What a difference a week makes – we gathered in the Queensbury on a positively balmy night compared to last week.

Tonight we were running around 4km to Stonebridge to help Jack from the Canal and River Trust with some litter picking on the Brent Feeder that runs from the reservoir into the canals and eventually to the Thames and the Channel!

An awesome twelve of you, including Katharine who joined for the first time, grouped outside to have a quick intro and get ourselves together before the run.

Sharks

I took everyone through what we were going to be doing, gave a shout out to Danny and Simon who had both ran in the Big Half on Sunday and told everyone about the GoodGym Monthly Social which is this Thursday in Greenwich. Apart from the odd moment of miscommunication – watch out for the ‘sharps’ not the sharks’ near the canal all went well and with Tabitha and Deborah backmarking we set off to Stonebridge.

Keep on running

We take a back streets route to the canal so we that we don’t have too many pedestrians and crossings to negotiate and we kept up a good pace and arrived in Stonebridge in around 30 minutes. After Jack showed us all the tools and safety equipment we needed we split into pairs (harder than you might think) and then split across two sections of canal and litter-picked away! We worked solidly for around 25 minutes and had filled nearly 10 bags full of litter! Great job team and well done to those that braved getting things out of the canal too – we loved those long reach litter pickers!

Litter picks!

With all the bags tidied up and all the equipment returned we gathered for a group photo with Jack. He told us about some of the upcoming tasks we might get up to (it’s not just litter-picking to be done) including a bat survey, some planting and even wading in to the canal to manage the reeds and we’re hopefully looking to work on some different sites too! Whilst Jack was telling us about this one of the local residents stuck her head out and asked about helping too – we’ll either join forces or have some competition but either way it’s good for the canal!

Bag and bags

With everything taken care of we headed back to the Queensbury (thanks to Kathy for backmarking) and had a stretch before heading home with a deserved happy glow. Next week we’re nipping over the border in to Camden (shhh!) and helping the wonderful Abbey Community Centre digging in their community garden (3k run each way). Sign up here, look forward to seeing you all.

Cheers, Pritesh