With a handful of diehard leaves stoically clinging to the trees and the temperature in the low single figures, it's hard to believe it's still autumn. Nevertheless, according to The Internet, winter doesn't start for another month! In these conditions, it takes a lot of guts to lace up your trainers and pounds the streets. Tonight a dozen fine folks from The Forest did just that. Particular kudos should go to Cecilia and Matt who joined us for the first time tonight.

Fortunately, it wasn't all cold and dark. After heading Walthamstow's lovely high street and passed the newly installed and glorious Christmas tree, we arrived at our destination. Shining bright into the night like a luminescent cattle shed in a nativity scene was The Mill (https://themille17.org/). The Mill is a pillar of the local community, and it hosts a diverse range of services and activities. With advent advancing, and some festive fun forthcoming, it was time for some decoration making to get us into the mood.

I thought we were bunting making, but it was even better than that. Our task was none other than festoon making. What a lovely word festoon is, I keep saying it again and again. This was a fun task and we wasted no time cutting the multi-coloured fabrics into strips in part one of a two-week task.

After our creative efforts, it was time for some exercise and we went for a bit of fartlek running tonight. Unlike festoon, fartlek is not a word that trips off the tongue so easily. Fartlek is Swedish for speed-play, it basically means mixed pace running in for short bursts. We used lamposts to guide us and headed down Copermill Lane into the wiles of the wetlands. It wasn't long until hearts were thumping and all thoughts of the cold weather had dissipated — truly magnificent running from everyone.

After our session, we still had to get back and it was a bit of an uphill slog, but we made it back to Mirth.

Join us next week cos we are doing the whole thing again.

☮️