!

Conversation always seems to take an odd turn when we're at the ICCA. Perhaps it's all those railings frazzling our brains like the static snow on an old TV (showing my age there).

It was a night of newbies last night, with Victoria and Walter joining us for the first time and Steph Ducat joining us from Ealing for a spot of tourism – thanks for the photos!

Our Team Scrape and Team Paint strategy is still working, although we might need to bring along some new scrapers next time due to some very exuberant work! I think this will be the last time we do it in the light for this year though, so I'll get charging the headtorches! Nothing will stop us getting to the end of these railings. Except rain. Rain is bad for paint.

THINK DRY THOUGHTS THIS WINTER!

We were back at the ICCA in Sherwood to continue the Nottingham GoodGym equivalent of the Forth Bridge.

With just the two of us Nigel chose to scrape and prep for future visits whilst Peter donned the disposable gloves and painted.

Good to see a bit more progress made and, who knows, we may even finish this year (in time to start again?)

Another week, another night of chipping away at this monster of a mission!

This time, Nigel and ~Nat~ turned up early to get a head start with the scrapers, our new favourite tool as recommended by Joel last week.

Doing it this way really does seem to help speed up the painting process and I'm sure we got through more of the railings last night than we have done on any of the nights before. Although some of that might be due to painting in almost sub-zero temperatures earlier in the year… Team Scrape have prepped a good chunk ready for us to get cracking with when we come back in a couple of weeks.

Welcome to Chloe who joined us for her first task! Hopefully see you again sometime soon!

Dayna, Florence and Nigel were joined by new comers Saul and Joel for the latest session of painting the railings at the ICCA Centre. Saul shared his memories of the building from the days it was owned by Sunblest and the resulting daily aroma of freshly baked bread. He also produced a steel brush and paint scraper that improved the preparation process significantly. Definitely good learning for our future sessions at this task as we work patiently towards its conclusion.