It was Valentines ParkRun's 666th event this week. They were expecting extra tourists as one of the challenges they like to do is run where the event number is triple digits. James, Eddie and Linda answered the call for extra volunteers and arrived to find the beautiful Valentines bathed in sunshine and starting to show signs that spring is in the air 🌷

After a little catch up with other runners we took to our posts, cheering on and directing cheering nearly 400 runners round the course. Among our 300 or so regular runners some of the tourists were marking the 666 number of the beast session by sporting horns and devil tails 👹, all in good fun.

How lovely that so many GGR members were available for a midweek morning session at Frenford Food Bank. With Kathryn, Peter, Jenny and Julia taking a break from their usual jobs and regulars Ed, Linda and AJ, seven of us got stuck into the packing lists for 57 food parcels to help local families. Then the phone kept ringing with local helpers offering to come along and it ended up with 14 of us. We were getting on so well we even had time for a little break midway for a cup of tea and a treat in honour of our Eds birthday today. Rested and refreshed we ploughed on finishing the job in good time for lunch. 🥳🥳🥳

Two fold GGR celebtations at Frenford Food Bank today. Our hardworking regular Ed qualified for his 100 Tshirt and our founder member Peter had done just over 800 tasks, no T-shirt for that one but definitely an achievement worth noting. The traditional GGR banner was suitably amended, sadly Colin the 🐛 was unavailable but with the usual GGR innovation a self assembly version was acquired and Gary the Grub was born 😁

With four of us off loading the supermarket delivery with help from 2 Friends of Frenford we soon moved on to switching the easter eggs storage round with the pasta, date checking the biscuits and re-stocking packages that had not been collected. After a quick tidy up we were ready for a slice of Gary

It seems that Linda and Bernadette missed the photographer's lens this week. So we've included a couple of old ones so you don't miss our drop dead gorgeous looks 😊

So lovely to have last minute sign ups Bernadette and Marie come to help Ed and Linda at Frenford food bank today. Relatively new additions Marie and Bernadette they are already invaluable members of the team. They joined in with super shelf stacker Ed, who was already working with a Frenford volunteer, unpacking two cages of donations and several supermarket delivery crates.

That job got finished in super quick time so the dynamic duo then joined Linda in labeling up the cages for the next picking and packing session, meanwhile Ed restocked the pasta shelves from the store room. Unfortunately moving the pasta uncovered evidence of the inevitable visitor one is likely to get with this kind of stock in storage 🐭💩. That's a little job for another day, next installment to follow tomorrow.

4 goodgymmers and a friend joined forces to restock and stock-take at Frenford food bank this week.

The ggers started by offloading the donations and abandoned collections whilst the friend date checked the biscuits. Sadly there were quite a few that were out of date and we now have procedures in place to make sure they are properly rotated.

Attention was then turned to bringing stock in from the store room while one of us had a count up so the task owner knows how much they need to buy in for the next session.

It was a nice relaxed session with everyone going about their tasks generally chitchatting as they went.

Forgot to take photos so here are some previous ones of all those involved.

At first it seemed we were a little short on the ground at Frenford with just Peter, Ed and Linda on site ( we had three GGrs drop out yesterday) so we got straight on with setting up the session. Pretty soon a couple of volunteers from other groups turned up and got stuck straight in. We were then joined by Bernadette and would like to offer her a huge welcome to Good Gym Redbridge. Bernadette hit the ground running as soon as she got her coat off and provided invaluable help with picking and packing.

As usual everyone worked together playing to our various strengths and weaknesses and got the job done pretty much on time. The task owner has expressed his gratitude for all our hard work. 😊

Next Wednesday we will be restocking the shelves and off loading the usual donations.

There were only two of us at Frenford foodbank this week where we arrived to find an enormous supermarket delivery and two cages full of donations.

Old hands at this job Ed and Linda split the job with one taking on the delivery and the other the donations. We may have been thin in the ground but it meant we had room to spread the job out. It took a little longer than usual but we got the job done and the shelves are lovely and full ahead of next weeks picking and packing session.