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| Anyone at home? |
Flying into Johannesburg in the late afternoon, the view from the plane is of a huge sprawling city - ten million people live here in the metropolitan area - fortunately for us we're staying at our Mandy's only 20 minutes away from the airport. We're in a suburb called Edenvale and Mandy's place is in a large gated community, my training runs consisted of tortuous routes circling the estate. Glad of a chance to escape from the Johannesburg suburbs we took a trip out to an area nicknamed the 'Cradle of Humankind' and we went down a hole in the ground. About an hour and a half into the veldt in a not very special area of countryside is a site that contains the largest concentration of remains of early hominids, wow!
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| Mrs Pies or Mr Pies - who knows? |
They've found lots of bits of Australopithecus Africanus, who were the predecessors to Homo Erectus and Homo Sapiens, including this young lady whose skull was found not too long ago in the Sterkfontein Caves where we were now standing down in the murky depths of an underground network. She was discovered in the late 1940's and identified as a lady, she became known as Mrs Pies for some odd reason, however more recent analysis of her teeth, or lack of them, indicates that she might have been a man! Notwithstanding all of this we spent a fascinating hour or so in the cool underground chambers away from the African noonday sun. It seems that part of the reason that there were so many intact bits of skeleton down here was that they belonged to folk who had fallen down some of the many potholes present at the surface of the limestone complex and they'd failed to make it back up.
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| Flying tonight! |
Despite Johannesburg's bustling residential suburbs and teeming townships and vast industrial estates there are, nonetheless, some good sized parks and we visited the 300 acre Johannesburg Botanical Gardens (now dedicated to Walter Sisulu one of Nelson Mandela's buddies.) And focussing my binoculars on a flurry of activity in a distant group of tall trees I spotted a huge eagle. This was a Verreaux's Eagle one of the largest birds of the prey in the world. My photos were a bit fuzzy so this impressive snapshot is courtesy of Wikipedia. A couple of pairs of Verreaux's Eagles live and breed in the park but sightings are apparently not easy to come by. These birds take sibling rivalry to the ultimate - two eggs are laid and hatched but within days the stronger of the chicks kills its brother or sister!
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| Hot running! |
Joburg has plenty of parkruns and Vicky's sister took us to her favourite at Gilloolys, a former farm (owned by Mr Gillooly) which is now an attractive and extensive recreational park. Event number 248 started at 8 am but even by then the temperature had started to rise, what's more this is at altitude - we were getting on for 6000 feet above sea level - so it was hard work! Nevertheless we sped round and I finished in 23 minutes exactly, beating the existing V70 record by nearly two minutes.
(Postscript 1: So.....it's well known that elite athletes use altitude training to enhance their performances; well it didn't work for me, on our return to Wales I felt as if I was running through treacle for the following week or so!)
(Postscript 2: Unfortunately the skull illustrated above is not that of Mrs (or Mr) PIES, it's Mrs (or Mr) PLES the name being derived from 'plesianthropus' which was the initial latin name applied to this poor creature. My mistake, I misread my research source. And by way of additional information the skull was intact until its discovery when it was blown into fragments by a stick of dynamite, the archeologists carefully put it back together again with that endless patience that archaeologists must have.
International cross country this time, having been selected for Wales in the V70 category we flew over to Dublin. Not that we saw much of Dublin this time round since we caught a shuttle bus straight to our hotel and, the following morning, walked to Santry Park where the event took place. Back on the midday flight the following day. Still it was a good trip enabling us to meet old friends and make new ones. The run was a bit of a blast round Santry Park, no hills, no mud, wind or rain so none of the elements that usually work to my advantage. However I was the first Welsh V70 runner and ahead of all the English runners in the category.
