Well. You get on the tube and it's a bit drizzly. You get off the tube and it's straight out big snowflake snowing. That did not deter 29 cracking runners from jumping on the good ship Lambeth for a night of two tasks and two decent runs. Nice!

After a good warm up, George and Tom led a merry band up the hill to West Norwood, where John was waiting at the Portico gallery. The famous West Norwood Feast gazebo sides were waiting to be sorted into CLEAN or DIRTY, folded and put away. Not the dirty ones though! They needed to get clean. This was a solid 4km each way, which kept everyone warm and the snow even stopped. Tom H took some photos and they are a bit blurry. Or perhaps they show the speed at which people were working? You decide!

My children's phone has produced some Gerhard Richter style portraits tonight...Said Tom

Katie and Lucy headed 3.5km down to Vauxhall to help prep a new community cafe that will be opening in February. Be Enriched have community spaces that anyone can come along to, have a chat and get some food for free. This cafe will charge people from the nearby sports centre and the profits will go back into the rest of their work. There was a lot of degreasing to do and so everyone donned gloves and set about cleaning fridges, shelves and a manky deep fat fryer, as well as sanding some wooden condiment containers down.

Shout out to Tim for tackling the greasy job of under the fat fryer!

We returned back to base and did some nice stretches, before a small party headed to the pub for some light refreshments and chats about our forthcoming trip to Liverpool in March.

Last night we had a round 50 superstar runners to help Lambeth celebrate FIVE YEARS of running to community groups and supporting isolated older people across the borough. We've had a cracking time of it and achieved so much, so a massive THANK YOU to every single person who has been part of our half decade!

John H led a lovely warm up, including the DANGER GAME where 50 people run at random around a dark space then say Hello to new people. It's quite the health and safety risk but surely worth if for all the nice new people we meet along the way.

We had options coming out of our ears this evening - some people chose to walk 1km to the Remakery led by Tom Benson; others chose to run that distance with Katie; some ran as far as Loughborough Farm with Steve, where they did a solid job of spreading woodchip across all the paths; yet more still went on a 4.5km long way round run to the Remakery led by George. Something for everyone, I think you would agree!

Massive thanks to GoodGym for record time scattering woodchip at Loughborough Farm! Said Karen

On arrival at the Remakery, Miguel had lots of moving and sorting for us to do. This fantastic space rescues stuff that would otherwise go to landfill and provides tools and training for people to make wonderful new bits of furniture and other useful things. We've been helping them for a few months as they have a bit of a spring clean and this evening was no different. The woodwork room got a big sweep and hoover, lots of big bits of furniture got taken out of the way and we moved the tool cupboard from A to B and filled it up with tools again. What a great job!

Back at the farm, Steve was leading a crack team of woodchip spreaders, who were also taking the time to pose for a Birthday Shoot on the woodchip pile - we think you'll agree Andy and David look wonderful.

And with that we were all back to base for a bit of fitness and some stretches then the main event: CAKE! Nicky and Phil are fundraising for their London marathon efforts and they had baked a lot of delicious things, as had Beth. We gave our pennies and our pounds and stocked up on delicious stuff. Everyone was a winner and it was a truly celebratory way to finish the evening. You too can sponsor the running duo by visiting their fundraising pages. Sponsor Nicky and Phil as a birthday present to Lambeth!

Here's to the next 5 years!

This evening saw a BONANZA edition of lovely new people and some equally lovely old-timers - so much so that we had FORTY-SEVEN runners on this somewhat balmy November evening. WOWEEE! Luckily we had just the task for so many hands - we were heading to Myatt's Fields to support the small team there with leaf collection. This time of year, thousands upon thousands of leaves fall from the trees and park gardener Taye has the thankless task fo trying to clear them all up. What he needed was FORTY-SEVEN runners to help him out. WHAT LUCK!

I wish I had forty-seven runners to help me out! Said Taye

On arrival, we headed down to the tennis courts and one team set about clearing leaves from inside the courts. Everyone else gathered leaves from flower beds surrounding the lovely bandstand area. Huge bags were filled up with the autumnal debris and were taken to a hidden away area, where a natural compost heap was formed, for them to rot away over the months. Hooray for nature.

