Wow, what a turn out! It was great to see so many GoodGymers out tonight - thank you everyone for coming.

We welcomed Dani from GoodGym Lewisham for a spot of GG Tourism whilst he is house-sitting locally, and met Lucifer for his first ever session - head to their profiles to give them a cheer!

Tom had plenty of tasks for us tonight, the main job being spreading woodchip over the children's play area and around the pond. With lots of lifting and shifting, and plenty of raking, many hands made light work of the task.

Meanwhile, the rest of the team got to work weeding and pruning on the side path of the orchard. We temporarily lost David to a large bush where he was extracting a bramble. Sinéad's trimming of the rosemary bush left a pleasant aroma for the rest of the evening. The discovery of Fred the Frog led to a lot of distraction, and even a photoshoot, courtesy of Jane.

We enjoyed and evening of education, with history lessons with Jim, spanish with Dani and nature studies with Sinead. Other conversation topics includes Sandi Toksvig, Mastermind and David the Gnome.

We ended the session with picking apples and grapes, ready for our lunchboxes for the rest of the week.

It was fab to welcome back Tracey for our task this evening, after a break away from GoodGym. We made our way to St Faith's, and got straight to work with litter picking, lopping and sweeping.

Tracey and The Katies took on litter picking, Our team and managed to put together the best part of a full outfit with their finds - pants, trousers, a sock and a glove, as well as coat hanger to display them all!

Team Dave were in lopping duty, tidying up the brambles and budlia round the front of the church. Dave spent as much time in the bag of cuttings as he did out of it.

Jim helped David from the church with clearing the side path. They made such a difference I didn't recognise the place when I walked back through at the end of the task.

There was quite a lot of Double Trouble tonight, especially when the we included the church volunteers too! Two Katies, two Jens and in impressive three Davids. We very much enjoyed some tea, squash and biscuits before heading back to FCC. And we also learned plenty about looking after snakes 🐍 - fortunately we didn't come across any in the church yard.

There were only a small number of us for the task this evening, and Barbara had set one of our biggest challenges yet - clear a path from the gardens to the tap!

It looked pretty daunting to start with, but after we got the strimmers up and running, and David got to grips with a new scraping tool, we were on a roll! The eclipse let us down a bit in its spectacular-ness, but we were able to see to power through to the end. Swings and roundabouts, I guess!

First of all, it was great to meet James this evening, joining us for his very first session - welcome to GoodGym!

We took a brief detour on our way to PARCS to find one of the Portsmouth Centenary Lions at Fratton Park, then tested a new route to get to our task.

Sammy and David took on some hedge trimming, weed scraping and litter picking duties in the front garden. Team work made the dream work, with the pair developing an interesting large broom / small dustpan technique to sweep up the cuttings at the end of the task.

James, Dave and I visited the back garden, which had become an absolute jungle of brambles. James seemed to very much enjoyed using the loppers, and also showed impressive dexterity to both chop and lift the brambles in one movement. We cleared a huge spaces, which is now on its way to being ready for service users at PARCS to tend to.

On our way home, we collected two more Lions, making a set of three ahead of the England match. Fingers crossed for a good result!

It was a very balmy evening for a spot of burdoch banishing, but many hands made light work!

Abby was incredibly proficient in digging in the very dry soil to get up the burdoch roots. Katie found what could have been a carrot plant, or perhaps a deadly hemlock amongst the weeds. Despite the task being at the pick-your-own orchard, somewhat wisely it was decided to leave that one behind.

We got some extra exercise in by jumping the stepping stones that were uncovered by our de-weeding efforts. Conversations went from the bizarre to the ridiculous, with much content probably unsuitable for publication. Although, I feel it is safe to confirm that the animated fox in Disney's Robin Hood was a handsome fellow.

This evening was sadly Andy's last GoodGym Portsmouth task before he heads off to Bath, but he has reassured us he will be back for plenty of visits! We were able to enjoy a nice beverage in a pub garden to round of the evening... although I'm not sure we'll be allowed to order Aperol Spritz again!