Over 40 runners joined in the GoodGym run at the Loves Trail Festival, combining running with doing good along the Gower Peninsula.

The Gower Peninsula is famous throughout the world. It is known for its long golden beaches, awesome surf and mystical coastline, where there are an abundance of secret caves and castles. It is the home of Bonnie Tyler, Catherine Zeta Douglas, and now for the Love Trails Festival!

The GoodGym run took place at 10am on Friday morning and was led by Manuel, Jack, Melanie and myself (Ben). The concept of GoodGym is simple, combining running with doing good. There are GoodGym running clubs in 43 towns and cities throughout the UK (42 are of them are located in England and 1 is located in Wales)

It was now time to give everyone at the Love Trails Festival a taste of GoodGym!

Everyone arrived for the GoodGym run at 10am, excited and at the same time curious as many of the runners had not been on a GoodGym run before.

Ben, who is also Swansea born and bred, reminded everyone about what they needed to be mindful of in order to remain safe on the run, stating that “despite what you may have heard about the Welsh, please do not chase the sheep,” and reminded everyone to careful with their footing as the terrain is quite changeable.

Let’s run to Broughton Bay!

Our route took us down the mountain boarding field, through fields where sheep were grazing and down country roads, climbing over fence stiles as we went. Because we were still all friends we stopped at the marshlands to regroup. A local, called Bev, took a break from her walk and began chatting to everyone. She started talking about the Welsh Culture and sharing words in the Welsh lanuage. Here are some of the Welsh phrases she taught us:

• Bore Da – Good Morning
• Wedi blino – Tired
• Da iawn – Very good
• Croeso i Gymru – Welcome to Wales
• Rhedeg – Running

Ben also said shared some riddles with the group and created a puzzle using 4 sticks and a stone that had to be solved before we could all move on.

Good news! Sophie solved the riddle which meant we could continue our journey. The run was scenic and warm at the same time as the clouds had begun parting and the sun was shining through.

After approximately 30 more minutes of running, over bridges and over a couple more stiles we had arrived at Broughton Bay.

Ready, steady, clean!

Ben challenged everyone to collect as much litter as they could and to try and spell out the letters LTF (LTF for Love Trails Festival, obviously) with all of the collected litter. He also laid down the gauntlet and asked everyone to report back on who could find the most interesting piece of litter!

As you read this you are probably sitting at the edge of your chair, filled with excitement wondering about what litter was collected, so here we go;

Items collected included:

• Half a rubber matt – A rubbish find by Will
• Glowstick – Found by Matt… it made his day (He also found a handful of straws!)
• String – Found by Laura!
• Ore – Tom found an Ore (I hope the person that the ore belonged to eventually made it back to dry land!)
• Pipe – Yes, Emma found a Pipe.
• Glove and ball – Sophie planned to celebrate afterwards at the festival bar
• Other items found included empty bottles of alcohol, a cool box, a chopping board

This is only a small summary of the items that were found at the beach. The group managed to collect 15 bags of litter in 25 minutes - this is what we would call in Wales a tidy effort at making the beach look LUSH!

Time for a beach game!

We’re all big kids so now it was time to play a quick beach game. Ben explained how frustrating it can be when you are running in a race and you are on track for your PB and how a pedestrian can sometimes walk out in front of you, inadvertently slowing you down and that PB becomes a long lost dream! Using the ore and a beach chair as boundary markers the field of play was set (That's good recycling for you). All of the runners stood behind the ore and they had to get to the finish line (behind the beach chair) without being caught by the pedestrian/spectator. If they got caught then they become a pedestrian/spectator as well (Yes – If you haven’t worked it out yet, it is very similar to British Bulldogs except we aren’t rugby tackling one another into the sand).

The game was a success! We had a winner and everyone had a fab time. It was now time to run back!

Lead the way!

Jack took one group of runners back a more direct route and Ben took another group along the beach and through a pine forest. The route back was stunning as you can see in the photos.

Thank you to everyone who took part in run to beach clean.

On behalf of Manuel, Melanie, Jack and myself it was a pleasure running with you. You can find where your nearest GoodGym is by clicking here. We hope you enjoyed your weekend down the Gower and visit again soon!