When we had finished, everyone got into pairs and played a best of three squat knee fencing competition. Tactics varied wildly but everyone tested their quads in the process.

After we ran back to base, we enjoyed some delicious lemon drizzle cake from Jim and yummy biscuits from Iona. DELISH!

T'was the night before Halloween so Lambeth had a special Trick or Treat run in store. First up was a party popper celebration for Dawn, who hit her 50th run and a Shit Prize of the Month for Emma for completing no less than 10 good deeds in October so far!

We had two tasks this evening, the first was a 6km round trip to help the Friends of Ruskin Park. They have a patch of land that is used to sow winter wheat, that gets sent over to Brixton Windmill for milling and turning into flour. What amazing things we find on our GG travels! Apparently last year two Shire Horses were used to plough the ground but austerity has hit and they have had to make do with a bunch of GoodGymers turning the soil with our fair hands. Setting about the task with energy and verve, we had turned the majority of the grassy area in 30 minutes, ahead of their sowing session at the weekend. Along the way, runners dipped into the Trick or Treat bag and took part in the various challenges and sweet eating they entailed.

The second group did the 8km round trip to the Portico Gallery in West Norwood. Here's what Tom H had to say about it: 11 runners made their way up to the Portico gallery, where they were met by John and Methuselah - who had appropriately for the season come as an actual black cat. John told us he’d been struggling to come up with stuff for us to do, before eventually noticing his windows could probably use a spruce.

We went old school for this one; using buckets of vinegar and rags to get the job done. Special praise to Rebecca Weir for fashioning an extension window wiper from a broom in order to reach the otherwise unreachable windows across the koi pond.

The inescapably strong vinegary aromas seemed to put everyone in the mood for Fish & Chips or in some cases… Pickled Eggs (?). With all the windows cleaned and nobody having fallen in the pond, we decided that the task was a success and our work for the night was done.

Surviving Katie’s tricks by way of some scary squats and murderous mountain climbers, we also ate our way through some chocolatey treats before making our way back to base.

On arrival back at base we were all delighted to take part in the final challenge - eating a massive cake brought in by David as part of GBBO's Vegan Week. It was a true delight, impossible to eat due to the massive size and very gooey icing and generally meant that noone needed any dinner that evening. The wind was taken from our sails somewhat when David said he had got his pastry chef to make it as he was busy that day. So really we must relay our thanks to this anonymous baker who really did cook up a storm.

The first week of October meant it was proper dark when we started our run and even darker when we finished! Luckily, we had two great tasks to get on with and everyone was super up for it.

A smaller group led by JKB headed back to the Tulse Hill Estate, where task owner Vinnie and his barky dog had three jobs that needed our attention. One group sorted out a compost heap that was a right mess, another moved a big old load of soil whilst group 3 moved a load of soil. You could say it was an evening of MOVING for this team but boy did they do well. Shout outs to Andrew and Rebecca who stayed behind to tidy up at the end. TOP STUFF.

WOOF! WOOF! Said the dog.

The rest headed to the fantastic Grove Adventure Playground, which is 1km away. For those wanting a longer run, Tom H led a group 3.5km round the houses. Once there, some people set about digging holes in the ground to plant some grasses that were from the Chelsea Flower Show don't you know. It turns out this was much harder than it seemed as chunks of concrete were awaiting us below the surface. After some serious perseverance all grasses got planted, which task owner Anthea was very impressed by. Another group filled up a flower bed with soil and the rest set about some serious weeding of flower beds out the front and also between the paving out the back. Even more people swept and mopped the floor inside. All in all, we got loads done and one tool was like a broom but had a tiny head on the end and we thought it was like a giant's toothbrush. So that was fun.

It's like a giant's toothbrush! Said Freyja.

On return to base, we tucked into some delicious biscuits and some cake that had candles on it as it was Katie's (that's me!) birthday so that was very nice. THANKS LAMBETH!