Litter-alley digging the painting!

16 sunny souls ran between 3.5 km and 7 km to blast two deeds at the Philip Street Community Garden and an alleyway behind North Road.

Our services seem to be in great demand at the moment as we had been asked to help out at two tasks today and given the great turnout that we are now achieving every Saturday, we felt confident that we could accomodate both.

It also provided the opportunity for those seeking either a short or longer run to come along and show just what GoodGym does best.

We had most of the bases covered today covering many of the things that we love to get involved with the weather also obliging us with a beautiful sunny GoodGym Saturday morning.

With a warm up and welcome to Ceri, who was joining us for her second run in a week, we all headed off to Philip Street, being joined there by Sarah and Fi - who had already bagsied painting duties! - and were welcomed by the wonderful Julia, our host at the community garden.

We split ourselves into two groups, although Julia seemed to be handpicking certain individuals who shall remain nameless (!), following which I took a team over to the North Road area of Bedminster, where we had been asked to help out with tidying up a private alleyway that had become a dumping ground for all sorts of rubbish and had also become overgrown with weeds and brambles.

So once we were gloved up we set about picking up the litter, cutting back and removing the brambles and weeding the alley with a group of volunteers who had also come along for the morning. One of the houses had set up refreshments with lemonade and cakes (the rice krispie with marshmallow cakes were ace!) which was most welcome.

Along the way we were joined by Emma (fresh from Ashton Court parkrun) and her lovely dog, Charlie, who seemed to want to help get involved with the tidy up. Meanwhile, Chloe, Alice and Chris seemed to be having a Gandalf "who's got the biggest staff?" competition - Chloe the clear winner here and Chris? - well judge for yourself by the photo!

After an hour of blitzing the alleyway the team headed back to Philip Street and what a transformation they encountered! The gang there had continued the digging and weeding that we had started a couple of weeks ago and had also managed to completely paint the wall that had previously been covered in graffiti - the area now looks wonderful and Julia was clearly delighted by our efforts! Fantastic job guys!

We all headed back to base for some stretches and a quick round up of the forthcoming group runs on Tuesday (Windmill Hill City Farm) and Saturday (Bramble Hill Farm) - it's going to be GoodGym Bristol Farm Week by the looks of things! Both are fabulous venues with brilliant tasks so you'll want to get signed up for either or both of those.

We also wished Debs all the best for the London Marathon tomorrow with a big Bristol cheer to send her on her way (with a shout for Paul too who will be there supporting her)!

Thanks to Debs and Chris for backmarking today and to Paul and Emma for the extra photos!

Nice one gang - we cracked the double!