It was full-on Bristol after a weekend of Harbour Festival loveliness to see hot air balloons back in the sky with the International Balloon Fiesta a few weekends away (and a cancellation of Ashton Court parkrun - you've been warned!). The general GoodGym rule of "see balloon, must point" was well-practised by the group of 5 walkers and 7 runners who'd joined forces to help clear some Southville Ward streets of weeds and save them from Bristol Waste's glyphosate.

Roddy found us by searching for the red t-shirts, Frances caught us up by searching for the right red t-shirts (there's no pulling the wool over Frances' eyes) and we all found the wheelbarrow of tools and made a plan after only five or so minutes chatting.

We were soon tacking the weeds on Murray Street, off Catherine Mead Street (not necessarily names after this Catherine Mead, but she's in the Academy of Cheese so deserves the name-check), Cameron making great in-roads beyond the parked car and Tom (named after the first King of Croatia, obviously) was a pro with the long-handled weeder-knife-thing, putting Vaguely Northern Darren's short-handled weeder-knife-thing to shame. Roddy was great at scooping up the piles of weeds and dusty dirt pulled out and swept up by the assembled mass of GoodGymmers.

Despite what the photos might suggest, Richards B and G worked really hard, too and Caroline, Jason and Helen seemed to have a race to fill the bin bags as quickly as possible so we soon ran out of official bin bag space and resorted to domestic bags.

All the bags were moved to the normal Bristol Waste pick-up spot, where we took credit for a number of green bags already there, Bristol waster will be thoroughly confused as we'd used clear (recycling) bags for the green waster and some of the green (non-recyclables) bags were blatantly full of drinks cans and bottles. Such a dilemma!

A great, if once again slightly warm, evening, finishing with a drink by the harbour at Workout where Caroline had a HUGE jug of oat milk with her pot of tea, we established everyone's birth month except Frances who protects her privacy with aplomb, and wished Ed well on his adventures to the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow for his wardrobe-enhancing volunteering stint (and he's no longer on the naughty step, if anyone's asking).

See you all next week?

We had a sunset! We saw stars because there were no clouds! We had new GoodGymmer Shubham with is for the first time! How good could this get?

As the walkers arrived they could hear the chip-chopping of the runners, already socking it to the brambles as we try to find the wall on the far side of the Burial Ground, progressing across the entire width of the previously bramble-filled space.

With Richard B swanning around somewhere soggy, Richard G took ownership of the Shears of Destruction to make excellent progress to the wall, even if he did trap himself behind the new wall of chopped bramble.

Meanwhile Cameron and Nachiket created a tunnel to the back fence after Cameron had already helped Caroline to clear the tool shed of encroaching brambles.

Whilst Vaguely Northern Darren raked up choppage, the main team were working on the latest bulk-of-brambles zone, revealing more gravestones - the whole space is looking lovely, before the brambles and nettles get a burst of energy is Spring.

The day's discovery was a babyfoot table, though it turns out only Melanie knows thats what its really called, not table football.

We all tried to learn a but of Japanese but we're finding it really hard - anyone have any tips?

More opportunities for good deeds this week, and a walk around the Light Festival on Friday, too - see you soon?

We have made so much difference to the winter view of the Burial Ground - lots of the previously-hidden gravestones can now be seen as soon as you enter the green space as the bramble forest has been cut to just a few inches - now to see what happens in Spring...

We were joined by Jen for the first time, a recruit from Greville Smyth junior parkrun volunteering, who quickly joined in the chopping mission to find the ground as well as the gravestones. Operation Find The Wall is now underway, having successfully cleared all the way to the far path.

Soundtrack for the evening was mostly experiences of volunteering at Glastonbury (trying to stop festival-goers contaminating the watercourses by encouraging them to use the provided loos) to childhood experiences of being blamed for things which a sibling had done, including sibling's graffiti-ing walls or windowsills in a less-than-sophisticated way. But also times the GoodGymmer had been the sibling causing the mischief...

Lots of chat and lots of chopping, Richard B as ever getting as much done in their Solo spot as the rest of us put together. The Whirling Dervish of Bristol GoodGym.

Time to pack up and move out, Vaguely Northern Darren went back to look for Melanie's missing non-gardening glove which was mysteriously found under the now quite soggy lights in her bag - if only there was a light on whilst putting the lights in the bag...

The rain and chill had lessened considerably for the journey back and we were lulled into a fall sense of dryness and warmth at Workout as we enjoyed our post-run/walk tea, hot chocolate, chai or pint. Until we were putting soggy hats, gloves and jackets back on. Roll on the bramble-growth of Spring but also warmer rain!

What a great Group Run/Walk to welcome three lively new GoodGymmers, back at one of our favourite tasks - and INDOORS!

We were chock-a-block at Workout to meet Nachiket, Tanmay and Joseph for their first GoodGym experience - we hope it's the first of many.

Runners strode of and the walkers were hot on their heels, joined by Richard B "fresh" from their Arc of Attrition exploits at the weekend through horrendous weather. It made for much chat through Castle Park. So much so that we forgot to turn left and walked a longer way to Emmaus than ever before... Well, it is the January Challenge :-)

Xanne was waiting for us and we were in the warehouse of joy for the first time in a while. its all change with the mezzanine being cleared for a fantastic project with St Mungo's running apprenticeships.

Weird and wonderful jobs including boxing and shelving unsorted donations in a tidy semi-organised ways, constructing beds to work out which pieces were missing, clothes "tat or treasure" and carpet tile piling that was more skilled than it looked.

We were busy bees as Xanne knows us of old and is the only task beneficiary that has a back-up list of tasks to keep us going when we've been so efficient to clear part one!

As ever, there were treasures to be discovered, old racist/sexist newspapers, figurines of old naked people cavorting, an evil clown-y figurine and Kingsley bagged himself a keyboard stand, as you do.

We were soon off sgain, many of us to Franco Manca to trade our kilometre Strava pizzas for real pizzas - fantastic Tuesday, everyone!