Stand And Deliver!

We were off to assist the homeless on the streets tonight, supplementing the work of Peter and his team. Our first job upon setting off from Glasshouse was to locate Daniel. Heading down to the entrance of the multi-story car park, we hoped to intercept him on our way to meet Peter. Sure enough, we did see him after a few minutes and as a full team we trotted off to the lock-up where we were due to meet.

Upon arrival at the secret base of operations, Peter was happily already waiting for us- no crossed wires this time. We entered, and received our orders for the first tasks of the night. Daniel was on sandwich making duty with Peter's assistance, Kirsty's tasks were filling the flasks with hot drinks and making up the bags for distribution, and James was tasked with filling paper bags with a specific assortment of biscuits- 2 bourbons, 1 Swiss roll, 2 custard creams and 2 Nice biscuits (can you be 2 Nice?!). We filled plastic bags with all of the required items and then packed them into our rucksacks. Next we had a quick briefing on the spots we were to check tonight before setting out on our trek.

Our first port of call was the old Pizza Hut. There was no-one there but we did find evidence that someone is using the space with a makeshift shelter. We then headed over to the shops on the other side of the car-park as we thought we had seen someone, sure enough we had and we subsequently had a nice chat with the fella before handing him a bag and some hot chocolate. After this we ventured into the steep woodland behind the retail park to search for inhabited camps. This was the most challenging and fun part of the evening (for some of us at least!); firstly we had to negotiate our way through the barricade of brambles, trying to make the best of the limited lights we had at our disposal. Kirsty used the torch on her phone to brighten up the biting branches, making our journey a little easier, though I think we all ended up with cuts after scraping our way through!

there was no place to 'slide' now, we were at the 'slipping-point' ...

The first challenge out of the way, we were straight onto the second one, immediately coming upon a steep and slippery muddy bank, with lots of fallen leaves and low-hanging branches thrown in for good measure too! On the way up this section we spotted a reflective surface in a tree up ahead and henceforth aimed our efforts toward it. We managed to make it up to the luminous object and discovered a very well made shelter; it had a dry sleeping area, a corrugated roof, windproof walls and was all around in a pretty good state. It was clearly being used and so we left a bag of food in it for the inhabitant to come back to later on. We hung it up on part of the structure to keep it off the ground so as not to attract rats and to also keep it dry. After this we progressed further up the hill to check if there were any other camps and if there was a way out so we wouldn't have to run the gauntlet again. There weren't any more camps but there was also "no easy way ooout, no shortcuts hoooomme!" as Robert Pepper would sing. This being the case we had to hit the slopes again- there was no place to 'slide' now, we were at the 'slipping-point' and it was all downhill from here on out. We all successfully made it to the bottom of the hill in one piece, now with the task of running back up the long and winding road to town- at least there were no obnoxious obstacles on this route though! On the way up the hill we decided to do a quick check at a couple of known rough sleeper spots in town, around the St Mary's Church and in Civic Gardens, but there was no-one to be found, so we headed back to base to drop off our borrowed kit and unused supplies.

As tonight's session lasted quite a while the gang didn't have time for the pre-planned burpees session; which may be fortunate or unfortunate depending on your perspective of intense exercise! That one will be saved for another time. We decided it would be best to stretch off inside the lock-up and end the session there too as it was more convenient for people to part ways here. The usual array of stretches were demonstrated and performed, announcements made (including more new sign-ups, fingers crossed for some new people attending soon!) and goodbyes said.

See ya next week!