a quick lunchtime session away from the laptop to water plants and pick out cigarette butts!

A lunchtime session of bicep-busting workout watering a community garden at Hainault station

Not sure how things would go due to a distinct lack of council bags (yes, my fault 🙈) , the three of us set off on our stroll down to Redbridge Roundabout to see what we would find.

2 bags between 3 wasn't all that bad and when we dug up a crate just past the leisure centre we all had something.

Just as we started to run out of space, a big white builders bag came to the rescue to contain all the different car body parts we dug up as well.

Bags dropped at a convenient location for collection by the Council we finished our loop, job done.

Collected litter was reported to and since collected by the council. 2x dumped rubbish too much to carry was reported as fly tipping, Council is investigating.

Linda has been quietly spending a lot of her parkrun mornings doing some unofficial VI guiding (Visually Impaired), so this weekend I joined her to see how it worked with a view on sharing the work in the future.

VI Guiding:

• Simon from GG Islington is involved with Achilles International and does weekly running sessions on Thursday evenings, new guides very welcome!

• This Saturday there happens to be a Learn to Guide workshop with Achilles, in the Olympic Park, in case you are curious

Five of GGR's finest arrived to help out at Frenford Foodbank.

Linda and Ed arrived early to set up. They were soon joined by last minute and very welcomed sign up Kathryn who helpfully brought along her Mum to assist us. We also welcomed back our Helena who can't always get to food bank but is always a valuable member of the team when she does. Last but not least AJ came to celebrate her 200th good deed with us. In keeping with tradition (which began with her 100th) she started with a spillage 🙄😂.

Along with the Frenford volunteers we all worked alongside each other helping one another out and getting the job done by lunchtime so 50 local households will be a little better off for it. We even had time to have a little tea break with the usual party guest Colin🐛.

5 Goodgymmers made their way to the last Babybank session before the summer break, by the usual variety of methods, including running, cycling & walking.

Adam discovered the nice laminated labels to mark the different age categories had disappeared, so we were back to the old school post-it notes and soon got stuck into the bags provided.

For some reason this load seemed to have a higher than usual amount of clothing being too big - 3 or 4 year olds don't quite classify as a baby anymore!

As if we aimed fir it, on the mark at 8 all bags were sorted, plies bagged up and put away for others to process from there.

Job done, we said our goodbyes and made our respective ways home. With the babybank now closed for the summer break, we'll find out in a few weeks when we will be resuming sorting duties, so keep an eye on the website for updates.