It’s been almost 3 years exactly since we were last at the Brandon Lawrence Sports Centre, home to the Renewal Trust (click here for that blast from the past).

It was lovely to be back there again last night for this week’s task, which saw 5 GoodGymers sprucing up the outside of the centre. We were joined by Lucas from the Renewal Trust who worked alongside us as we swept up all the leaves, weeded the planters and carpark/path area, and picked up litter. After an hour’s work, it was all looking much tidier (from what we could see in the dark). Unfortunately someone forgot to take many before and after shots…

We’d all anticipated a chilly evening so had piled on multiple layers either under or over our GoodGym t-shirts, but it turned out to be surprisingly mild. Add to this the hard work sweeping and scraping up the weeds, and we all felt pretty warm and well-exercised by the end – so warm that we all managed to expose our GoodGym t-shirts for the photo without turning blue!

Thanks to Lucas for hosting us, and for showing us another overgrown and littered area which could do with a touch of GoodGym magic at some point – this got us very excited for a possible return visit.

Last night’s GoodGym Nottingham task was meant to see us helping at the Meadows Foodbank. However, for the second week running, a last-minute change of plan was needed, this time due to illness (get well soon Mark!).

Luckily, Leah had a stash of purple bags and gloves in her car, so not to be defeated again, we quickly switched gears and turned our attention to litter picking around the local area. As there were so many of us, we split into two groups and collectively managed to fill 4 bags of litter which had been lurking amongst the fallen leaves – impressive given how clean and tidy the area actually looked and that some of us were wheeling bikes around whilst picking!

It may not have been the task we originally planned, but we still got out, got moving and made a difference. Thanks to everyone who came for being so adaptable, and we will hopefully reschedule our visit to the Foodbank for a future week.

A big welcome to Georgie who joined us for the first time!

Next week we will be at the Brandon Lawerence Sports Centre – sign up here.

There's not a lot that will stop a GoodGymmer completing a task.

We've litter-picked in -3°C, we've weeded instead of watching an important World Cup match, we've painted railings and cut down bushes by the light of a headtorch…

But this week we were foiled. Unfortunately, a group had gone on a coach trip down to Birmingham and left a tonne of cars in the car park at the ICCA. They'd told the staff they'd be back by 5, but at 6:45 they hadn't arrived. As any of you who've been to one of these tasks knows, that paint gets EVERYWHERE and we agreed with the staff that we couldn't risk getting it all over the cars. And even scraping would have caused the flakes to get all over everything.

With no backup litter-pickers in the car after a pre-holiday boot shuffle, we had to abandon the task.

Thanks to Peter, Nigel and Leah for trying! We'll be back at the end of November to try again.