A very mild evening saw another great turnout for our two tasks tonight. After a brisk warm-up and some newt herding, we parted company and while one group set off for the Emmaus warehouse, the remainder were escorted off to St Pauls Adventure Playground by our brand new run leader, Charlie. Thanks, Charlie!

Emmaus Warehouse

Emmaus helps previously homeless people get back into work by giving them longer term place to live and helping them develop new skills, including PAT testing for companies, performing house clearances and moving large items for elderly or vulnerable people. A couple of the companions also help to organize the warehouse that stores the goods for the Emmaus shops - including one located on the same site.

Now a large part of the current shop stock is womens clothing and the two male warehouse staff could use some assistance in sorting this stock into the correct sizes (some of it is unlabeled). So, it was quite handy that our Emmaus group was almost entirely made up of runners who could do just that. In just 30 minutes the two teams of 8 moved a large quantity of the clothing onto rails with consistent hangers and lovely clear sizing cubes - a task that would have taken much longer otherwise.

Meanwhile, another small group worked through the donated books to sort fiction from non-fiction. The usual debates over categorisation ensued. Is "Pooh's Workout Book" - fiction or non-fiction? And of course, trampoline engineer Kerry made a beeline for the clothes rail construction task, ably assisted by one of our new runners Tim - who also came up with tonights pun - please do come again, Tim :)

And to top it all, Abigail finally got her red laces.

Thanks for back marking, Kerry!

St Pauls Adventure Playground

A group of 10 runners merrily trotted over to St Paul's Adventure Playground. An amazing local play area that is being spruced up and ran by a group of volunteers.

On arrival we were met by Dug who had a long list of jobs for us to be getting on with. We quickly got to work forming a good old good gym chain to shift a lot of chip board up into the mezzanine attic. All to the beat of some great reggae music.

Still with time to spare we sanded wooden doors, washed metal shutters ready for painting, moved metals poles and sorted out tents/sleeping bags.

All in an evenings work. Great work everyone!

Thanks to Dave for back marking.

A fantastic 35 runners met at Vivo tonight for the short run over to the Bearpit to help out our good friends at Incredible Edible; represented tonight by the amazing Hannah. Incredible Edible reclaim patches of urban wilderness to grow edible crops that are then available to anyone passing through. Working together with the wonderful businesses that make-up Bearpit CIC, this once neglected (and somewhat notorious) space has been transformed into a much greener and safer environment that encourages mixed use by the whole community.

As it turns out, Hannah had been a little held up so the only option was of course to run split relays alternating step ups and lunges with circuits round the edge until she arrived. We then split into two teams with Liam once again stepping up to lead a sortie to a secondary IE site at Spring Hill so that the remaining (inedible) Snowberries could be uprooted to make way for edible alternatives. With few cutting tools available, this was a very physical task and while the team worked Incredibly-edibly hard and many brave snowberries perished, some still remained (although in the interests of the title pun - thanks Alice - this is to be regarded as fake news and ignored for the remainder of this report). Well done Snowberry team!

The remainder of us tackled the Bearpit itself, using an assortment of lighting options to distinguish food from weed-ville. Special mention to Alex (good deeds = 99), Mel and Julia for their horticultural skills in this endeavour.

Finally, when the special snow-beret troops returned we decided to call it a day and thanking Hannah dashed off back to Queen Square for some stretches and a well-earned - if long-awaited - pizza.

Welcome to Sally, Kimberley and Saskia for joining us on their first GG Bristol group run tonight!

In other news it is nice to see the Bring-a-Friend tradition continuing. Anna received her red laces tonight for bringing Hollie for the last two weeks, and Julia actually qualified for a second pair. Abigail - I still have yours for bringing Sophie, sorry I couldn't find them amidst all the gloves and lights in my bag tonight!

Thanks very much to Charlie for leading the second group (and carrying backpack #2) tonight and Alice and Jack for back-marking (and group photos). Congratulations also to Mel, Jack and Charlie for becoming qualified GG run leaders!

On a very blustery night 12 GoodGym runners headed down to Stepney City Farm with Anna and Andrew Cornick masterfully navigating the mazy East London streets. Splitting up into three teams we worked hard for 35 minutes moving fresh compost across the farm, one team loading wheelbarrows, one team running the barrows to the other compost heaps and one team on top of the heap turning the fresh compost over.

After the task was complete Simon from the Farm took us into the barn to see the 48 hour old new kid goats with their less than sprightly Mum over seeing proceedings. After 10 minutes of learning about goats and making suitable 'ahhh' noises Tom took us back down to earth. We ran out to Mile End Park where we followed the parkrun route completing fartlek intervals of 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds repeatedly as we made our way back to base.

After a short stretch we disappeared into the gales of the night.