Some of the usual suspects braved the chilly weather and made their way down to Valentines Park to assist run director Wendy in making sure parkrun went ahead safely.

• Ed was at his usual spot guarding the main car park entrance
• Kathryn kept track and timed all the finishers
• Peter assisted at the 2nd car park by forming a human bollard guarding a spot of ice right where the parkrunners would turn the corner.

P.S. hope you feel better soon James P.P.S that skyin looked pretty chilly as well Julia

Had a message from Frenford Foodbank to say new stock was coming in today. The stock needed to be put away, preferably during the day when the sports centre is not so busy. Ed and I quickly set up a session not really expecting anyone else to see it and sign up in time but luckily Louise did. With three of us working on it the delivery soon got done so we had time to tidy up some loose ends and give the nappy section a much needed reorganisation.

4 of us got together to support each other as well as supporting Barking Park Run. It was a beautiful, fresh morning. Not our usual parkrun, Barking was very welcoming -even with a tongue in cheek "get back to your own park runs"- yelled out during a little congestion at the start 😂. Julia and Linda ran while Ed and Sharon cheered everyone on. Dog sitting for a friend Sharon brought two little dogs with her -well it is Barking parkrun after all- and Julia brought hot tea and Colin cup cakes to warm and cheer us on with the rest of our Christmas day.

With Denver temperatures averaging +14c above normal for the past few days, it’s hard to feel very Xmassy! Nonetheless, Metro Caring Food Market is serving those who require assistance at this time of year. With a full stock of all the healthy basics, there was also posh yogurt, a healthy (?) dark chocolate cherry trail mix and fresh Chilean cherries 🍒 as nice Xmas treats. The cat meowed the whole way home on the bus!

Peter got there early but was feeling under the weather, went home to recover. That left us with 3 goodgymers going for a litter pick. Krish who was a 1st timer for goodgym joined us regular lot in tracking down litter. Our route took us down to Wanstead Leisure centre which was quite well kept although we did find a basket which Linda put to good use. we wandered further down where we found a bush which had a truck full of litter, annoyingly most was unaccessible so we moved on to under Redbridge roundabout where we saw somone had flicked a load of red paint across some of the flats, under the roundabout near the bike and footpath we found the paint in a black bag, as our bags were pretty full we moved on, heading up to The George & the Dragon pub, we dumped and reported our 3 full bags of rubbish to the council, made our way back to our HQ and called it a night. Well done all.

This was setup as something good to do before the Christmas meal, the goal find loads of litter, following one of our usual routes near Wanstead Leisure centre and toward Redbridge roundabout, we manged to get 2 bags of rubbish and report some fly tipping