We welcomed a happy gang of litter pickers, including Fiona for her 3rd session, and Ram for his 5th session 🙌

Fay and Sallyann walked with the litter pickers and bags, whilst Ben sped off ahead, somehow I kept up with him, and the rest of the group sensibly jogged together.

Jane bravely climbed down to the river's edge for maximum litter picking opportunities, whilst Rich joined for a photo opportunity, after the photo opportunity of dragging a chair from the bushes.

Andy alerted us to the news that Chelmsford institution, Back Inn Time, is celebrating it's 40th anniversary with prices from when it first opened. We promptly booked our next social there!

For a final photo opp, Rich of course got into the rogue trolley we found, with Fiona and Ben joining in this time.

Next week we have Painting for Little Edi.

See you all soon!

Laurie

We met this week at a different location due to the length of the run, I was concerned some may head to the usual place so sent Jen there, but no need! Everyone made it so a quick briefing and then off we set! Great to have Sean join us for the first time and tell us all about being RD at Writtle parkrun, who are moving to their winter course this weekend. Check it out!

It is just over 4km each way so we held a steady pace, taking shortcuts where we could. Ram barely broke a sweat, I need longer legs...

As we got to the allotments, we were confused at the odd numbering system in place. Wandering around aimlessly until we spied Sallyann. We headed over to dig the earth over and make the area as flat as possible to lay a greenhouse on in due course.

It was while we were there that Fi revealed she knew Andrew at Mencap, but ordinarily neither of them had any clothes on! Obviously there were no follow up questions to this.

I think we did a great job making the area flat. Posing for a couple of poorly taken photos, Russell lying on the floor to determine flatness being my highlight, followed by the spooky ghost goodgymers as I wink to the camera, we wolfed down loads of biscuits.

We then headed back at a frankly ridiculous pace to see the cats eyes on the path in action. Great task, great running, and great remembering of headtorches everyone.

Led by the wonderful Edith, the Ideas Hub has been supporting underrepresented communities in Chelmsford since 2011, and after moving from temporary location to temporary location, they finally have a permanent home where they can grow roots.

Rich lead Richard and Ram there on a 2km run, and arrived a minute after Jane and Sallyann, who walked there the short way.

Tilers were coming the next day to fit a new floor, so the first job was to prepare the ground, peeling off old bits of carpet underlay, and chipping off rough pieces of concrete. Richard immediately asked if there was a hammer, and started on the concrete, joined by Ram. In the other room, Sallyann and Jane had a go at the old bits of carpet.

Before we left, Edith gave us a tour of the building and told us some of her plans for the place, including cooking workshops and movie nights featuring food cooked by the refugee communities. There is a lot of work to do before they can open, the old kitchen needs gutting, and there'll be lots of cleaning and decorating. We'll be back here next week to see the new floor, and to help with some more jobs.

Thanks all for coming and we will back their again next week to continue the good work.

8 GoodGymers went to Hearing Help Essex to give their garden a tidy while the builders are in doing renovation works. It was great to see Ram back, joining us for his second group run.

After a chatty run, we met Sallyann there, and were about to get stuck in when we realised we didn't have the code to the key safe. Luckily Rich found the email with the code so we didn't have to break in.

Martin and Ben got the tools out, Sallyann got stuck in clearing the path, and Joel took all the weeds round to the compost bins.

While we worked, Andy told us he was looking forward to the Clacton airshow; hopefully it won't be cancelled due to thunderstorms, but if it is, maybe he'll do the run leader training instead 🙂

This week we had a social after the task, so for once we didn't run back to HQ, but ran to Brewhouse instead, where we met Fay. We arrived just as their quiz night was starting, and (after much debate about rivers and county boundaries) came a creditable 5th out of 20.

Well done everyone 💪 Next week we are delivering charity leaflets around Melbourne.

PS Ram gets a Social Media credit for showing group admin Rich how to add his name to the WhatsApp group 🤦‍♀️