Hot and Cold

Gosh it's hot!

Here's grim determination coming up towards the finish line of the Airlie Beach parkrun. Vicky's seventh parkrun here and her third best - not bad considering it was such a hot morning. She's done 141 parkruns in total so should reach 150 by the end of the year. I also suffered in the heat but sneaked into the top ten finishers. Airlie Beach is a tropical parkrun, it's about 500K north of the Tropic of Capricorn which bisects the Australian coast just south of the small town of Yeppoon. So we'll have to have a go at the Yeppoon parkrun sometime in the next year or so - watch this space!

Oooh it's chilly!

And here's the same young lady seven days later. After several weeks of warm weather in Queensland we headed south to Canberra for a couple of days and then hit the high road to Jindabyne which is close to the highest parkrun in Australia, not only is it 950 metres above sea level it's a lot colder than Airlie Beach - there was over 20 degrees difference!

So just where are the Spanish ones?

And a third shot of the same delightful lady in a more relaxed frame of mind meandering through a grove of birch trees at the Canberra Arboretum. This arboretum is like no other that we've seen, usually arboreta are areas of parkland with individual specimens trees dotted around - some of them are quite splendid. Canberra is different - they decided a few years ago to plant mini forests of trees of the same species, some of them threatened or vanishing species. OK you might say - these look just like ordinary birches in this photo, but these birches are sheltering a rare variety, the Spanish Birch, these are disappearing in their native home - once the Spanish Birches become established here the regular birches will be sacrificed - it's what you might term a far sighted long term project. Very impressive and a joy to look at!

Ozzy Birds!

Let's  get cracking.

Managed to get a nifty photo of an Eastern Whipbird snuffling about in the undergrowth in the Mount Tamborine rainforest at Eagle Heights. This little blighter is often heard but seldom seen, I caught a glimpse of something beneath a bush beside the pathway and kept snapping away hoping that I'd get a decent picture and here it is. The call of the Eastern Whipbird is an unmistakeable drawn out note followed by a crack not unlike the crack of a whip - hence the name.

Grub up?

Quite pleased with this pic of two Kookaburra's perching on our balcony in Airlie Beach, the young one on the right was very tame whereas the adult kept flying away then returning to check on its offspring. We figured out that somebody had been feeding the youngster on a balcony similar to ours and the little bird thought we would be another source of grub (or grubs). Kookaburra senior was obviously concerned about possible violations of child protection protocols.

Not my photo but such a pretty bird it was! We took a stroll round Lake Jindabyne in the New South Wales highlands and spotted this chappie fluttering around - it wouldn't pose for us though apart from a flash of its unmistakeable tail. We were aiming for a pint at the Banjo Patterson Inn but got caught in a violent freezing hailstorm which completely soaked us - so it was back to the apartment for hot showers and a change of clothes - not the sort of weather we are accustomed to in OZ.

Chances of further scattered showers according to accuweather.com forced us to take the car up to the Jindabyne Brewery Tap - this was no great hardship!

Enjoying the warm weather - wish you were here!

Isn't she lovel

Well guess where we are again? This is Bredl's Country Farm, a delightful place out in the sticks of Northern Queensland. Lots of kangaroos, huge crocodiles, wombats, snakes, large lizards, etc. And what a very entertaining informative day we had. However it was dry, dusty and hot - by 10 am the temperature was already climbing towards 30 degrees and shade was at a premium. We were a little acclimatised as we'd experienced the heat a couple of weeks before at the Hidden Vale Trail Race many miles west of Brisbane. Vicky, Lyndall and myself all won age category prizes. In other words, to use a dreadful aberration that I heard recently, all three of us 'podiumed'!

It might seem a little odd to be winning cycling jerseys although they are rather nifty. However the trail race was the precursor to a weekend of mountain bike racing and my 11.5K race and the girls' 5K race were over the same terrain that the cyclists used later on - dry, dusty and hot and with lumps in the middle of the trail. I was rather jet lagged and losing concentration towards the end and managed to hit one of these lumps, found myself in a heap and had to avail myself of the first aid support at the finish - ouch! Our Lyndall managed to survive the run without mishap and the following day completed the 55K cycle race in fine fettle - cold beer was in order that evening.

The weekend after this we hit the St Lucia parkrun by the river in Brisbane, as you can see I was modelling my stylish trail race running vest. After many weeks of drought Brisbane welcomed a rainy morning and we got absolutely drenched during the race director's briefing - soon dried off though!

Back to the hills

Guess who got lost!

Nearly two years since I last did a fell race. Sixteen years ago I ran a couple of back to back fell races on Dartmoor, on the Saturday was the 11 mile Sticklepath Horseshoe which was followed on the Sunday by the Sourton Tor race, a 14 minute up and down quickie. This year, being in the vicinity, I spotted the Sourton Tors race - not quite the same as it started further away. This was a thoroughly enjoyable tramp on the hills, a traditional style fell race with registration and prizes out of the back of a car in a pub car park. Not that either of us won anything but it won't be two years until my next one.

