We fell back to our old faithful of a litter pick this evening. This lovely lot do love a litter pick though – in fact, they suggested it despite a couple of alternative options!!! 😉 There’s something strangely satisfying about filling bags with rubbish though and looking around and seeing how much cleaner and tidier (and cared for) the area looks.

Tonight there were 6 of us, Emily, Kat, Karen, Nigel, Maurice & Me. The weather was kind once again – cold but dry, so we were happy with that. Our run soon got rid of the chills as we did a 1.5 mile circular route around the industrial estate (yes, not the most glamorous but it’s where we ended up to start our litter pick – and it was flat – so every cloud and all that!). Somehow, we (I mean I), managed to mess up the route (I’m not going to blame the fact that I was chatting – it must have been the cold affecting my brain!). I felt better when we met back up with Emily, Kat & Maurice (who were a tad quicker than us) and learned that they had made the same mistake… so it must have been my poor instructions!

Back at the start point, we collected our pickers and bags and set to work. We covered Weston Lane (not the entire length of it – just a section!), then up past the station and down part of Gresty Lane. Just like the week we did Macon Way, we managed to completely fill 6 bags (why can’t people just put their rubbish in a bin!!!) and I think we could have easily filled the same again. Something that didn't go into our bag though was a lonely, lost teddy. We really hope it gets reunited with it's owner. It looked extremely loved and I'm sure someone is really missing him tonight!

One section of Gresty Lane was especially bad – littered with cans. Anyway, as disheartening as it was to see all the rubbish, we were lifted by the fact that it looked much better after we’d worked our magic! And, the bonus was, we covered another 1.5 miles – so all in all, we did 3 miles worth of exercise tonight. I’d say that is a WIN-WIN!!

Well done team on another tremendous effort. You’re all amazing. You’re also fantastic company and wonderful friends! My Wenesday's just wouldn't be the same without you in them!

Have a great week and hope to see you all soon!

Oodles of love, Nicola xxx

We were delighted to be back with My CWA this evening helping this wonderful charity who are always happy to have us and always so grateful for our help and support no matter how few or how many of us there are.

Emily, Karen, Nigel, Maurice & Nicola were happy to once again be meeting up for our weekly group ‘exercise’ before doing our task. We were really lucky to have dry weather after several days of persistent rain. Maurice was under the weather tonight and a stalwart for even turning up but he did (bless you Maurice) and so tonight, we all went for a walk instead of a run. We had a chatty brisk walk and a good catchup as we walked just over a mile around Crewe and back to My CWA. There was talk of football (world cup fever) as well as chatter about where we are going to go for our Christmas social.

Back at My CWA, we were greeted by the lovely Bev who talked us through our task for the evening. Tonight we were moving dozens of Buddy Bags from one end of the building to the other in preparation for the children who are going to be coming in at Christmas to collect Christmas gifts and will be also handed a buddy bag. The buddy bags are donated to My CWA and given to children who come into the centre. They contain various items including books, puzzles and a cuddly toy. We moved across the centre and then sorted them into different age groups. Some of the bags had been stored for a quite some time and needed a bit of a wipe down, so we did that too!

The task didn’t take us as long as we thought it might, so we all agreed that the only thing to do was to end the evening with a beer (or two!) and a bag of crisps (or two!) at Hops Belgian Bar. We had a lovely time (as always), covering everything from I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here to Parkrun Tourism (but to be fair, I don’t think we’ve had a beer where we haven’t covered Parkrun Tourism!! ;-)).

Well done on another fantastic job done for a wonderful charity and THANK YOU for being utterly amazing friends who always brighten my week!

Have a lovely week & hope to see you next week! Lots of love Nicola xx

PS - Thanks to Nigel for the fantastic pun this week! #Lifesaver!! :-)