Bagpipe, dog belly rubs and litter - usual Saturday morning mission....

Well saturday morning weather did not 'disappoint' with a grey cloudy sky and pouring rain coming down on Redbridge.

Arriving But 'a little bit' of water couldn't stop four GGR heroes running from their homes to the meet-up place. Commute varied from from 2.5km to 5.6km, with James running the longest!!! Julia decided to get her (not)parkrun done before the mission so ended up jogging back and forth on the road in front of Redbridge Garden Centre for the last kilometre arousing suspicion from passers by.... Thankfully Linda and Jenny arrived soon after and joined her for the last kilometre to support! By then James has arrived and we were ready to rock and roll with our litter pickers (oh year, we're cool!) AND the rain stopped!

Litter picking good We got a bit stuck at the entrance to the Roding Valley Park as there was a lot of small rubbish that needed to be put away, we found a variety of 'interesting' items there including a toy car, car licence plate, fishing nets and the, now, usual selection of face masks.

As we slowly progressed towards the wilderness we continued picking up strewn rubbish whilst really appreciating the nature, mushrooms and fungus on the tree, apples, flowers and colourful leaves of autumn.

We then encountered a dog-walker (who else would be out in this weather?!) with Elsa, the friendliest staffie you'll every meet, who demanded belly rubs and was just a delight and really made getting out in the rain worth it:)

As we were walking alongside the motorway (nasty sound) a couple of us thought we were losing our marbles as we heard bagpipes.... None of us are even Scottish! :) As we were turning towards a bridge, we saw lovely Damian practicing his tunes under a bridge, probably the only place in Redbridge where the bagpipes will not disturb any residents with M11 drowning out the noise....

Good job done! We've collected three bags of rubbish on our return to the starting point, after passing a 'busy' rat near the Redbridge Lakes! There Dharmesh came by to say hello on his run, hope he can join us next time for a litter pick!:)