In Lewisham, the start of the Christmas period isn’t signalled by any TV adverts, baubles appearing in shop windows, or even the first bite of a mince pie. Here, we set our festive clock by the Blackheath Christmas Fair and this week was our first-of-two tasks distributing their flyers in aid of Age Exchange!

Having suffered wet weather in previous years (along with the dreaded floppy-flyer syndrome that can cause!), a dry if cool evening was welcomed by our squad of 7 as we divvied out the 600 flyers before heading out from Glass Mills.

After a short uphill run to our muster point, and having split into 2 mini-teams, meticulously marked up maps were on hand to guide both around their respective streets selected to receive our festive fair tidings (though note-to-self: yellow highlighter doesn’t show up well under yellow streetlights!).

There were even flyers and time-enough to tackle a few extra streets before we all met back up right on time for groups pics (with a graveyard theme?!) and a nice downhill homeward run.

Same time, same place, same task next week? Why not, see you there!

And also not fast car driving involved but there was lot's and lot's of bulb planting involved! It was a short run this week to Florence Green and with half the group meeting us there, it was a small group running up the hill.

On arrival at Florence Green, Subo had kindly put all the bulbs into individual bags and numbered them depending on which tree we should be planting around. It was time to get stuck into the planting. A fairly straight forward task and the only obstacle was the many tree roots.

On the way back it felt like the group had got much smaller, but it hadn't, we definitely didn't lose anyone! I hope the fox hasn't ate too many of the bulbs we planted!

Next week we are heading to The Albany to tackle the litter and also to tackle the weeds in some areas of the garden. Don't forget headtorches!

In the history of leading group runs, I don't think I've taken such a small amount of photos. The important thing here is this was definitely quality over quantity!!

We haven't been to The Albany for a couple of months and we were pleasantly surprised to see the grass had been cut, and the works completed. It gave us an easier task of spotting the litter. Luckily we have Paul-sized bin bags (as confirmed in the photos) to hold all the litter. It was mainly the usual suspects of glass bottles, cans and chicken shop boxes. Nothing exciting for once, no bags full of snails, shoes or wigs.

We were done and dusted ahead of time and just as it started to rain we made our way back to Glass Mill.

Next week we are heading to Senior's, a longer and hillier run but nothing we can't achieve together!

Another trip to Luxmore Gardens before it gets too dark and the gates as shut early. As usual we needed to tackle the green alkinet and any bindweed that was taking over the plants. There's always a lot of each of those weeds, they end up taking over the plants and stealing their nutrients and water.

Luckily we had a large team of volunteers from Friends of Luxmore Gardens to complete the task even quicker than normal. Well done team!

We'll be heading back to Luxmore Gardens one last time this year to tackle some mulching.

A group of us headed to Mamma Dough for pizza which after a long hiatus was very good pizza!

Next week is a longer run to Seniors and we'll be doing some big tasks in the garden. See you there!