It was another rainy evening this week but what a lovely bunch showed up. We celebrated JKB's impending fatherhood for our Shit Prize of the Month - good luck James and Sarah! - and then got on with our running.

Tom H led a long run up to West Norwood - here's what awaited them: 15 runners headed up to the Portico Gallery to assist John in an innovative game of real life Tetris. This involved repositioning two large shelving units. But not before removing every single item from the shelves, which ranged from all kinds of fancy colourful materials to snazzy retro sewing machines.

To add an extra level of difficulty to the Tetris challenge; John requested we put everything back in exactly the same order. Even though there did not appear to be a whole lot of coherent ordering logic going on with these shelves.

Thankfully for everyone Frances came up with an ingenious three-dimensional grid mapping system that would have put the mathematicians at NASA to shame. A strong group effort later and the task was all done without a single sewing machine out of place.

Careful not to disturb the Yoga class going on below us (who curiously were being instructed to imagine themselves as a scorpion…) we made our way for home.

The final 15 headed to the brilliant Remakery, 1-mile away in Loughborough Junction: What a brillo place the Remakery is! Part workshop, part college art space vibe, part cafe - all community driven. These guys reclaim all kinds of gubbins and members can go and turn the gubbins into useful things. All sorts of projects were going on - chairs, tables, sideboards and the like being made anew. They had a PROPER challenge Anneka situation of large amounts of small bits of gubbins, mainly by way of nuts, bolts, screws etc that needed sorting from a mass pile of mess, to ordered piles of things that are almost the same. The 15 runners set about this task with Time Team-like precision. There were big, small, tiny and middle sized screw areas. There were hooks, door handles and a 'what the heck are these' areas too. After a solid 40-minutes of the most almighty sorting, team GG had made a serious dent into this possibly never-ending task. We loved it. They loved it. It was great!

On return to base, we all got to enjoy some delicious chocolate, banana and pecan cookies made by Ruth from an Ottolenghi recipe.

They're an Ottolenghi recipe! Ruth reminded us again

And with that we all went home happy that we had been so very helpful this evening.

What a night! By far the wettest and chilliest night of 2018, yet 20 heroes turned up to run to two tasks that needed our support.

Lucy and Tom B led the walking contingent, whilst Beth led the runners, to Grove Adventure Playground. Here's what Beth said about it:

Our fabulous five ran and walked over to Grove Adventure playground and were met by a very grateful Anthea who had the heating on ready to warm us up. We started off by sweeping the floor before Tom and Lucy gave it a good mop and Paul did a great job of cleaning the toilets. After that three of us moved on to the job of paint scraping. Thanks to some over eager corporate volunteers some of the paint from the door frame had got on to the windows so we scraped it off and gave them a brush. Before we set off Anthea took a group photo which made Lucy a bit anxious that we would ruin her clean floor by standing on it. On the run back any drying out that had happened was undone by a car driving past a huge puddle and splashing us but we carried on knowing we could make a start on tasting the week’s baked goods before the other group got back.

The rest of us headed to the Crisis charity shop near Elephant and Castle. Katie's glasses immediately steamed up, rendering her a fairly useful navigator and Tom H's phone was playing silly buggers. This meant we went a slightly meandering route that was thwarted by some locked park gates. On arriving a little late to this brilliant shop, we got stuck in with steaming, labelling, hoovering and neatening up the clothes on the shop floor. The staff were delighted that we had saved them some morning jobs.

We ran back in two groups on a much simpler route and enjoyed some of Beth and Paul's delicious bakes before heading home to warm up. Well done Lambeth!

We had loads of lovely new runners this evening, giving it a decidedly 'back to school' feel, just without the new pencil cases. If only.

There were two run options, the first group were led by JKB up to the community growing project at Agnes Riley Gardens. he said:

We navigated the dense and cumbersome mesh, mainly there to keep birds out, in order to water KEY VEGETABLES. We trimmed back rose bushes to make them less hazardous, but the thorns proved tricky. Navigating the bush in the dark was not so easy so it's time for a JKB TIP which is BRING HEADTORCHES. Its getting dark!

The rest of us were led to the Portico Gallery in West Norwood by George, who was celebrating his 100th run. After the 4km mainly uphill climb we reached our destination and began sorting gazebo sides into dirty and need cleaning or OK. These are used for the monthly West Norwood Feast, which takes over the town in the summer months.

On running home, we all enjoyed some banana bread from Lavinia as her #GBBO2018 offering and then we went to the pub for some food and a drink. Lovely stuff.

We had two lovely runs this evening, one was back to the historic Brixton Windmill. Tucked away off Brixton Hill, lots of people don't even know this windmill exists but it does and it is a great place of learning, surrounded by a peaceful garden. Beth led a group on a 1km route to the mill, whilst those wanting a longer run took the 4km Tom Benson run bus.

