What's up Duck!

 

First time away from home since November. A pleasant but not comparable alternative to Malta or Tenerife (or even Brisbane!) is South Derbyshire. Here's Vicky sitting on the steps of the bandstand in Crossley Park in Ripley. Sunday afternoon in late summer listening to the Newstead Brass Band must be one of the finest ways to spend time - hopefully after a year's break this will come to pass in 2021 - we must go back.  Ripley is located in the East Midlands and was very much involved with the early stages of the industrial revolution. Crossley Park is a piece of land close to the town centre that was donated by James Crossley in 1901, he was a local businessman who made his money in a variety of ways including supplying the town gas and building a textile mill. Other earlier entrepreneurs took advantage of the plentiful deposits of coal and iron locally and the area became known for its advanced (for the eighteenth century) steelmaking techniques. 

The bulk of the industry has now disappeared and the surrounding countryside has reverted to woodland and farmland criss crossed by an astonishing network of footpaths which must be those that the factory workers from the local villages took on their way to work. During our short stay I donned my running shoes and explored the plethora of paths and bridleways. On my return I looked at the satellite map of the route I'd taken; I'd run alongside a large cowfield with splendid acres of lush green grass waving in the breeze. Looking at this scene from above however there's clear evidence of human activity from long ago. Could there have been a Roman villa here? Or maybe a much earlier neolithic settlement? I would think the less romantic and more prosaic explanation might be related to the industry of the past few hundred years.

In this part of the Midlands visitors are very often puzzled and surprised to be called 'Duck' It's a local term of endearment and people slip it into their everyday conversation all the time. Our accommodation for our short stay was above a small supermarket and I popped down for a few bottles of ale to go with our supper. The chap behind the counter called me 'duck' three or four times during our brief conversation and having known what to expect I wasn't in the least bit put out. What did surprise me was the name of the local brewery from just down the road in Derby:

On the Run once More

 So here we are back at it - first proper road race this year was the Mid Cheshire 5K - starved of competition runners came from all over the place - there was even a top runner from Devon and the overall winner on the night was from Morpeth. And what a high standard - 27 runners managed to break 15 minutes. Unlike normal events where everybody runs together here we set off at intervals so it was difficult to get an idea of how the race is unfolding. I was happy to see one of my rivals, who'd set off before me, come into view in the final stretch and I crept up on him and surged past. (He didn't stay to congratulate me!) Here I am sprinting for the line to finish in my best time for a while of 20:44 just 8 seconds behind the age group winner in my category. Woo, hoo!

Just like buses, after waiting for hours (months in this case) one run comes along and another arrives shortly afterwards. This was the Moel y Parc fell race four days later. My personal route is shown here and it looks like a pleasant loop on hilly terrain - it took me 55 minutes and was recorded as just over 8K. To my surprise I finished in second place! I was aware that something had gone wrong when, to the north of Moel y Parc, I came across other runners wandering around not knowing where they should be going. I decided to contour anti-clockwise round the mountain and got back on track. What should have happened however was that the runners should have returned from the summit on more or less the same route in reverse and completed the recommended route of 5K. These things happen more frequently than you might think - runners, me included, tend to be like sheep and follow the one in front even when it looks like they're going wrong.