At GoodGym Bristol we love a bit of fun and creativity, which is why we think the Children’s Scrapstore is awesome. Companies donate their unwanted junk and the Scrapstore sort and pass it onto schools and community projects who turn it into toys, art, stage sets and anything else they can think of. As it is such a popular project they are always thankful for a helping hand sorting the donated scrap, so this time we brought over 50 helping hands!

After meeting at Vivo Sports Club and introducing ourselves we realised that not only did we have a massive group with even more happy new faces, but a lot of runners were called Emily and Dave, so remembering names on this run would be a lot easier than usual!

We ran 1.5 miles from Vivo to St Werburghs with an epiphany of Emilys and a deluge of Daves taking Bristol by storm. Our goodness must be contagious as a guy who was jogging by saw us and after a quick chat with Paul, who explained our task for the evening was to “go and cut stuff”, decided he wanted to join our helpful hoard.

After this gentle warm up we were ready to take on whatever the lovely ladies at the Scrapstore had to throw at us. We were shown around the warehouse of wonder before being split into groups and set to task. And what do you know, Paul was right in his prediction that we would be cutting stuff up. People were ripping apart curtains, cutting guttering, tearing tents, dismantling chairs, burning through rope, taking thread off of reels and our old favourite, taking phones out of boxes. It may sound destructive but rest assured that there is method to this madness. As ever when the time came to leave it was tough getting everyone to finish their task in hand. “Just one more curtain…” they exclaimed, “We’ll be quick, just gotta finish this…” came another shout. Eventually we got everyone together for a group shot before heading back into the night.

After jogging back, we assembled in Queens Square for a rather random but productive warm down. With a few tricep-dips, squats, sprints and lunges we finished off a very successful evening. Thanks to everyone who came along, you are all ruddy brilliant. Don’t forget the Scrapstore are having an open day on Saturday 17th October when you will be able to go and grab yourself a basket of scrap for a small donation. So why not come and help us build a rockery in Redcliffe at 11am and then head over there to get creative afterwards.

On Saturday GoodGym joined in with the Bristol Green Capital Healthy City Week.

Meeting at the Bristol 2015 Labspace on the Waterfront, a dozen GoodGymers, including 3 first-timers, Dina, Emily and Amber (really hope you enjoyed it peeps!), were welcomed by Victoria and her team of volunteers and after an introduction from Chris, who led the run, and a mightily impressive starting photo we headed off for our task.

Flying under the radar was Kim, our local Coach Runner Rep, who was completing her 150th GoodGym run - a truly fantastic achievement! Brilliant stuff and well done Kim!

Stopping briefly on Castle Green for a series of walking stretches, which included some ninja style hamstring stretches and sumo style lunges we made our way over to the Bristol Bath Cycle Path to tidy the area of litter.

Splitting into groups of four we challenged ourselves to fill as many bin bags as possible whilst keeping an eye out for unusual items among the debris. We were not disappointed, managing to quickly fill a large number of bin bags and finding an array of treasure among the litter including a toilet seat, printer and fax machine, bike tyres and a large gate spring in among the more standard fare of bottles, bags wrappers and a staggering number of soiled nappies!

Mission accomplished we then set off back for the Waterfront during which there was a moment which typifies what GoodGym is all about. As the group had got split up the front pack set about clearing some litter from the Pip’n’Jay church, and were quickly joined by the second group and the combined effort saw the whole area clear of litter in next to no time - brilliant!

Upon returning to our meeting point we cooled down with some stretches and were greeted with a wide variety of herbal teas and took the opportunity to learn more about what would be happening during the course of Healthy City Week and listen to the Gasworks Choir which featured occasional GoodGymer Fraser.

Oh, and Chris got to sit in the Big Green Chair!!

Fab work again gang!!