It was excellent to welcome some new faces to our group last night - a huge welcome to Laura and Lan who joined us for the first time!

We met in a very busy Hyde Park ready to run through a very busy Central London, all the way to the small basement of a refugee centre where squeezed into very close (clothes) quarters. There was definitely a theme to the session last night!

After a warm up we took off towards Leicester Square, discussing all things parkrun, racing and epic challenges such as the Great Wall of China marathon. The energy levels were high! We ran past some iconic sights - through Wellington Arch and past the Ritz, taking a short pause for a pic beside Eros before ending up outside the blue door of the Notre dame Refugee Centre.

This amazing place assists refugees asylum seekers, undocumented migrants and other human rights applicants who are in the UK either seeking protection or with precarious immigration status. They have a storage space where all the donations they receive are put, but it needed a bit of love.

We jumped in, sorting through bags of clothes, hunting down precious hangers and helping get the place more organised. With so many pairs of helping hands it didn't take long to get the job done, we even had time for a bit of styling advice from Louise and Dan!

Before the second part of the task we took ourselves upstairs for a short - but intense - core blast on a very hard floor. Still, it didn't hold us back, and we knocked out planks, crunches, v sits and toe taps.

The next task took us up four flights of stairs, so we got a bit of bonus fitness (although not quite as much as Kamil and Dan who braved the stair challenge at least two more times than the rest of us!) before stepping in to sort a big office cupboard in an even more cramped space. Old crisps out, new stationary in - the result? One very tidy office area.

Next week we've got a much more spacious task to do. We're going to be painting the Lillington Garden community centre - I hope you'll be able to join us to do even more good in Westminster.

I have summer house on Fridays so I cycled over to Bermondsey to help Mrs C.

We helped TRAID in Brixton to their stock from a flooded room. A good work out and a worthy cause.

Four GGers stepped into the breach last night for a brand new task in Westminster. We braved the rain, navigated a confusion system of pathways around an estate and finally stepped into the Lillington Community centre to find the 'foyer' we were anticipating was actually a huge hallway and reception!

We weren't going to let that put us off, so quickly taping up skirting and putting down dust sheets we got to work transforming the off white walls to...a different shade of cream.

The job was a huge one so we covered plenty of topics including the best prompts to use with AI, tube related quiz questions, the best pasta shapes and controversially, the merits (or not, according to Dan) of potato salad. My offer of a potato based reward once the job is finished still stands btw!

We managed to get far more done that we had first thought, and although there were some concerns over the colour choice, it was satisfying to see the transformation taking place.

Thanks so much for an amazing effort - I'm just confirming with the task owner but looks like the next session will be Saturday 2nd. watch this space!