Kevin and I ran to the Adventure Playground via the Olympic Park.

Tim had walked from Stratford via the River Lea

Hilary was leading the running from the Print House.

Ange met us at the gate,she had a very busy day with over 100 children having spent time enjoying all the playground has to offer.The have a trip on a canal barge coming up which sounds like great fun.

Tonights task was to restack a pile of wood as it had been left with nails sticking out and quite precarious.

Some of the small pieces will be uses for the fire pit and pizza oven.

Wood restacked we went to have a look at the tadpoles in the newly built pond. The pond is part of a project to have a pathway of small ponds along the Lea Valley to increase amphibians.

We said our goodbyes and headed home.

Next week we are heading to see Sybil at Emmanuel Church

Welcome back and thank you to the team who turned out for our first session of 2025. And what a great one to start with - sorting donations for Care4Calais at their East London storage facility.

We were met by one of their long term volunteers, Andy, who explained what needed to be done - essentially weed out any donations not worth keeping, and then sort the clothes into piles of similar items (childrens, mens, womens etc) - and that we could approach it in any way we liked... This brought back memories of similar "sorting" activities from our lockdown-era sessions for Crisis at Christmas and we were only to happy to put our experience into practice. We made a good dent into the big donations pile, leaving behind what we hope is a more usefully organised pile that can be distributed on to people seeking asylum across East London.

We'll be back there again in a couple of weeks (and potentially beyond if they still need our help...) - as the pictures show, it's dark, so please remember head torches if you've got them! We've also got some other great tasks lined up for January - Hackney Marsh Adventure Playground next week (soon to be listed) but also a long awaited return to the Up Garden on Saturday to do some painting - sign up here.