Saturday, May 24, 2014

Heading back up north

Here's a lovely snap of Vicky in front of the Palace Hotel in Torquay. This was quite something because we were originally booked into a crummy B and B but I decided to cancel and we found a last minute deal in the best hotel in town for less than £60 a night including breakfast (well done e-bookers!) We had excellent weather - look at that blue sky - and we walked up to Babbacombe village up the hill. Now here's a thing - John Babbacombe Lee lived there, the man they couldn't hang. An accused murderer he survived three gruesome attempts at hanging him at Exeter prison and apparently lived another 40 years making a living lecturing about the story of his remarkable escape (was he an ancestor of Stephen King?).

Next shot is off the cliffs at Babbacombe - here she is again looking through the bins at a huge landslip which occurred two or three years ago. The bit at the top left is the remains of a big house that someone had just bought at auction (a bargain I think not!)  a few days before they moved in the hillside moved towards the English Channel, if you blow up this photo you might just see bits of furniture among the debris falling down the hill. Lovely views though which explains the high property prices. And a very nice pub overlooking this tragic scene - The Buccaneer (and where are your buccaneers as the actress said?)

So we have to keep on running and on the way back we found a delightful 10K-ish off road gallop near Bristol at Tyntesfield House - a nice evening run round the grounds of this Gothic mansion. The race actually started outside the chapel pictured above (OK it looks more like a mini cathedral!) I got along in 46.50, Vicky was 4th L60 in 75.38 and we were joined by Katie F who followed up her excellent performance with Anton in the Bristol 10K by running a creditable 70.55. Not only that but she fed us on some tasty oriental grub back at their very quiet backstreet house in St George. 



Friday, May 23, 2014

Running on the Moon

So there we were coasting round Cornwall starting to
wind down a bit and looking forward to a nice trail
race at St Austell. Although I had known that the run was on the old china clay workings at St Austell, I hadn't realised that this was on dusty gleaming white tracks .....and the sun was getting hotter and hotter. The extraction process has resulted in an extensive and dramatic landscape of waste tips and quarries with many of them still in their original white colour, although some are now covered in vegetation. Where tips remain white and adjoin flooded quarries, the contrast between these and the turquoise colour of the water is spectacular.
But therein lurks danger, the china clay dust when combined with water forms a deadly quicksand. So for those unwary trespassers who decide to go swimming in the blue lagoons there is no escape and they are sucked down and down. Hence the reason that the public are not allowed on this lunar landscape - except for one day of the year for the Imerys Trail race - and wasn't I glad I just did the half marathon distance and not the full. The clay workings were originally moorland 1000 feet above sea level and the first 7 miles were an undulating switchback on white dusty trails reaching to the highest point where there was not a whiff of a breeze to cool us as the sun glared angrily at us, the bleached white trails reflecting the heat back up at us. Still I got round in 1.50 (1st V60) - just to indicate the difficulty of the course there were only two finishers under 1.30! The full marathon competitors must have really felt it with no one coming in under 3 hours. As with last week I was wearing the odd running shoes - getting quite used to them now!!


Saturday, May 17, 2014

Devon - a slightly bigger county!

Onwards to Devon, the fourth largest county in England, also home to the only town with an exclamation mark in it's name - Westward Ho! This is part of a little tour we're doing of the South West and in my hurry to get out of the front door I neglected to notice that I'd packed an odd pair of running shoes - I've another pair like this at home! Just as well I didn't pack two rights or two lefts. First race of the trip was the Beer Blazer organised by Axe Valley Runners http://www.axevalleyrunners.org.uk/index.htm, a friendly enough event. My 10K (55.30 - note the interesting time) involved beach running on loose shingle and climbing up steep cliffs.
You can see the cliffs in the distance behind Vicky who is looking upwards for some reason. The harbour is at the fishing village of Beer which I thought we just couldn't miss seeing. The event itself had all the elements of a category A fell race so I was pleased to find that the winner only got round in 43 minutes. I managed the first V60 and Vicky had an excellent run in the 5K coming in first LV60. And the one person to notice that I had odd shoes on was another runner who is the proprietor of a running shop, we had an interesting discussion about the comparative grip properties of Innov8 versus Adidas.

We had to spend some time on Dartmoor of course - this is me with Saddle Tor behind me and Vicky posing in front of Haytor Rocks. Very lucky to have nice weather and not many other tourists (Torists?) around.




