Canicrossing

And that's Skip just in front - "a bit of a help at times!"

And here she is doing well in the Mynnydd Myfyr hill race at Trefonen on a lovely Sunday morning. Vicky was first in her age category and won a marvellous cake! I made the error of faffing around at the venue before the race and completely missed the start - I eventually got over the start line about a minute or so after everyone else - still I did have fun overtaking over half of the field and still won a bottle of plonk despite my silly mistake.

Shouldn't ease off should I!

I should really try to lean forwards instead of backwards when running downhill. However on this occasion we were just about to hit the finishing line at Southwick Country Park parkrun in Wiltshire - the young guy ahead of me had just gone hurtling past me and I just knew I wasn't going to beat him. If I'd known I was going to finish a mere five seconds outside the V65 record then I might have pushed it. But we had a wedding coming up later in the day and I must have been saving myself (ha ha!) It was quite a wedding as well, the weather held and everyone had a great time!

A banqueting hall not a chippie!

Here's a church. Well it was a church, or to be more precise it was a basilica, the Corpus Christi Basilica in Miles Platting, an inner city area of Manchester. The slums are long gone, the large congregation, largely of Irish descent, is long gone and the impressive building is now the Usmania Centre, a banqueting suite specialising in wedding parties, many of them Asian. The eminent architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner noted that it was "large with pale sandstone dressings, in the Italian Romanesque style."and it's good to see that the building has been preserved. What intrigues me is that the basilica was the home of the Norbertines who had a priory at the back of the church. The Norbertines were followers of St Norbert who founded the order in 1160 in Belgium. And who is England's favourite Norbert? Why, World Cup winning footballer Nobby Stiles of course. And where was he from? He was born in Collyhurst which is next door to Miles Platting. I knew that Nobby was a Catholic and I like to think that his parents attended this church and, impressed with the saintliness of St Norbert, or maybe just the unusual name, decided to endow their son with the name Norbert (when did they realise that it would be forever Nobby?)

As a footnote to this last story - another footballing Norbert was Nobby Lawton, a former Manchester United youngster who captained Preston North End when, despite dominating the game, they lost to West Ham in the 1964 FA cup final, Lawton was considered to be man of the match. And he was born in Newton Heath which is also next door to Miles Platting!