The GG Bristol-Malago Berry Maze collaboration continued today as 14 of us travelled over to pull up a few more roots and prepare the way for the mulch. The project aims to realise the designs of a local primary school in producing a maze made up of 15 different varieties of berry. In doing so, the project owner Raluca hopes to bring together the local community both in its construction and in the enjoyment of the completed space.

A lovely fresh Autumn day made our run along the Malago Greenway very pleasant and it was fantastic to welcome along Mhairi from Southwark to join us. Great too to see Liza and Camilla return for their second GG Bristol run - you already feel like part of the GG Bristol family!

Brilliant also to welcome back Kim to a Goodgym Bristol run. Kim and Chris started off this amazing Bristol club and it's lovely to have them along again.

In terms of root digging, it was interesting to watch the improvisation going on as a very mixed assortment of tools were employed to achieve the desired result. The better equipped had spades, but there were also one or two trowels, some rakes and Liam's amazing long handled 'claw of root eradication'.

It's traditional now to find a car part or two and today was no exception with a fan; we also uncovered a few more rocks, the odd shard of glass and a number of worms - to Linlu's obvious delight (not). Petra then informed me that in Borneo, a small Sago worm (or really a grub) know locally as Butod is quite a local delicacy and can be eaten raw. I have to say that at times like these, a vegan diet seems especially appealing.

In the course of an hour we cleared two complete paths and in a last minute intervention, helped to move an particularly large slab of concrete so the way was clear for the rest of the days volunteers.

The maze is really starting to take shape now, so exciting to think that we've been so actively involved in this from the very start and seen the space completely transformed.

Thanks to Alice and Richard for leading the second group and to David for backmarking for me.

Another fantastic turn out tonight as 30 of us set out on a fairly short run over to Dame Emily Park in Bedminster.

The park is cared for by the Dame Emily Park Project (DEPP), a small group of volunteers who work hard to keep the space tidy and the equipment maintained as well as hosting events for the local community.

On arrival at the park we were met by Ursula and Sarah who split us into groups and set about equipping us all with litter pickers and rubbish bags. We were then all assigned different zones of the park and tasked with clearing away all the litter we could find.

With October fast approaching the early evening light is starting to fade fairly quickly and the simple task of navigating around the park was made somewhat more challenging as a result. It was nice to see a few head torches appear and with a couple of our new lights in play we managed to carry on a little longer and finish our task.

Apparently the park had had unexpectedly been cleared early that morning so we were expecting that maybe there wouldn't be too much to do, but Goodgym runners have a real knack for finding litter so it was no surprise to finish up with over 10 full bags of rubbish by the end of our session. Amazing work everyone - DEPP really appreciated all our efforts. It was nice to have some of the skaters in the park helping out too.

Another short run and we found ourselves back at Queen Square with a lttle time to spare so we finished off with a trio of running trains heading around the perimeter. The bursts of speed required to move to the front are a good form of interval train-ing (get it?).

Finally we presented a set of red shoelaces to Kerry for brining along here sister Megan on Saturday and we promised a similar award to Abigail next time for bringing along Sophie tonight.

A very warm welcome to our new runners, Kate and Hollie. Hope you had fun!

A double whammy tonight as both our task and run leader had to be substituted at the very last minute.

Our trainer Gary was unwell so he was unable to join us for his penultimate Bristol run. (There were some rumours that he just needed the extra time to put the finishing touches to his fancy dress costume for his farewell session next week).

Not only that, but our original task had been canceled! Fortunately, the emergency red GG Bristol phone had rung just hours earlier with an urgent request for help down at the Malago Greenway Berry Maze. The project (which we visited just last weekend) had run into difficulties after ploughing had revealed a veritable mine field of rubble that was sure to take out the rotivator when it arrived later in the week and put paid to the Mock A Maze day planned this Saturday.

Naturally we jumped at the chance to help out - our members love nothing more than to help a project in need - so we headed out along the Malago Greenway and got stuck in moving as many rocks as possible out of the soil and into a pile. Meanwhile Tom, Ian, Alex, Andrew and Richard were on wheelbarrow and refuse sack duty moving the pile into a location for collection by a skip.

Everyone worked hard collecting up rubble and rubbish. As is often the case we made some interesting discoveries - a shoe, an old orangina bottle and indeed it appeared that on this occasion that we had discovered an ancient car burial site as first Liam uncovered a tyre and then Rachel located a steering wheel in amongst all the dirt.

By the time we were due to leave we had uncovered most of the rocks so Mock a Maze should be able to go ahead!

Thanks everyone for adapting so willingly to the changed plan. Raluca was really grateful for our help and this was one of those occasions when it's difficult to see who else could have done all that manual labour at such short notice. You all rock!

Our work finished, we returned to base and then headed off to our monthly eats. A really great turnout at the meal tonight (as you can see on the selfie!) - lovely to have you all along both at the task and at the restaurant afterwards!

Thanks to Dave for leading the second group and to my back markers Alex and Clo. Thanks also to Caroline, Richard and Jack for the glove run!

Welcome also to new runners Emma and Richard

Don't forget it's (optional) fancy dress next week for Gary's last run. No theme, the more random the better!

It was a warm and balmy night (or should that be barmy?) in Brizzle when 30 runners met to take on two tasks spanning the length of the city centre. After meeting and running through some warm ups we split into two teams. Dave's team headed to the Bedminster Patchwork Project to help tidy their South Street patch. My team we more inclined to go further and headed up to the Golden Hill Community Garden (or Golden Balls as I called it in the warm up) to promote their Harvest Fair on the 9th September.

Team Golden Balls

With my trusty back marker Nick team Golden Balls rolled through the streets and really shined when it came to tackling the hills. When we arrived at the community garden we were met by Clare. She gave us an introduction to the great work that the farm do offering people from all walks of life the opportunity to try their hand at gardening. To fundraise for their work they are having a Harvest Fair on Saturday 9th September. We will also be heading back their to help on the day too. We split into 5 groups, 4 flyering the nearby streets and 2 putting up posters to grab the attention of the passers by. Maps were handed out and instructions given before everyone took on the task. Due to long run their and back the time we had was short but that didn't seem tomato to these keen runner beans.

After 15 minutes most of the groups returned and were given a tour of the garden before we left. One group remained AWOL. Neil and Georgina were far too keen and wanted to put up all of the posters they could. Eventually we were all back together and ran back down the hill to Vivo for a stretch off.

The Patchwork Plummers

Dave's Patchwork Plummers fig-ured a shorter run would be a nice option. Taking a fine nine runners over to Bedminster we met up with the lovely Laura from the Patchwork Group, for the second week running, this time on South Street to help tidy up a small garden of land just on the approach to North Street.

Here we were greeted with a fig tree, plum tree, Fat Hen weeds and some bushes to trim plus some grass to cut. A pair of shears were in great demand with Petra tending to the grass, Guido tackling some weeds and Alice (combining shears and loppers, such a pro!) on bush duty.

Ed, Molly, Roanna (a combination of her mother and father's names apparently), Gulnara and Mel made a fine job of clearing the weeds and secateuring (?) the bushes, before we sampled the plums which in the main were a little sour for our liking but Petra seemed to enjoy them as she came back with a stash!

Our shorter run gave us more time on the task and so managed to leave the garden looking much nicer and neater than it had been when we arrived.

Massive well done to everyone who ran along tonight. It was warm, it was tough but you all delivered.