20 people ran in 30 degree heat to help Castlehaven Community Centre and 2 people ran 10k to wash an elderly couples windows

30 degrees huh! Blimey. We're not complaining though- bring it on! We pay to sit on easyjet planes to experience weather like that.

We had two jobs to do this evening. One was a mission. Winifred has been a full time carer for her husband for the last 13 years but has recently been struggling to keep up. She really wanted to give the windows a wipe but it was proving difficult. We sent lovely Pritesh and Will Dowsett to help.

An Englishman's home is his Castlehaven

The rest of the group headed to Castlehaven Community Centre. They're a great community association with projects from the under 5's to 60+. They have taken over the maintenance of a piece of public land around the centre and are turning it into a thriving growing space. You can check out what the volunteers are up to here.

There were 4 major tasks we were set to cover.

Paving the way

In a few weeks Castlehaven will be having a small festival in the garden, but at the moment the paved area where all the stalls are due to be erected is infested with weeds. Our job was to pull, scrape or yank out anything that didn't have a flower. With a wheelbarrow full of trowels, hoes and gloves a group of 6 girls got down to it right away.

Heard it through the grapevine

Armed with a ladder, and a couple of secateurs Gemma and Rachel scaled a fence and chopped back a huge dead vine. Nice work ladies

Pond life

4 hardy gents climbed into a drained pond and lifted out a massive load of boulders, rubbish and rubble. The hardest thing wasn't the heavy lifting but putting up with the pungent smell of warm dog mess emanating from the corner of the park.

Forking hard ground

The rest of the team were charged with attempting to start creating some new beds. Before they could start breaking up the ground with the spaces and forks they had to pull out all the weeds, and rake up all the leaves. That was no mean feat in itself but the forking....cooor that was difficult. Still we made our best effort and in 40mins we had made significant progress.

The crawl home

After 40mins, (in which roughly 20litres of sweat had been perspired) we down tools, locked them back in the shed and made for the exit. We were all a little bedraggled to head to Regents Park for a run so decided to head on a shorter route home to the Community Centre. Another cracking evening y'all

Following the difficult task of trying to break into a magic box we had two tasks at GoodGym Camden this evening. Both involving lots of heavy lifting.

We work hard and we 'play soft' but you're in 'safe' hands with the GG Camden long crew!

Tonight a crack team of eight headed up towards Dartmouth Park for a long run with some surprise tasks in store! It was a tough night for a long run in the close heat but our fearless group pushed on hard up the hills and made our way to Highgate Newtown Community Centre (HNCC), where Catherine and Rita were waiting for us. We've worked with them before at Waterlow Park but tonight we had a different task in store.

After a quick refreshment stop (thanks ladies!), we were shown the tasks that we had and we split into indoor and outdoor teams. The outdoor team were helping to completely clear an overgrown garden and trim down some other plants around the play area. The indoor team had a merry go round task of moving the pieces of a soft play area from one storage room to another room that was full with some large tables and chairs that had to go into the space where the soft play pieces were...got that?!

With time a bit of an issue we quickly got on with the tasks, Catherine assisting the indoor team and Rita with the outdoor team. At 8pm we all combined to get the indoor task completed, a fantastic effort by everyone to ensure that this very important task was completed and all the items were swapped around.

Cunningly, however I had forgotten that Catherine had asked us to help move a safe too. An innocuous task, we'd get that done in a jiffy before we left...or so we thought.

We're not quite sure what was in the safe but had this one been in Hatton Garden I'm sure the thieves would've been thwarted. Apparently the "little wooden box", the pictures do no justice, had a cast iron safe inside...they really don't make them like they used to and I wonder if that was cast iron and lead lined! It took a herculean effort from everyone to coordinate, lift, slide and move the safe! After an initial struggle we worked together and with some occasional brute force we moved the safe out of one building across the car park and into it's new home as you can see in the pictures!

With this we had four minutes to get back to base in Somer's Town; at least it was downhill on the way home! With a slightly altered route (thanks Rachel!) we were only 15mins late - that's on time on the Shaun Dixon time keeping scale ;)

Brilliant task tonight, great to get the job done for HNCC and an awesome team effort...especially on that safe!

Long Crew Signing Off (Alex, Chris, Danica, Jess, Pritesh, Rachel/Rebecca, Sophie, Steve)

Till the next time!

Pritesh

Skip Garden

The remaining 14 of us did a short run up to the Skip Garden. An amazing project that is using recycled materials to build a community garden in King's Cross.

They needed some help shifting heavy stuff around and we were happy to help.

There were heavy planters to move, a giant pile of heavy scaffold boards to reposition and a heavy hydroponic thingamijig (best to look at the photos) that had to be carried the long way round the outside of garden in 10-second bursts. We also got to shovel some heavy rubble and finished off by shifting a heavy sack ("sack" doesn't really do the size of the thing justice) of logs that was so heavy it had broken the pallets it was being carried on and was blocking a gate.

45 minutes later, with stiff shoulders, a coupld of splinters, sore hands and aching bones and a little bit out of puff we did what any sensible group would do and headed to the green next door to do a circuit session. It comprised running, press ups, leg raises, step-ups and squats (Dan was so keen he managed three laps in the time it took everybody else to do two).

And with just a few minutes left it seemed only right to do Simon's favourite "elbow the palms" drill and then put our driving action to good use with a blast around the green. Dan still wasn't tired and came in first finisher (I mean "winner", this isn't a parkrun).

A little jog back, a little stretch, a little go on the stick to "sort our bodies out" (thanks Caroline) and we were done for the night. Anybody stiff today?

Simon