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.

After thunder and lightening very very frightening during the afternoon, we actually managed to have a dry run come evening in Lambeth. As the last Tuesday of the month we had our Shit Prize of the Month to give out. The lucky winner was Andrew, who finally, finally bought some new trainers. This has made trainer Katie very happy as she feels sad when she looks at his sad, sad shoes. WELL DONE ANDREW.

James KB led a small but perfectly formed crack team 3km through Brockwell Park to the South London Botanical Institute. They had to move some seeds and boy were there lots. They moved boxes and boxes of the stuff in a human chain. And they only got about half way through. Don't panic Botanicals, we'll be back!

Katie led the rest of the group back to Clapham Common, where we were all happy about the rain as it softened the ground for our nearly final round of digging. We removed loads of the turf and wheelbarrowed it over to the park edge. It was hard work and sometimes even two people jumping on a spade didn't manage to get beneath the surface. But after a lot of arm muscles and a serious portion of elbow grease, we left happy to have made such a big dent in it.

After running back to base, we did some nice stretches and then went home. Well done Lambeth!

It was another lovely evening and we had more lovely new people. Which is quite amazing and lovely. We congratulated Frances on reaching her 100th run with a party popper. Well done Frances!

After a nice warm up we split into two groups. One group went with Katie directly to Agnes Riley Gardens about 3.5km away up some long straight roads. It was quite warm, phew, but we got there and they were quite surprised by how many we were. Little did they know (until Katie immediately told them) that there was another group of almost the exact same size, led by John, that was on the way, they had just taken a longer route.

There was a range of saws and loppers and people got to work quite literally chopping down some large trees as well as pruning some fairly ferocious shrubbery. Some others took to neatening up the bed edges and even more did some lovely watering. A gang with wheelbarrows and trugs collected woodchip from over there and brought it over here. It was wonderfully organised (yet of course safe) chaos. We smashed the glass ceiling by insisting that they didn't need 'four strong men' to cut down trees and in fact showed them that a wonderfully diverse group of capable people could in fact achieve the same thing.

John took half the group and did some truly tough exercises with them involving some horror of a burpee involving a sit up. And he's relaxed having just come back from his honeymoon imagine if he was having a bad day lads?

With 5 minutes to go we were dragging the aforementioned ferocious shrubbery to a different resting place and the big tree branches had been chopped into smaller ones. The cut grass was taken over to the compost heap and you really would never have known we had been there except for the improved look of the place and the mixture of shock and awe on the faces of the lovely people who run the gardens.

'They came, they saw, they massacred', they said. Which was in fact a good thing.

And with that we ran home again, did some stretches and went our separate ways. EXCELLENT WORK!

'Twas the night before Valentine's and also Pancake Day. With such reason to celebrate it was amazing that anyone turned up at all. But turn up they did! We welcomed new Portsmouth trainer Katie and split into two groups.

Group 1 headed off on a mega long run to help Streatham Youth and Community Trust. Their youth centre needed a good old spring clean and so 17 sweaty individuals set about it with aplomb. There was light bulb changing, window cleaning and throwing away of pictures drawn by young people - along with their dreams. At an 11km round trip, they all earned their Love Running badge on Strava in one fell swoop!

Group 2 stuck a little closer to home, heading 2.5km down to Holland town estate to cut back some spiky roses and weed some stubborn weeds. Once back at Papa's, we did a bit more sorting of the broken toys from the good ones and then chopped back some twigs sprouting from a big tree. Portsmouth Katie led a nice fitness session and then we all did some stretches and retreated to the warmth of home and pancakes.

Top running Lambeth!