It was great to have Simon, Martha, Miriam and Maria join us for the first time tonight! We treated them with a game of Whoosh to get warmed up (I promise our warm-ups are not normally that mentally challenging) then split into our two groups.

A bunch of us headed off, navigating our way through the Extinction Rebellion protest, to St Werburgh's City Farm Gardens. We met Sarah and Emily who had a whole host of tasks for us to get stuck into. We split into groups and swarmed off around the gardens, weeding all of the paths, cutting back overgrown bushes and trees, removing bindweed from the grounds, watering plants and turning compost. In just 30 minutes, the group did an amazing job of getting all of this manual work done - apparently the compost alone would have taken the team two weeks!

While our trusty clan of barrow-returners went off to the farm, the rest of the group were lucky enough to have a Lunge Off in their two teams. Who knew there was quite such a height difference in the group until this challenge?!

A marrow-thon effort

Meanwhile, Maria led a group up the steep hill to Bramble Hill Farm. They were met by Kim and Adi, our youngest GoodGym helper. They all set to work with various tasks around the farm. This was mainly taking photos of the pigs, but also included lots of weeding, watering of the veg, collecting eggs from the chicken, post-bashing and bindweed removal. Their hard work was rewarded by getting to pick and take home some massive courgettes. Queue the marrow puns...

A marrow escape

They finished all of this just in time to pull themselves away from the hilltop view of a hot air balloon-filled dusky Bristol and make a run for it down the hill, newly equipped with some summer squash. After cooling off and discussing Darren's rocker days over Ross's delicious birthday macaroons (thanks Ross!), the only other key subject on the cards was this week's menu because...

Tomarrow's dinner is courgette to be decided

No pun credit is taken by the author: thank you to Gary, Mel, Clem and Richard.

43 GoodGymers gathered for our monthly visit to help Felix Road Adventure Playground tonight. It was great to have Caroline and Phoebe join us for the first time, and also lovely to see that we hadn't scared GoodJim off as he joined us for his second time.

Are you a parking ticket? 'Cos you've got fine written all over you

(Thanks for your top chat-up lines Alice) We got warmed up with a game of 'Squat if you...' (technical term) while a Parking Attendant watched over us. We quickly headed off so as not to get booked and jaunted along the Bristol Bath Cycle Path to the task.

While I mastered our groups, everyone else took part in the Mexican Squat Wave (are your legs tired yet?). Then we split into teams to cover the list of tasks which they needed help with.

• The staple removers continued the slow but satisfying job while perfecting their knowledge of which tool worked on each individual staple and nail type so that the Adventure Playground can paint the inside of the centre
• The waterers scattered buckets and hoses all the way round the playground to help the dry grass and the strawberries after our recent hot days
• The litter-pickers got to work on the ever-requested job of the playground and spread themselves around the large area to clear up two bags of rubbish
• The heavies got to work playing pallet tetris to get the pallets in a safer and more condensed position and removed four buckets of rubble and nails from the area.

In between all of this, the group still had time to practice their hula-hooping, do some laps of the velo-swing and send an teddy bear on a BMXing adventure.

Half an hour later, we hopped it back to Queen Square where we took part in my SUPER FUN fitness session for the night of partner jump overs and crawl unders. I have now been informed that it is, in fact, just fun.

Centurifun

Behind the scenes and to my ignorance, the wonderful group had been working up lots of surprises for my 100th Good Deed. After donning the Centurion outfit we were presented with Richard's latest addition to the Centurion outfit Hornycorn (or latterly, Horny Shona). Alice had then crafted a congo which we did much to the bemusement of people gathered in Queen Square for an evening of peace.

After all of this, we headed to Turtle Bay for this month's Eats and Claire's delicious cake. Thank you to Clo for organising!

Now all that was left to be asked was...

Did anyone order a ginger beer?

