Due to the Easter holidays our sessions have been a bit all over the place for a few weeks so it didn’t feel too weird doing a Tuesday session to help our friends at Ouseburn Trust. This fab charity maintains loads of green spaces around our Stepney Bank Stables space and it’s always a great workout. We’ve done so many sessions with these guys and they are always varied, everything from path clearing to litter picking and tree planting. It was lovely to join them for an evening task in daylight, and an added bonus of missing the rain by minutes!

This session had been billed as a Beginners session but alas no beginners were anywhere to be found. Instead, three regulars rocked up for this one, Damu starting early ahead of the pack to allow him to leave early without feeling guilty. What a superstar.

Tonight we were path edging on the steps to the Cumberland Arms, a popular thoroughfare through the network of paths connecting Ouseburn and the wider city. Path edging makes paths safer, clearer and has the added bonus of needing a lot of physical action to make a difference. We also learned the difference between Dutch hoes and British ones (one has a curved edge and one is flat) tonight which might come in handy one day. We unearthed and rendered temporarily homeless a number of worms tonight, but I’m sure the later rain helped them to find somewhere new pretty quickly! Hopefully you can see the difference we made in the before and after pictures.

We received an urgent referral today for some help at the Tiny Forest site in Bensham that needs some muscle and a few pairs of hands on it. Keep an eye out for that, it will be listed tomorrow for this weekend.

It was one of those deceptively sunny days where as soon as you step out of the sun you step into a fridge for our visit to help at North Marine Junior parkrun in South Shields.

Let's get a huge round of applause for Aimee who completed her 50th parkrun volunteer today and earned herself the red V50 tshirt. The bulk of Aimee's volunteer points are at junior events so it was fitting that she earned this today.

We covered three roles at North Marine Juniors today: Paul and I timekeeping and Aimee marshalling. 52 brilliant kids ran, walked, skipped and hopped to the finish today and the finish line was the happiest place to be as always. A lovely blue sky start to Sunday all round.

It was a massive turnout today morning, as we all headed down to Leazes Park to help out Urban Green. Today's task was to clear the top of the bushes at the edges of the park boundary. Some of the bushes and ivy was encroaching on the adjacent pavement and we needed to clear it out. Mike was there with his hedge trimmer. With so many of us there, we got so much done! It was definitely an eventful morning!

Aimee and I met at 6pm this evening to deliver another batch of leaflets for Guide Dogs. Although the light faded as we delivered the leaflets, it felt good to be shining a light on this wonderful charity.

Starting in the light and finishing in the dark made me think of white and black - which reminded me of piano keys - which is a very contrived way of letting you know it's World Piano Day today! This has absolutely nothing to do with Guide Dogs or leaflets, but it was a very straightforward task with nothing interesting to tell you! Who comes up with all these days anyway?!

Which only leaves me to wish you all a very happy Easter. Don't eat too much chocolate!