We came, we sawed, we lacquered

Embracing the hills of Lewisham, a fabulous 26 runners headed south side to Seniors, to tackle a number of tasks in the garden, running 7km along the way.

Welcome back and a MASSIVE thanks this week to Steve, who I was delighted to see returning, with his high-level punnery, just check out tonight's title, quality.

It's been another amazing week of pure goodness, with many runners visiting older people in their homes, either to help out with a mission, or for a weekly chat. We also had a pretty special community mission on Saturday, where a group of around 19 of us returned to St Mary's Church, to continue the painting along those many miles of railings. It was fun being able to spend a bit longer on the task and we certainly made a difference, reaching all the way to the entrance to the Therapeutic Garden! Great work team!

This week we welcomed two brand new GoodGym runners to the family, all our Lewisham Love goes to Louise and Naomi. We also showed the Lewisham way to Sara , who was visiting from our neighbouring group in Greenwich for the first time, welcome!

We did things a little bit differently this week, with our about-to-be run leaders Kim and Amber leading the way and me keeping things together a little further back (thanks also to Steve for back-marking). When we have a big group like this on a longer run, it can be easy to get split up and we certainly don't want to lose anyone! It was a gorgeous evening to be running through Ladywell Fields and pushing ourselves hard on those hills.

We were met at Seniors by Cathy, who quickly split people up into different teams:

• Team Lift 'n' Shift, moving heavy items from inside the building to the storage space underneath the window

• Team Paint, working on painting the tables on the patio, taking advantage of the hard preparation work carried out on a previous task

• Team Worm, constructing a water butt, which will become a wormery (this has to be one of our more unusual jobs!)

• Team Dig, clearing and digging over the vegetable patch to make way for more squashes

• Team Hardcore, gathering and wheelbarrowing some rubble trough the garden, to support the wormery

• Team Saw, working together to saw some wood into smaller pieces

• Team Smash, taking an old art crate and kicking and bashing the heck out of it to use the frame as a raised bed

Wow, that's a lot of tasks!

As we rounded off our visit here, Cathy told us about a few events coming up at Seniors. On September 12th is an open day, with lots of demonstrations and opportunities to see how the space is used then, in November, there will be a sing-along, with tea and cake - I'm pretty sure we have some splendid voices amongst our group, who fancies joining in?!

As is usual when we're over this way, we like to push up the hill to enjoy the stunning view from Blythe Hill Fields and it didn't disappoint tonight, with a beautiful sunset to our left and the city sprawling ahead of us. Our breathing steady again, we enjoyed the swoop down to Lewisham and a good stretch, back at our start point. Next week we will visit a brand new task, at Chelwood Nursery, so a 5k run in total. I will be enjoying myself on holiday, but you will be safe in the hands of Lucy, the trainer for GoodGym Southwark. Don't forget, as it's a Bank Holiday, our start point closes early, so we don't have access to lockers, travel light!

See you in two weeks, be good!