It's Tuesday night, it's GoodGym Swindon Group run night!

On the hottest day since July, Autumn came early for us this year with a leaf-gathering task at the Central Community Centre in the Railway Village.

We've recently been supporting the Railway Village get ready for Heritage Open Days) with a dusting task in the Bristol Street Tunnel. The whole area is looking spic and span ready for the whole heap of things taking place at the weekend.

Four of us gathered at Sainsburys Bridgemead on a sunny evening, and set off the 2.3km towards the Railway Village. Running along via Penzance drive, under the railway bridge and along Church Place and Bristol St, we arrived at the Central Community Centre.

There, we met the both delightful Karen and Helen who shared some of the plans for the weekend (plus some lovely plum cake!), then we were joined by Gaby, and we got to leaf clearing behind the Central Community Centre!

In no time, we had cleared an unbe-leaf-able amount of leaves and helped sweep up as well! There was plenty of opportunities for chatting with this task too. Emma took the pics, and the caretaker joined us again to take the all important group pic in front of the Mechanics' Institute itself.

We said our goodbyes to Karen, Helen and Gaby, and we started running back. We even added an extra fitness element by running around a busy Faringdon Park, full of people enjoying the late summer sun.

Before we knew it, we racked up a 5.5km run in total and were back at Sainsbury's in the sun, and stopped to natter a while before going our separate ways. Well done everyone, and big congratulations to Alethia (A-leaf-ia?!) for smashing her first run back in 6 months!

Good Dees galore with GoodGym Swindon: Next week, we're Gardening at Chippenham Close Community Centre

Regular Community Missions are going on to support the Steam Vaccine Centre!

Or get involved with some of our life-changing work with older people, either via Missions or by pairing with a coach

This week we met back at Sainsbury’s for the 18:00 express train. After checking all passengers had valid travel tickets, we were off full steam ahead! This train was heading straight through to Steam Museum. Consisting of two carriages, one running and one walking, today’s train driver Sam opted for a more scenic route but ensured a smooth ride without delays. There was definitely no quiet carriage on this train!

This evening we were back at the Traverser armed and ready to, once again, conquer those persistent pesky weeds. The brief tonight was short and simple, “if it is green then it shouldn’t be seen”. Naturally separating into equal sized groups we each choo choosed a section of the track to conquer. 45 minutes later and all those weeds had been steam rolled, doomed to the confines of a black bin liner. We then finished the task with a nice group photo stood on the Traverser with the warm evening summer sunshine setting behind us.

After a quick tidying up, it was all aboard for the return leg, arriving safely into this week’s temporary station on time. Next week, we’ll be meeting Mike who will lead us to the other side of the railway line for a much needed tidy up ahead of the Heritage Open Days! If you can lend a hand, please sign up here.

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?

Recipe for success: Take one overgrown church path, add 5 eager Goodgymers and a sprinkle of history from a friendly local volunteer.

Church volunteer Paul gave a thorough intro and entertained us throughout the task with the history of St Mary's church. In summary - there is A LOT of history dating back over 1,000 years including queen visits and Normandy connections.

Time flew and after 90 mins pulling weeds and sweeping up, the path looked as good as new (although it was probably laid in the 17th Century).

Then as a treat we got to pop our head in the door to see the renovation, wow. Can't say more before the big reveal in August, other than Becky was very excited by the stain glass windows.

Socially distanced coffee at the forest cafe afterwards ended a lively morning.

The Park Wardens at Lydiard do a great job of keeping on top of the rubbish left by park users but after a busy hot weekend they were happy for us to help out.

We met a new member Annette - previously known as Tracey who had spotted a lot of litter on her weekend run past the lake and had come prepared with net in hand to tackle it ef-fish-iently. With the help of Safety First Simon to prevent accidental swimming.

Paul and Stuart took on the car park and were nearly run over by an exuberant 3-year-old on a bicycle who proceeded to steal the picker and take over. No word of an Eli. Top find was a plastic stingray by the lake.

It was great to see Alethia turn up, unbeknown to the run leader she had already cracked on with cleaning round the cafe with Teresa.

Not too sure where the others got to after heading down the dip and in to the woods, but they came back with bags of rubbish so success! Top find was a 2012 crisp packet.