Plenty of skylarks and ravens on Dartmoor plus stonechats and whinchats. I wasn't quite sure which chat was which but I bagged a photo of the stonechat which I was hoping was the rarer whinchat. Dartmoor also has many remains of prehistoric settlements, we saw stone rings, stone rows and ruined villages - not many seem to have been excavated in the manner that we saw in Cyprus (see our blog from last month!)


And finally a real rare bird, this being one of the black swans of Dawlish which have been breeding here for many years - they were originally introduced from Western Australia. Dawlish is also where Devon Violets come from - not the sweets but the perfume which was invented here. There are apparently hundreds of varieties of violet grown locally! Next stop Cornwall.

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Into the Smallest County

'Multum in Parvo' as any young Latin scholar should know (i.e. me, the Salford schoolboy from the sixties) basically means muchness in smallness. This is the motto of Rutland, the smallest county in England, and it was a delight to stay down here for a few days cos there is a lot here in a small space. Right in the middle is Rutland Water which is quite a large expanse of wetness that is home one of the few UK populations of breeding Ospreys - and, lo and behold, we were very privileged to see one! (This is not my photo I should hasten to add because I was driving as it flew close overhead - didn't look like a buzzard to me, much bigger, it wasn't a kite and our Lyndall confirmed our first sighting of an Osprey!)

Managed to get most of Peterborough Cathedral into this picture but it wasn't easy. This is right in the middle of a busy city full of shoppers and Peterborough United supporters on their way home, a little disgruntled after a final 0-0 draw against Port Vale - Alex Ferguson's son Darren's team have made the play offs but they've clearly got a lot to do to get past Orient, Rotherham and Preston to make it to the Championship. Not many people wandering round the very nice cathedral grounds though - more or less had it all to ourselves!

This is clearly a Dutch barge, how it ended up on the river in Peterborough as an Oakham Ales pub is anybody's guess but we were very happy to take full advantage. Oakham beers tend to be very hoppy and we weren't at all disappointed. Couldn't drink too many as we were on the run the following day (see below). This young lady posing in front is Scout, Lyndall's English Shepherd dog, a very proud individual who we babysat for for five months back in Llangynhafal and, once we'd cured her of her desire to make the acquaintance of sheep became my perfect running dog.


And here's the proof of the pudding - the Langtoft 10K prize mugs, Vicky was 1st L60, I was first V60 and Lyndall and James also had great runs out. I didn't quite manage to get under 42 mins but this was my quickest 10K for over 2 years (not that I've done many recently). Flat course but it was unexpectedly warm and humid. What we are enjoying is running where we haven't been before, on new courses where we don't know anyone else which sort of takes the pressure of and the race more enjoyable - next week we're racing in Devon!

And what else is there to do on a Bank Holiday but go to one of the stately homes of England. Burghley House near Stamford is one of the best. Here you can see that the very rich Lord Burghley has decided to economise with a very nice fuel efficient Hyundai Santa Fe which is parked outside his front door!
And finally to show that Smurf is still trolling around with us............



Friday, May 2, 2014

A bit more travelling in Old England

Well here we are in Abingdon on Thames - used to be in Berkshire but maybe the Oxford dons who lived here thought Oxon was a more prestigious address and they leaned on the county reorganisation folk to do a border change. The border was the grand old River Thames and even here, many miles from the sea, the water is wide. Vicky is on the never-having-been-Berkshire side of the river pictured in front of some interesting almshouses plus the Old Anchor. If you look at a blow up of this piccy you'll see that the Anchor is described as a Morland's pub and just above the roof of the
white car is a beautiful porcelain advertising plaque built into the wall of the pub from before the days of Morland's (brewers of Old Speckled Hen Ale, named for the MG Car which was made in the town many years ago) Morlands was acquired by Ruddles, of Ruddle's County fame and the whole outfit was bought out by Greene King.




These former grand old ales of England became a shadow of their former selves (I include their flagship beer Abott in that context.) My interest here is that I toured the Morland's brewery with the 1st Abingdon Boy Scouts some 50 years ago and I must have caught a whiff of something interesting that has followed me for a fair few years.
The following morning we chased up to Bledlow Ridge in Buckinghamshire to do a 10K off roader which would probably classify as a BM fell race up north – I was 2ndV60 in the 10K and Vicky got first FV60 in the 6.5K version.



 

That evening we found three pubs in Reading namely The Retreat, The Monk’s Retreat and The Alehouse, all sound pubs but lacking in imagination regarding inspiring nomenclature. This last photo of us and Smurf, was in the Alehouse which was decorated in five or six rooms with wall to wall pump clips.More Southern wanderings next weekend - will miss the Llangynhafal Loop but felt it best to stay out of Huw's hair for this - good luck Huw, hope it goes well!