A nice sunny evening at St Mary's where three GGers tackled the churchyard weeds again. For those unfamiliar with the history, this is a perennial task as St Mary's is a chemical free zone. Going totally organic means manual deweeding is commonly required during spring and summer. It does mean you find lots of wildlife there though. The bee hive was going strong, our host said 7 years now if i remember correctly. The superstar pair, Becky and Alex notching up more good deeds, rapidly approaching 500 combined Moylett good deeds now! Your author getting very close to the century.

Third time back at St Mary's at Lydiard. This time we were working mainly at the back of the church clearing the stoney area.

This was our 4th trip to St Mary's to pull out weeds and tidy the paths. This time we were back doing the same weeds as the 1st time. With a couple of people unable to make it and Becky running (cycling) late. We started with 3 Pauls and a Tracey.

Tracey got to work with her "stick-er-in-er" and usual yelps due to scraping out worms...we soon got back to the history chat.

This time: How useless King John was, the Doomsday book and descendents of Anne Boleyn.

Becky made it with plenty of time to muck in, delayed due to giving blood which is fair enough. She is just too busy being good everywhere!

Entrance to the church was looking nice in time for the heritage open days and we got a sneaky peek at the restored "feminine Christ". Not sure that was it's official title.

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.

We had a bumper congregation of GoodGymers for the Super Saturday community mission, including the lovely Zdeni visiting from GoodGym Bristol.

We started our day in the splendid Lydiard Park for parkrun. Lucky for us, our Super Saturday community mission was just a hop, skip and a jump away at the beautiful little church within the park. St Mary’s church received a Heritage Lottery Fund to restore the historic interiors, which include remarkable wall paintings and vibrantly painted architectural features. The conservation process requires specialist knowledge and world-class expertise. We do like a painting task but we had to admit that restoring medieval wall paintings would be a tad ambitious even for us so we had the task of sprucing up the outside areas with a spot of weeding.

The weather was glorious and it was lovely to be out in the sunshine for a couple of hours. We set about clearing the weeds on the footpath leading to the church and clearing a lowered planting area at the back of the church.

In 1592 Queen Elizabeth I, no less, came to Lydiard and awarded a knighthood. So we thought it appropriate to perform our own version of a knighthood as we celebrated Sam’s 50th good deed - congratulations Sam! The Risk Assessment prevented us from actually waving a sword about but we dub thee for your valour and service to GoodGym. Arise Sandy Sam, and go forth and collecteth your black t-shirt! We then made merry with traditional Tudor fare of ummm, cupcakes and gluten free flapjacks?!

Despite the lovely tranquil task, there was a nervous frizzle in the air as a few of us were minus one day until the Swindon Half Marathon. A first for some, helped by many GoodGym runs improving our fitness but mostly by the months of congratulations at each training milestone and the lovely pick-me-ups during the inevitable set-backs along the way. This community mission was perfectly timed for some last minute preparation, pep talks and positive vibes that only a GoodGym task can bring.

With frequent check-ins from the lovely people at the church – including advice on how many squats we needed to do to burn of the cake – super helpful! – we were soon done and waving goodbye.

Next up, we’re off to church again when we will be walking and running approximately 5km in total to Christ Church and back to help with a gardening task in the grounds of this stunning landmark in Central Swindon. You can sign up here!.