Welcome back for your second Tuesday Henry and to your first January Challenge.

The January challenge is well underway and we are hitting it hard in the Diff. Today saw double and triple deeds going on to help us reach our increased target for 2026.

Tonight we made our way to Cwtch Together, always lovely to see them and this was our first visit of 2026 to Cwtch.

It was a nice route following the river and then through the park, utilising Darrens head torch with the power of a thousand suns.

After our initial welcome from the lovely Sarah, it was time to get into our busy groups.

• Group 01 - raking leaves
• Group 02 - unpacking Sarah's car
• Group 03 - in the store room

Group 01 The leaves had been blown from the park and where wet on the pathways, causing potential slips for the children and young people. Not on our watch 👀

Group 02 Sarah had received a request from one of the young people using her charity, to wrap up their parents. So off to the store and lots of reduced Xmas wrapping paper later.

Group 03 Sarah had requested our tallest person for the task in the store room of toys and activities. Earlier after a box explosion, items where spilling all over the place. So along with the tallest runner, group 3 took to tidying up the back.

We finished a little earlier than usual for a Cwtch session, so we increased our run back for the extra kilometers for the challenge.

Join us next week and keep those deeds flowing so that we can hit our 160 total deeds and 2000km.

Another Tuesday, we know what that means........

It's goodgym

We had a group of 8 volunteers tonight, including our tourist from Tower Hamlets Kareem.

A warm, Welsh welcome to you....

CROESO

This was our first ever time helping out at this hostel, but not our first time helping the Salvation Army.

First to set off were our walking elves, making their way directly to the location shared by Michael. Then, after a warm up led by Lucy it was time for the reindeer runners to head out.

A shorter route there, in case we needed extra task time, both groups arrived simultaneously. Michael rang the doorbell and we were let in.

Michael also works for the Salvation Army at another hostel that we have helped, so tonight he was also task organiser. A quick chat about what the hostel is, and it was time to make our way to the back yard and get busy.

Task ahoy

Tonight's task,

• Sweep the yard
• De-tangle the bramble from the clothes lines
• Weed the stones
• Cut back brambles growing from the train tracks
• Put up the lights around the railings
• Unpack and put out the new table and chairs.

Everyone got to work as tasks were handed out, Lucy and Jonathan grabbed the secauters and got chopping. Owen and Kareem we're raking it in as they weeded the gravel. Martin straight in with the brush, bum bum. Neda got down and dirty weeding the yard. Emily, with tool in hand, was on light duty. Each set of lights had to be unscrewed for the batteries, then put back together so that they were waterproof. Then cable ties secured them giving us the way glow that was needed in these Winter months.

Greenery collected was put back on the land behind the fence, where it will rot down and feed those hungry worms. All that was left was to unpack the furniture, Neda and Martin got to work on this.

We bid farewell to the support worker as we left, and took to the streets for a slightly longer run to make 4.5km in total.

Along the way, managing to pick up a student who ran with us nearly back to the Glassworks, but he had to head off to the train station. Will we see him again, who knows....

Once back, we went into the Glassworks for a games night and lots of laughs.

Congratulations to Kareem for winning telestrations and Emily for winning Exploding Kittens.

See you all again soon. 🎄

Tonight was our yearly Halloween run.

Michael had promised that if others came in some kind of costume, he would wear the inflatable dinosaur costume.

We met at our usual start location in the City Centre, after a quick chat we welcomed our newest person Deborah, who had joined us at a goodgym run at Love Trails.

CROESO

After a brief moment inflating, and some strange looks from the pub behind us, it was time to set off on our run.

We had cheers of dinosaur, t-rex, there were beeping cars and lots of waves. Maybe we should have a T-Rex more often.

The task tonight was helping at Cwtch Together, a charity run disability play project, which promotes inclusive play and socialisation for disabled children and their families.

They are holding 2 Halloween parties, Friday and Saturday, and our fun task was to help set up the spooktacular event.

Everyone got into the spirit as we dressed tables, got pumpkins ready, built a play house, decorated the hall and carried in sand pits and black boards.

As we ended our evening with the usual group photo, the t-rex returned for the jog back.

Join us next week as we begin our Xmas tasks for 3 weeks.