Three of us were out on a chilly Monday evening to load up the GROAD van with clothes and bedding which will be distributed to rough sleepers on the Strand tomorrow evening. Welcome to Edmund on his first mission with GROAD. Yesterdays mission had bagged everything up so our job was to carry it all out onto the van whilst Andrea stacked it inside. We also took all of the bedding and blankets from the shed as they will be handed out tomorrow too. After less than an hour everything was in the van, the shed was a bit emptier(!!) and we all went on our way home!

What an absolutely gorgeous evening for doing some good! ☀️

This evening we met at a buzzing Papa's Park. The music was blaring, the cafe was open and Valcie came to say hello!

We briefly discussed our favourite beverages for a day such as today (including several healthy and soft choices!) 🥵 and then we got going to Larkhall Park's petanque pitch/court/arena(???) which had definitely seen better days...

There we met Alex who gave us very clear instructions of our task:

• Uproot a load of weeds that had gone wild around the edge of the pitch
• Rake the gravel into piles
• Shovel the gravel into wheelbarrows
• Wheel the gravel to the big pile at the edge of the park so it can be reused

It was a proper workout but most of us switched up jobs so we didn't get too tired. Ed kept going on his weeding patch though, right up until the end. 👏

Some locals and one of the Friends of Larkhall Park who walked by said they were super grateful for what we were doing, pleased that the petanque pitch would finally see some use! (And definitely be easier on the eye...)

Petanque you very much

Nice work guys! Here's the link to next week's task and we'll head to the pub afterwards too! 🍹

We just about managed to load about half of the contents of Pret into our two rucksacks along with some extra plastic bags. I even got some free milk courtesy of the lovely staff at Pret :) I jogged with a backpack of baguettes to the community hall and Ed arrived on his sandwich-laden bike at around the same time. Unfortunately the gates to the community centre were closed so we posted the food through the gates as per the centre's instructions. Hopefully that food can feed the five thousand :)