Life's a beach clean! - Love Trails Festival

The third and final GoodGym run of Lovetrails, how the weekend flew by. We met at 9am, which for some only afforded a handful of hours sleep after Saturday night's party. Thankfully it was a great turnout of GoodGym members as well as first timers and nobody was sick during the warm up, which was fairly intense as Ben led a game of Evolution by Rock Paper Scissors.

First stop on the run was Woebley Castle, part of the festival site which could be easily missed if camping on the other side. A quick picture and a look out over the gorgeous Gower Peninsula before heading off on the trails. All was going well, lots of chatting and random rock jumping, until we hit the dreaded tidal river. Luck was not on our side as the stepping stones were fully submerged (well I guess we could have checked the tide) but we took it as a challenge to cross rather than divert around. Shoes off and two tactical groups formed: the "long jumpers" and the "human bridge", various levels of wetness occurred but given the heat, we had all dried off a mile or two down the trail.

What a view as we reached the Broughton Bay beach, miles of sand with very few other people around that on first look didn't appear to have any litter on it. We split in to pairs and before long plenty of plastic and other rubbish was bagged up. A review of the best pieces was captured by our very own paparazzi, a local guy with a telephoto lens did the job perfectly.

With energy levels still high, we had a game on the beach, a take on British Bulldog and Stuck in the Mud. With run leader Ben starting in the middle perhaps it should have been called the Welsh Beach Dog game. We ran down the beach with the bags and the festival vibes continued with music from our Midnight Runner as well as some ABBA and other questionable sing-a-long "big hits" from Ben. We had to stop for a quick swim of course, would be rude not too given the sea temperature was actually really nice!

A forest section, and then back to the homeward trail taking us back to the festival site, via a cafe of course for the obligatory Welsh cakes and scones.

And that was the end of a brilliant weekend of running and socialising at Lovetrails, and what a way to finish by helping to clean the local area with like-minded outdoor adventurers. Until next year....