Here's what Beth had to say:

For those of us that took the direct route up Brixton Hill there was some chat on the way there about how few of us knew that Brixton had it’s own fully functioning windmill. On arrival we were a little disappointed to see that the sails had been taken off the windmill but once they are repaired they’ll be back on and it will be looking more functional again soon. Jean handed out tools and showed us what needed doing. A large group neatened up the edge of the path, a group of three started digging a spot for a new tree and there was also trimming of some overgrown plants to be done. Once the reinforcements arrived in the shape of Tom’s long run group there was even more digging going on and plenty of sweeping and bagging up of weeds.

The rest of us went 2km up to the Tulse Hill Estate. Hidden amongst the buildings is an incredible polytunnel that serves as an educational food growing project for the whole estate. Over the summer, hundreds of tomato plants were cultivated and given out to residents to grow on their balconies. The project gets lots of reclaimed wood that is used to make pallet beds for growing but at the moment it was all piled up next to some garages. Presenting a fire risk, it needed to be moved so we squeezed into the small space and started pulling them out and taking them to a safer space. The pile was quite big and there were bits of timber, old fence and even a fireguard that we pulled out of the way. It was a fantastic effort made all the better by not scratching the very nice VW Golf parked precariously near to the work area.

On arrival back to base, we tucked into some Bake Off treats from Tess and Sarah. It was all delicious and we headed off home happy.

September has come round and the nights start to draw in again. The hot summer has started to leave us but that was lucky for this evening as we were back to Clapham Common to take off some more top soil as we finish off the wildflower meadow. As the summer was hot and dry, the ground was still pretty hard and everyone had a tough session trying to get their spades through the roots!

It's hard to get through these roots! Said everyone

After running 2.5km there, we split into two groups. One went off to do some fitness with Katie and a lovely yoga for runners session from newly returned Sarah, whilst the other half got digging. After swapping, we then ran back in three groups at different paces. On return we all enjoyed WEEK ONE of our Bake Off Sweetstake - Vix and John H brought us some sweet and savoury biscuit joy. Wahey!

What a lovely evening for a run! We had lots of lovely new people along to join in with our three task bonanza. They were IN LUCK as the most important thing in the GG Lambeth calender has come around once again: The Great British Bake Off Sweetstake!

Beth had all the names and descriptions ready to go and fearless Lambeth runners drew the names of their star bakers. As if you needed an excuse to join us on a run - now you can with added cake right up until Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year!

Onto the tasks!

From Beth: A group of 5 of us took a short jog to Loughborough junction farm to meet Walter who had an orchard of trees that needed watering. Once supplied with watering cans, a couple of wheelbarrows and rather nifty H2Go bags we were given directions of where we were to fill up said watering vessels and headed through Wyck gardens. Where we had been directed to appeared to just be a regular street so we were a bit confused, it turned out our water source was just a very kind man called Andy who had a hose running through his flat and out of the front door. Once the hose was appropriately positioned so that any leaks ended up watering his flowerbed we were laughing and chatted away while we watched the bags fill up. We covered various topics including the best baths to visit when in Budapest (there’s the popular one in the park that everyone goes to but there’s also a new rooftop one) and thanks to Andy having to call his dog Marley back every so often were reminded of this gem. Once all the trees had had a much needed drink we took our equipment back to the farm, got a grateful hug from Walter and made our way back to Papa’s.

From Jim and Tom: The largest group headed down to old fave Kennington Park, where the very organised Marietta and Rita set us about the usual jobs. There was litter picking, removing the pesky bindweed and trimming the hedges in the lovely rose garden. Kudos must go to the 'advanced level' rose trimmers who certainly know their petal from their lead and also to Andrew G who dug up a tree by following instructions very well!

From Katie: 15 of us headed to a new task, helping out at an adventure playground. They want to develop an area of the playground that's a bit overgrown and the first thing was turning some compost that had been there for a while. It turns out that some bees had set up home in one particular part of the compost and so we turned them over by accident. Luckily they were friendly bees who were happy to see us and didn't sting us at all. The compost was quite stinky but everyone did a great job! Freyja and Elise got to measuring up specific bits of the park that will be renovated. We did some nice planks and then ran home.

TOP EVENING LAMBETH

It was another lovely summer's evening and we welcomed Saul, trainer for soon to be opening Huddersfield, along for his first ever GoodGym run! As the last Tuesday in July, it was time to award our Shit Prize of the Month to another deserving winner. This month it went to Mark, who bagged himself a 10km PB in the stonking heat at the British 10km and for making such a great contribution at the Shindig earlier in the month. WELL DONE MARK!

JKB led one group across to Myatt's Field, where they set about unwinding some pesky bindweed around the nature garden. Once a satisfying pile of the pesky weed was accumulated, they did some paired running around the circular park path. Once you meet each other, you high five, turn around and run back the way you came. If you're both keeping a steady pace, both runners should arrive back at the same time.

Katie led the second group up to the lovely Ruskin Community garden. Justin was very delighted that we were all there and we set about clearing two beds from weeds and turning the soil as well as spreading some compost on another bed. We also learned the difference between a mattock and a hoe - which was very exciting. After that we did a pyramid hill session before heading back to base.

When all the runners were back from doing so much good, we celebrated GoodGym's 100,000th good deed with a banner and some photos. Well done Lambeth - you have made such a big contribution to this number and long may it continue!