Four people ran to help Thames21 keep the River Quaggy in Lewisham clean. Frances and Andy ran from pacing at Beckenham Place parkrun earlier in the morning. After getting a bit lost, helping to push a broken down car and stopping for some “national spiced buns”, they arrived at Manor Park slightly late but in time to meet Kim, Andrew and the 50 other volunteers from the local area.

Most of the volunteers split into two groups, moving upstream or downstream to clear rubbish. As we only had one pair of waders between the four of us we worked as a team, with Andrew wading into the river and to retrieve rubbish and the rest of us collecting and bagging it.

After we’d filled a couple of bags and cleared our section, we sat down to enjoy the tea and cake kindly provided by the Manor Park cafe – delicious!