It was a hot day and I didn't fancy running at high noon, so I got my bike out and had a nice ride via the river path. I've helped Mrs D before so it was nice to catch up. Thorns had taken over the back path in her garden, making it difficult for her to get out with her washing. Mrs D has reduced mobility and needs the path clear of trip hazards. Fortunately, I was working mostly in the shade, and I spent an hour cutting everything back. No sign of the robin this time, but collared doves were calling from the trees. Mrs D was pleased with the result. I rode home with a quick stop to watch the house martins swooping over the canal.

Who wanted to watch England play in the World Cup anyway?! Not us. When we set off England were 1-0 down, but on our run to the task we heard a loud roar, and Ben ducked into The Wheatsheaf to check that, yes, England had equalised.

The lovely garden at Hearing Help needed weeding, especially the lawn, which was a bit of a jungle. Rich and Jess got the tools out, and after a quick safety briefing of DON'T GO NEAR THE HEMLOCK! we started pulling up weeds.

Another loud roar soon told us that England was now 2-1 up.

Ben and Martin got straight on it, I was distracted by a low flying kestrel but eventually put my bird app away and started work.

Fay and Sallyann arrived on foot, and together we filled a big rubble bag with weeds, and left a nice patch of cleared lawn for Hearing Help to enjoy.

We had nearly finished when Andy turned up. He's settling into retirement so well he's forgotten what time it is.

When the tools were away, we watched the house martins flying round the mill, and went home to watch the highlights.

Went down. Lobbed the four bags. Easy game. Didn’t miss any World Cup.

5 of us met at HQ ready to run up to Beaulieu Community Centre to wash their windows on a glorious summers eve. A big welcome back to Mike after returning from a suspected sprained ankle and ready to test it out on a 3.5km run out.

We ran up to Beaulieu with a few walks along the way as it was getting rather warm and we met Fay and Sallyann already hard at work. As everyone was hard at work and in need of a cool down from the heat, I popped into the local Sainsbury's and lucky found one of the last packs of Cornettos still in their freezer.

With windows cleaned, and buckets and flannels rinsed and tidied away we set off back to HQ. maybe it was the tail wind. maybe it was mostly downhill, but i think it was the cornetto that put a spring in our step and whisked us back soon than we thought.

Thanks for coming everyone, next week David will be leading a run to a local free library where we will be donating some books. ( bring any books you wish to carry and run with )

Until next time...

RUN HAPPY

Rich

After a very heavy downpour, the sun came out just in time. I met Andy and Joel at HQ and we had a chatty run to the church, where Sallyann was waiting for us. We grabbed our tools and started pulling up the grass that was growing between the cracks in the paving. The rain had at least made it easy to get the weeds out, and we got a couple of sections of the path clear.
Good job everyone!

Next week our task is cleaning windows at Beaulieu Community Centre.

A team of 5 of us set off towards the new Hawthorns School, with an idea of where we were going, but in the knowledge that our maps may not get us to the right place. Our task was to assist with assembling tents on the school field, to provide shelter for the students in the hot summer months.

We made our best guesses and got to the right place, where we found a mix of tents that our host Louise had found locally on a social media marketplace.

Russell (best tent builder on the team) and David (best at keeping team morale up) started by helping the other assemblers, and managed to put a tent up successfully.

Jane (best at monkey bars), Ben (best tent building confidence) and myself (best at...supervising?) chose one of the other tents, and whilst we started out with a lot of enthusiasm, that waned once we realised the poles were so damaged that it wouldn't be possible. We decided it wasn't salvageable and went with the choice of Russell and David, and rallied together to build a six mesh sided tent. It was getting more ominously windy as the tent went up, but it didn't stop us.

Great work team, and lets hope the Hawthorns School have us back again!

See you all soon,

Laurie