A wet morning in Ulster

Recent park runs completed include Penistone in Yorkshire where we followed the flattish West Pennine Trail on an interesting surface - it looked like tarmac but was springy, nice to run on it must have had some ground up tyres mixed in. Also two in Northern Ireland - a sunny jaunt round the grounds of Stormont Castle and a very wet morning in Wallace Park in Lisburn. The latter is an undulating three loop course in a lovely park with a fine example of a band stand - I spotted myself in this photo of the race briefing - must have been about 200 runners under cover there.

Heading for Devon

Taxi!

Trundling down to our new house in Devon with all our worldly goods in a transit van, (well three vans in a row) we've been pitstopping halfway at Droitwich staying at the Chateau Impney (see post from May). This particular hotel is a popular wedding venue especially with wealthy Asian families from Birmingham. We spotted one wedding where 5 brightly coloured brand new Ferraris were revving up in the extensive and beautiful hotel grounds. On another occasion we spotted a stretch Porsche - here's Vicky trying to persuade the driver to let her go for a spin in it.

Just a quick one!

On arrival in Devon we fairly swiftly repaired to the Bell Inn, our nearest pub. We knew that a selection of real ale was on offer but this time we were delighted find Otter Brewery's OPA. The regular at the bar told us this stands for Old Peoples' Ale but of course Opa is Dutch for Grandpa so Vicky took to this quite rapidly. Other ales from local breweries were also tasty! Plenty of parkruns to go at down here and we soon ticked off several including Exmouth and Teignmouth both going up and down the sea front. Haldon Forest was a pleasant parkrun through the woods on the fringes of Dartmoor. However on August bank holiday we thought we'd better have a go at the Lustleigh Show 10K just 3 or 4 miles up the road - well this was almost a fell race with getting on for 300 metres of climbing mostly off road. And a hot day it was too. However Vicky was very well prepared and was equipped with most of the gear required for running the Marathon des Sables.

Where's my camel?

Midsummer running

Puffing bit here

Here's the new parkrun in Derby, described as flat - it wasn't quite! It's on the course of an old railway line, but I don't think an express train would have coped with the ups and downs, more likely it was an old industrial branch line. Derby may be a long way from the sea but but you may be interested to know that in the middle of the 19th century the MP for Derby was Samuel Plimsoll who gave his name to the Plimsoll Line  the indicator on shipping worldwide that shows if they're overloaded! Plimsoll's efforts to get parliament to pass legislation making his line a compulsory item were initially thwarted by lobbying from powerful shipowners but in time the law was passed and became an international standard.

Swag!

We seem to have been park running and not much else this year but Vicky had a very good go at the Denbigh Triathlon. Starting off the swim she was disconcerted to find that she was in the same lane as our friend Tony who had announced that he was using an unconventional swimming stroke. Sure enough there he was all six feet two of him swimming the back stroke! She got comfortably ahead of him and managed to avoid colliding as they passed, had an excellent cycle and run and then went on to win the ladies over 60 award - here's a photo of the haul of goodies she was presented with: a nice medal, a super trophy, useful buff and a rather odd star prize (for June) a woolly bobble hat!

Cruising along

Meanwhile I had a crack at the Ruthin evening 5K, I'd done this race three years ago and despite all the shenanigans with my health issues since then I managed 21:51, less than a minute outside my previous time - so smiles all round, that's me in the blue with the fancy shades with Paul G on my left, he's been running very well lately but with about a K to go I got past him as he blew up a bit. More parkruns to report on include Conwy a couple of times, Conkers (down in south Derbyshire in the National Forest no less), Conyngham Hall in Knaresborough and a parkrun in one of the loveliest of settings at Fountains Abbey - the slightly undulating course goes right round the abbey twice. And here it is:

What's this doing in the middle of our parkrun course?

Jet setting on the Riviera

It's that Riviera Touch

Busy a lot lately and I've been trying to get in a blog entry at least once a month but - whoops - totally missed June! There's a lot been going on, I saw an ad for a trip to the the Polish Riviera and followed it up with a booking. We flew from Liverpool to Gdansk and found ourselves a few miles up the coast at Sopot a seaside spa town. This was the place to be in the 1920's and rich tourists flocked from all over Europe to be seen in the riviera of the north. Spot boasts the longest wooden pier in Europe plus some fine old hotels and a very good pedestrianised town centre. It's on the up and up and although there were very few foreign visitors when we we there there's obviously a big rejuvenation effort going on, with lots of construction etc.

The Sopot Lighthouse!

In anticipation of rising sea levels (and seemingly against local opposition) they're raising the height of the sea walls - we encountered a group of labourers from Cornwall enticed over by the prospects of €400 per day wages! We were particularly taken with the railway system and senior citizen tickets to the middle of Gdansk and north to Gdynia were cheap as chips. Gdansk was full of old churches and other attractive medieval buildings and, as in Sopot there were plenty of tourists, just that they were mostly Polish and mostly large groups of schoolchildren come from all over Poland to learn about their heritage. A week here was just about right, we found an excellent brewpub in Sopot with some fine ales, a larger brewpub by Gdansk railway station was a bit more prosaic with less exotic beers but the food was fine.
And, what a stroke of luck, we found a parkrun! Parkrun has been going on in Poland for several years and there are maybe seventy park runs in various locations in the country - we ran twice round a very pleasant park to add another country to our list.