With Anji down south the task force had to step up and help out. Katie started the group run welcoming new runners Fai and Lucy – welcome both! Also Welcome back to Kate as it was her first run back since last year! We heard all about Andrew’s brush with fame at the mission (last Saturday)

Katy was in holiday mode with only 4 days to go till the summer holidays, so for the warm up we played a game where in pairs we had to run around and be first person in your pair to shout out a holiday destination starting with the letter Katy shouted. Many exotic places came up including our own Newcastle! (perfect staycation spot?)

We set off for our nearly 4km run to St Marks in Gateshead. Paul leading the way and Aimee and Katy back marking. This task was the rescheduled task for Equal Arts that we cancelled due to bad weather in June. Equal Arts are a great charity who are improving older people’s lives through creativity. At St Marks they also had some (very large and fluffy) hens as part of their hen power project!

Once we arrived we were joined by Charlotte and Ross. We all signed in and task owner Jill showed us the garden. We helped ourselves to gardening gloves and tools and everyone got stuck in with weeding and tidying. Rachel and Louise did the flowerbeds. Rachel found a dead bird on a coffin of paper, which was a little odd. Amy rescued a snail!

As we were about to leave the one of the staff members brought us jugs of juice to rehydrate us in the heat. Sufficiently hydrated we headed off back. We didn’t have a fitness task because it was a longer run this week, but we did run up plenty of hills! When we arrived back at the hotel Paul took us through some post run stretches.

Next week are spoiled for choice with not one, not two, but three community missions this week. (Wednesday evening is tidying up at Ouse burn farm), (Saturday you can marshal the northern pride parade), (Sunday is littering picking up northern pride), (read about it here).

We will be back next Monday at Hotel Indigo ready to (return to WERS) an amazing service that supports asylum seekers and refugees.

Happy Running! Aimee

I was last to arrive, which was embarrassing as I was leading the mission, as I grossly under estimated the time it would take for me the run the 10k from my house. I downed two glasses of water while people finished their cups of tea and met some new and newish goodgymers Amy, Amy and Jasmine. We were triple Amying at this mission, which made everyone’s name easy to remember! Three Amys are better than one!

Once I had recovered from my run, and everyone had finished their cups of tea, we headed outside to get cracking. There were two smaller henhouses and one big shed/henhouse. Lynn, task owner, had also provided three tins of brightly coloured paint; two smaller tins and one big tin. We started painting accordingly. Liz, Miranda, Amy and Amy started on the smaller hen houses, whilst me, Andrew and Jasmine got stuck into the big shed. Before we knew it the two smaller hen houses were done in record time! Everyone who had been working on the smaller henhouses came and joined us on the shed. We quickly started to run out of paint, so Lynn had to make an emergency trip to B&Q.

While we awaited the extra tin of forget-me-not blue one of the residents asked if we would paint her bird box with some of the leftover pink paint. Liz happily agreed and set off to do that. The rest of us had a play on the outdoor gym equipment outside the community centre. A chicken wandered over and seemed very interested. One of the residents showed me some round decorated slabs that Equal Arts had made with local school children. A few of them were in remembrance of his departed wife.

Once Lynn arrived back with the second tin of paint it was all hands-on deck to finish the big, (now) blue shed. Liz had to head off slightly early which was a shame as she missed the home-made food. It started to rain slightly so we hurried inside to tuck into cheese and onion quiche Lynn had made us with eggs collected from the chickens and a nice cup of tea. She decided to make something vegetarian after there were so many veggies at the last mission! Once we demolished that she produced a rhubarb pie with warm custard!

We ended the mission with three hen houses painted and full of quiche and pie. We hope to get invited back as Wood Green is always a pleasure to visit!

This was a new mission with the Equal Art HenPower Project at Wood Green in Gateshead. HenPower engages older people in arts activities and hen-keeping to promote health and wellbeing as reducing loneliness. Wood Green is a retirement community where the project started before being adopted in other areas of the country! They now have 25 hens! The first task they wanted us to help with was moving a shed, so it could be easily accessible from the path. The second task was laying a path inside one of the chicken coops to improve accessibly.

Carol Anne and I arrived first and cracked on starting to move the shed and levelling the ground at its new location. We pegged down the tarpaulin and clipping together the interlocking plastic floor tiles which led to the shed. We were quickly joined by Kate, Emma (who got slightly lost and ended up at a farm!) and Andrew (who ran all the way from Gateshead parkrun as the metro was off!). All five of us turned and moved the shed into its new position. Carol Anne was even lifted off the floor as we pushed the shed over!

I was super excited to meet the hens and got to hold a lovely hen called Rebecca. Carol Anne was not so keen! The hen’s approved of our handy work and a few of them started wandering over to where we had churned up the soil levelling the ground and we soon eating up all the worms we had exposed.

Next, we moved on to laying the path. We started digging up the paving stones in the coop to improve the path. Once these were removed we decide it was time for a break. The lovely task owner had left us bacon sandwiches and chocolate cake! They were shocked to learn that four out of five of us were vegetarian! Carol Anne tucked into a bacon sandwich and the rest of us had a cake (or two) with our tea. We also got to see some of the eggs the hens had laid.

We decide we better crack on with laying the path. The others dug the ground ready whilst I carried over the slabs. We were busy laying the slabs and using sand to fixes any wobbles, when we were interrupted by a lady with a medical emergency! Carol Anne did an awesome job looking after her and Kate and Emma helped support her child who were very distressed by the situation. We even fitted in another cup of tea before finishing off the path.

I hope we get invited back to paint the hen coops which we didn’t have time to do today so we can see our feathered friends again!

The team had today's community mission 'in the bag', supporting Equal Arts by packing groceries to raise money for their work with older people who suffer from dementia.

Ross and I headed to Morrisons in Cowgate to help Saturday shoppers fill up their bags with groceries and Equal Arts fill their buckets with generous donations! Ross had a lovely chat with Sandra, the cashier, and I was pleased to chat with many generous shoppers who were happy to support our cause.

In an hour, we estimate that between the two buckets alone, we raised over £20 and that doesn't include the other helpers from Equal Arts who gave up their time to support the excellent work done by this local charity. We will try update you on the total as soon as we can; it certainly was getting busy as we finished our shift and there was another two hours to go!

The team were lovely and we hope that we'll be supporting them again soon.