Sun, Se(niors) and sand(paper)!

On a golden Monday in Lewisham, 24 runners covered 7km of hilly terrain to help out at Seniors.

Thank you once again to Oli, who gifted us this excellent title pun and some of those scattered through this report.

Thank goodness the sun has come out at last! It was still a little chilly though, so we might have hung out in the Glass Mill foyer for a tiny bit longer than we needed to! So much to talk about this week!

• First up, we welcomed some newcomers, what a lovely evening to join us for the first time! Lewisham Love to Amy, Anna, Cat and Steve.

Sofia, so good

• At the weekend, over 80 members of the GoodGym Race Team were over in Sofia to take part in races of varying distance. We were superbly represented by a top team of Amber, Kim and Nykolette, who took on what sounded like a hot and testing half-marathon - well done you three!

• Well done to Vic, Caireen, Juliet, Emma and Olivia, who were at the Wildcat Wilderness yesterday to help with various tasks (fixing a roof, bashing weeds, lifting and shifting and...burning stuff). It looked like an epic volunteering session.

• Talking of which, we have two opportunities to join in volunteering sessions this Saturday, with Wildcat Wilderness throwing open their gates at 10.30 and Manor Park welcoming helpers in at 10am - take your pick!

• Still in the Wilderness, the date is set for our summer social (yay!). Maria has very kindly offered once again to fire up the BBQs and invite us in with our food and drink. All of the details are here, please sign up if you can definitely come, so Maria knows how many coals to tip on.

This week saw us heading on a challenging 7k round-trip. We're not put off by a few hills though are we? A very big thank you to Conroy, who led the way on the run and Nykolette, who kept us together as back-marker. When we arrived at the task, we had a slight moment of panic, when it seemed like we might not be able to get in! All was well though, as Di was in the building already and she and Alice then guided us out to the amazing garden. There is always plenty to do, so pretty soon we had various jobs going on:

• A hole lotta fillin' - a team of barrow pushers found holes in the lawn and filled them carefully with soil
• A pressing bench workout - with sanders smoothing out the benches on the terrace
• Water we doing? - some TLC, repotting and lots of watering in the polytunnel
• Dust another job for GoodGym - a very determined and dusty sanding down of the cupboards in the main room

As our run here is slightly longer, the time seems to go more quickly, so we stretched it out as much as we possibly could, before sweeping up, putting away and heading off. We look forward to returning again soon.

A trip here at this time of year isn't complete without pushing hard up to Blythe Hill Fields to enjoy the view over the city and, if we're lucky, the setting sun. The Fields did not disappoint! Back at base, we looked forward to next week and another longer run, this time to a brand new task at Camelot Pre-School to paint their fences - sign up here. Tomorrow is the third birthday of our very good friends GoodGym Croydon. We wish them all the best and hope they have lots of fun!

See you soon xx