In a gap between rain showers (it never rains for GoodGym) 43 weedy nice Bristol dwellers took a few hours out of their evening to run 6k and help at the Malago Greenway Berry Maze. In recent weeks some unsavoury (and by that I do not mean sweet, which I guess would be the opposite to savoury but very much not suitable on this occasion) characters have vandalised the berry maze and we wanted to come and help as much as we could to get them back on track with their fantastic community project which has taken a unused and often fly-tipped area of green space and turned it into a beautiful, educational and enjoyable area.
We met at Workout, and after a hokey-cokey style warm up we split into two groups; the first led by myself and backmarked by the ultra-crazy Matt, the second led by Danica and back marked by our cake queen who never gets a soggy bottom, Alice.
On our arrival Germinal and Luke were pushing around two wheelbarrows of tools ready for us to let loose on the juice factory (berry maze). Their faces lit up in shock and a-maze-ment as 43 runners arrived to do as much work as possible in under an hour. The team was introduced to the project and its berry worthy cause before splitting into groups. 6 of the strongest around (well keenest maybe...) took on the role of bashing in posts to replace those that were vandalised and the rest spread like jam over the area to clear weeds. Wheelbarrows were filled with unwanted greenery and posts half disappeared into the ground leaving them strong and upright able to hold the laziest and most fruitful of brambles. Our red t-shirt wearing army of good tore through the weed faster than hippies at Woodstock, and did more fencing than Zorro facing Arya Stark in a fight to the death. When the leader of the maze project, Raluca, arrived 10 minutes before the end she was astounded and incredibly thankful for all the help we were able to offer in such a short time.
Once the time had come to leave we tidied up the tools, took a group photo and ran back to Queen Square. The faster group did a few progression laps of the square before we all stretched and Alice reminded us just how much cake is involved in all the GoodGym tasks coming up over the next week. Seriously, dough you might not know it, flour runs may bake some effort but should you rise to the occasion there's often a slice treat at the end!
Thanks so much to everyone who came along tonight, Raluca, Germinal and Luke were incredibly impressed and thankful for everything you have done. We all prove that despite the wreckless and mindless actions undertaken by a small proportion of our community, there is always a bigger heart of kind and thoughtful people to outshine them. Shine on, you crazy diamonds!

Welcome to Vale, James, Amber and Andrea who joined us for the first time tonight! It was great to have you along and we hope to see you again soon. It was a big one as we celebrated...

The Centurijon

as Jon hit his 100th Good Deed! He was sorely mistaken in thinking he would let it slip under the radar. See the photos to see an up-close action shot of him actually doing his deed and pulling a notably unsightful weed out. Great deeding Jon!

The group split into two so we could help our two tasks for the night. Alice led half the group to Bramble Hill Farm where they got to work doing various tasks around the farm. Darren was soon running around with a wheelbarrow in tow while the rest of the group were filling the barrows, sorting netting, gardening and pretending to be the animals... All in an evening's work.

The rest of us went to Zion in Bishopsworth (with a few impressive folk doing some hill sprints on the way) where we were met by the ever-organised Jess who had written all of our tasks on a list. The group then spent the next 30 minutes crossing off as many of those as possible: Kait had her first run-in with a mop in over a year, Darren, Vale and Mel got into some therapeutic blackboard painting and Shreena got herself into a rabbit hutch while the rest of the group weeded and groomed the outside and scrubbed and cleaned the inside and all of the toys.

Jon with the wind

We filled up with oranges and almonds before starting the downhill run back. The two groups were reunited in Queen's Square where we watched Jon put on his centurion outfit. This centurion then headed to Chilli Daddy where the staff looked on as the warrior battled with a spicy noodle soup.

Welcome to Sophie, Diane, Ellie and Chris who joined us for their first GoodGym Bristol Group Runs tonight!

We quickly split up into two groups. Patrick led The Hardcores on an 8 kilometre return trip to Easton Community Garden. They set a speedy pace and made it out there and back in time to leave 25 minutes to get through all of the tasks Nat had set them including weeding all of the bark at the Community Garden to help it stay strong. According to Nat, you guys were

an awesome bundle of energy and loveliness and got the jobs done at lightning speed! 🎉

Meanwhile...

A sea(gul)l of a-poo-val

The rest of us set off on a 6 kilometre trip to St Werburgh's Community Centre. Alice was deemed the luckiest of us all on the way as 26 of us dodged a seagull's toilet trip and it landed right down her (previously beautifully clean) GoodGym t-shirt. Alice wasn't sure she agreed on how lucky she felt...

When we arrived at the Centre we were diverted while they set up and we got the chance to fit in a fitness session before we got started on the task (Alice's luck was obviously rubbing off on the whole group). We split into two teams to play circuits Cat and Mouse. Well done to the Cats who caught their Mice, while the other group were remaining equal despite some questionable counting and corner cutting going on.

We got back to the Centre and split into two groups: a team headed out in the evening sun to deliver some Helpful Peeps leaflets to the local area. Another team tackled the outdoor area of the Centre to dig up, brush up and bag up all the remaining rubber pieces from around the play area and give everywhere a good tidy-up. In just 15 minutes the place looked a lot better!

We headed back to base to feast on Claire's super delicious belated 50th Good Deed celebration cakes in the remaining sunshine. Credit to Matt for the pun!