Climb, de-grime, then history time

Some tasks are relatively uneventful and hard to write a report about, not this one, get ready for an essay. Mainly because our host Paul is so fascinating, with a head full of historical facts about St Mary's and Lydiard Tregoze. Even though this was our second visit in short succession, he pulled out all the stops with the facts and anecdotes.

But before we get into that, let's back it up a bit and start at the beginning of this task. When we arrived Paul was struggling to unlock the gate due to a technical issue with the combination lock, I missed a trick to ask if he had tried the combination "1592" (that will make sense later). So, off we walked round the stone wall to a ladder that Paul had set up for us to climb over into the church grounds.

Everybody got over safely, including Paul Watkin's bike....hold on back up again...Paul Bonner welcomed first timer Paul Wakins (or forgot to because they knew each other from the Bassett Hounds) before we climbed over Paul's ladder to the church. After a thorough intro we got to work de-weeding and de-grassing the paths, only to find that Alethia had already been hard at it for about half an hour already with her own special tools.

Newbie Paul was a dab hand and the de-grassing and was contemplating opening his own barbers, whilst simultaneously Tracey was intermittently screaming from finding slugs appearing from random cracks, truly hilarious. Paul Bonner kept getting worried that Adam and Sam were getting too close for social distancing before remembering that they are a couple, on repeat. Adding for those who question why those two GGers are so close together in the group photo.

Then when we were in the swing of things, we asked Paul to remind us again about the time Queen Elizabeth I visited the church and stayed on the estate - September 1592 - of course it was! James I visited too in 1613 and don't forget that the church has 6 bells with the newest from 1965, the older ones 1635 and 1670. None of those numbers open ed the combination lock either...that meant to take the weeds and grass to the compost heap we had to carry the wheelbarrow over the wall and down the ladder too. Something different to a typical Tuesday evening.

Jenny "the chief bell ringer" popped over the ladder for a brief chat, mainly with Teresa who I was not aware has a 30 year history of bell ringing and apparently still hasn't really mastered it. Campanologist is what non-bell-ringers call bell-ringers, bell-ringers just call themselves bell-ringers. ANOTHER FACT in the bag.

Then the piece de resistance, we got a cheeky tour of the church again, but this time the focus was the St John family tree plaque and the fact that the Tudor royal coat of arms has a dragon instead of the unicorn in the modern royal coat of arms. Well you should have seen Tracey and Paul Watkins' faces (both Welsh), OK mainly Tracey's face, absolutely loved the fact Henry VII was born in Pembroke Castle.

Time to go home for tea, but not for Alethia, first one in and last one out, she was determined to get to the end of the path. Which I assumed she did. The run report writer / photographer had long since hopped back over the ladder for his chicken pie.

When are we going back for the next history lesson?