On a glorious May Day evening, the crew from the UK chapter of Achilles International (an all abilities guide running charity) met up for a smashing run around Green Park.

This week, we were joined by a collection of London Marathon running heroes (Mark Colby and Andrew Jones ran exceptionally well considering the heat). We also had the pleasure of joining Siri, the daughter of UK chapter founder, Chris Blackabee for her birthday celebrations. A wonderful evening of celebrations for all involved!

Next week, we will be meeting at Stratford Underground station for top running fun in the Olympic Park.

Sign up here to get involved: https://www.goodgym.org/v3/sessions/come-and-guide-run-with-achilles-international-olympic-park-stratford-route-6575e329-1470-4a07-959a-abcd36058c26

With the supermarket delivery already offloaded and Ed and Linda coming in early to set up the cages we were ahead of the game at Frenford Food Bank this week. Sadly the printer was not so on the ball and we had a little wait for the orders to be produced.

Time to do a little extra shelf filling and for Linda to try on a jacket which AJ was passing on from one of her stewarding volunteer sessions. It fit perfectly which is not surprising as you can see from the photo we are practically twins. 😂 While taking that photo Liz accidentally took a photo of her foot which came in handy as a 'before' photo...see below for explanation.

Pretty soon we were picking and packing at a rate of knots. It was really hot despite having all the doors open and there were some pretty pink faces around. We were about to stop for a tea break when Liz dropped a pack of tuna tins on her foot which Linda found hilarious ...until she saw the blood 😳(sorry Liz) like the trooper she is Liz was back up and packing again as soon as she was cleaned up and plastered. Things were going so well and we thought we were finished early but were asked to hang on as more orders had come in so we had a little pause for flapjacks and other treats then finished off the last few while Ed started restocking the shelves and it wasn't too long before we were done.

Our Marie and Helena told us that they wont be coming to sessions for a while due to other commitments, they have both been such valuable members of the team we will miss them but wish them well on their separate ventures.

All in all another successful mission under our belts.

What a lovely lot of volunteers we had signed up today. Welcome to our newest member Victoria (likes to be known as Tors) and to Sevan a more seasoned GoodGymmer who came all the way from Ealing to add Redbridge to his list of GG boroughs visited. Frenford Foodbank had been let down on deliveries with some supplies arriving late and others not turning up at all. Linda and Ed decided to forgo the task of having everything set up early to go in search of rice, 5 Supermarkets later they'd managed to "score" 84kgs and arrived 5 minutes late 🙈 to find other volunteers ready and waiting.

There was then a flurry of activity where things were put on shelves, cages shifted about, admin sorted and bagging station set up. We had the briefest instruction session and we were off finally doing the picking and packing we set out to do. As this was the last session before Easter chocolate eggs and other treats were added for families with children.

Despite the time used for other tasks before the packing we still managed to get 35 of the 57 packages done before most people needed to leave. Luckily a couple were able to stay on and finish the rest.

Good Job Everyone 🥳🤩

There really was a magnificent turn out at Frenford Food Bank today. Helena and Frenford volunteer Jan got started on sorting out our large stock of tea bags into date order. Peter got stuck into filling a mouse sized hole under the store room door, Michael's first job was refilling the pasta sauce shelves, Jason was helping Ed deal with the fruit shelf and Marie got on with organising the donations.

Everyone worked so well, by the time Linda had given the last person a task the first person was back asking "whats next?" they all only needed to be told once and did a fabulous job. Pretty soon the door was fixed stock sorted into date order and 2 cages of donations off loaded and shelved up.

Good Job GG Gang 😍