What's your favourite berry? A warm-up survey suggested that blueberries were the most popular in our group today, but have you heard of 'Autumn' or 'Golden' raspberries? What about Himalayan blackberries? Well, whatever you choice there's a good chance you'll find it growing down at the Malago Berry maze, our destination for this mornings group run and the first of THREE GG Bristol group activities occurring this weekend in addition to all the regular missions that are taking place.

A straightforward run along the Malago greenway soon brought us along to our host Jackie and with Barney giving us a quick introduction to hoe technique we were off, clearing weeds from the paths around the berry bushes with hoes, trowels, spades and an extra special two-prong weeding tool expertly employed by Fi.

While we worked we discussed future race plans. Paulin is busy preparing for the Cardiff half - and following our chat it could be that Hannah will join her for her first attempt at the distance!

By the end of the session we had completely cleared the first path of weeds which means that Jackie can now walk past without seeing another job to do and the maze will be that much easier to navigate when it opens to the public on the Bristol open doors day on 15 September.

(We did of course find one more buried car part right at the end of the session - can anyone identify what Darren is holding?)

Thanks to Fi for the pun and to David for back marking today.

Painting and a shortish run. The GG equivalent of a perfect storm. No surprise then to see 23 eager faces lined up for our pre-run warm-up.

Originally listed as a double bill, a last minute cancellation of our scheduled visit to Ashley Street park meant that team Cube was to be expanded from the planned six to our entire group. Massive thanks then to our host Pete for rustling up plenty more rollers and paint brushes in the last couple of days.

The Cube is a small independent cinema and music venue run entirely by volunteers. Over the summer the venue closes down for essential maintenance but with many of the volunteers on holiday our help was very much appreciated to help with some of the painting.

We were to paint the outside walls with a special fire retardant paint and the gents toilet floor with a non slip version.

Toilet Team

Special thanks go to the volunteers for the toilet team particularly on such a hot day and especially in the presence of an 'unidentified liquid' (presumably water as the toilets had been thoroughly bleached and disinfected before our arrival).

Wall Team

Everyone else got to work on the outside walls. Amazingly we got 17 people in action in a fairly small space and as a result we managed to finish the whole space in just over 25 minutes. I have to say it looked pretty smart by the end (as evidenced by the much happier 'after' group shot)

With the task finished in such a short time there was plenty of time for some tricep dips in the Bearpit and a quick round of Grandmothers triple extension footsteps and Squatopia on the way back.

Well done everyone - and thanks to Sarah for helping to set this one up!

Saturdays have got HUGE! Over 30 people on today's group run to Bramble farm including half of Goodgym Bath :-) Great to see you Bath peeps today - we love our nearest GG neighbours!

With such a big group it was a good thing that Dave stepped up to help lead one half - and it was fun on the way over trying to guess which route he was taking and see who got there first. Kudos to my half for sterling efforts on Victoria park hill!

Once there, Chris and Kim were ready with lots of brill tasks. The farm is run entirely by a small group of families so we were able to supply lots of manual labour, digging out some strawberry beds, digging in cardboard to create some potato beds and lots of weeding and compost spreading.

There was a bit of a debate over the best way to plant a potato but everyone was in agreement that they should be positioned 'eyes up'.

Some also felt that the clay based soil was a little hard to turn - but hey, what great strength work! And great to see Kim and Adeline demonstrate proper double-digging :-)

All that photographing of cats, ducks, goats and the odd Goodgym'er was hungry work and I expect the digging was a bit too so it was great to see cake and biscuits appear to fuel us on our way home - and it's always nice to see Matt happy.

Great work everyone!

(Apologies for the 'misty' effect on the right hand side of the pictures - my camera lens needed a bit of a clean)