46 GoodGymers braved the cold and the first dark, dark night of the winter to come and get fit and do good. We got warmed up (revealing some shocking facts along the way, including who eats dinner before they come to GoodGym) and then split into our three groups for the night.

Alice led the first group to Fry Court to finish off a Community Mission from last month, Richard was leading a team of rubble movers to help Up Our Street and the rest of us headed to St Paul's Adventure Playground.

Frytonight

Alice's group were tasked with finishing weeding a raised bed at Fry Court sheltered housing and adding some fresh compost ready for the residents to plant. The gentleman who lived closest to the plot was absolutely delighted, and came to thank the team specially. Not satisfied with just one set of good in a night, the team then did some leafleting relays down Stackpool road to get seasonal with the Christmas Santa Dash happening in just 5 weeks' time!

GoodGym causing t'rubble

Richard's team were also set to work on the raised beds. They met Melissa from Up Our Streetwho showed them the area to clear, which was three beds with lots of rubble on top. The group got to work clearing this area and wheelbarrowing the debris away (with Gary and Darren fitting in some 90 metre sprints along the way) and made a massive dent in the work. A local resident even stopped to say thank you to the group :)

Insane in the membrane

Meanwhile the rest of the group was at St Paul's Adventure Playground where we had three tasks: to clear all of the leaves from the playground from the London Plane Tree, which become slippy and dangerous; to continue digging the trench we started last month for a tyre barrier next to the flying fox swing; and to help the team from Monkey Do who are building a brand new swing with digging a big hole for it. The leaves were soon cleared, the trench was well on it's way to housing the final two tyres and the giant hole was not quite a giant hole, but the team made a jolly good crack at it (intermingled with conducting their own archaeological dig to find a giant membrane from the ground which was not, as at first wondered, a long-lost fossil). With very muddy trainers, we headed back to Queen Square.

Centuri-darr-en

Once everyone had reconvened from their tasks, it was time to celebrate the amazing Darren achieving his 100th Good Deed tonight - massive well done Darren!! He donned the centurion outfit, did the Gallop of the 100s, and then treated us all to his incredible vegan carrot cake and millionaire's shortbread bakes. Who needs the Bake Off final?!

Tonight's pun kudos goes to Alice, Lexi and Richard

It was great to have Dhanesh and Jordan join us for the first time tonight - we hope to see you back soon! It was also lovely to have Grace, Rahul and Shreyan joining us for the second time tonight following last month's Mind Your Head campaign.

We also got to celebrate Georgina's 50th Good Deed tonight just in time before she heads off to pastures new - well done Georgina!

No rain no gain

The hardcore 30 split into two groups. Sally took a group on a shorter run to Faithspace where they helped Redcliffe and Hotwells Development Group deliver leaflets for their Midsummer Fayre this weekend. The run was not as short as advertised as their beautiful synchronised leafleting formation taking them either sides of the river pushed their run to over four miles in all. Nice work!

Thrills and Hills

The rest of the group headed on the hilly (although slightly less hilly than last week) route to Bramble Farm. When we arrived Chris explained a bit about the farm and we got a tour to meet the piglets, goats and load ducks and hens. Once we had torn some of the group away from the Swing Ball, it was time to start leafleting for the area's Get Growing Trail this Saturday which the farm is part of.

Logging a good deed

The group did this in no time so we had the chance to do a hill session in the park on the way home. Impressive sprints all round! With heavy legs we jogged back to Queen's Square where we congratulated Georgina and then celebrated Tim's big birthday early with him and the amazing cake he made!

It was great to welcome Natalie and Tracy to their first Bristol GoodGym run this evening! It was a special night for several reasons. Richard G hit his 5 year Group Run streak. What a hero. To mark the occasion, he had a fetching '5 today' badge which he wore with pride for the rest of the night. Our second celebration of the evening was Emma becoming a Centurion with her 100th Good Deed. Massive well done Emma, we look forward to seeing your wear your wings with pride 😊

Spring forward for a good forking

The group split into two gardening tasks to celebrate the first light Tuesday evening of the year. The first group set off on a longer 8km run to Easton Community Garden. There, they did some speed compost shovelling, sawing, sanding, digging and weeding to make a dent in the pile of work required to start off the warmer months at the garden. We will definitely be back to continue this work before long!

The second group headed over the hill to St Werburgh's City Farm Community Garden. The garden has adults with disabilities there during the week, so the group were set to work with manual tasks around the garden which are too difficult for the group. The tasks were: digging and deweeding a large mound for planting, putting their signs up, weeding a bed for planting, shovelling animal compost (Group 1 weren't the only lucky ones...) and chopping down large amounts of overgrown willow. Sarah was gobsmacked at how much of a difference we were able to make in just 30 minutes with all hands on deck.

After we had got a bit too involved in our willow-lopping, it was time to hot foot it back to base. After this, it was time for our monthly GoodGym Eats, where twenty of us crammed in to Bambalan for delicious food and a delicious Alice-baked cake (again!) to celebrate Emma's 100th. Thank you Clo for organising!