Rosie on the Sands

I've been away, so I haven't had an opportunity to upodate my running diary so far, but I'll make up for lost time here.

On Wednesday I had a chance to replicate a run I last did on New Year's Eve 1969, when I was 15 (it was the early morning of the day of a family wedding, and a day which had consequences that have rattled down the years). I was on Walney, and I made my way over to a starting point by the allotment in North Vickerstown where my late Uncle Frank used to grow onions the size of footballs. From there I ran to Mill Lane, the length of West Shore Road, and then along the sands of Earnse Bay to complete my 30 minutes. The conditions were magnificent, the tide was right out, the sky was blue, you could almost count the new-born lambs on Black Combe, and the panorama of Lakeland Fells shone in all it's glory. It should have been a run to raise the spirits, but somehow I didn't feel like somebody who had run a half-marathon ten days early. I had to stop at the end of West Shore Road to use the loo (none too salubrious) and then running on the sand wasn't the smooth easy ride I'd imagined it to be. I had to stop a couple of times. The moral, I think, is not to try to run on top of a Full English Breakfast, but hell, if they are going to charge that much for a room these days then I want everything I'm paying for! Still, I did it and thye setting was magnificent. A Walney Half-Marathon would be a wonderful thing, methinks.

Yesterday I was back in my old haunts, running the Kennet round in the anti-clockwise and downstream direction starting from Coley Hill. It was fine - no need for any breaks in the 30 minutes apart from the crossing of the Southcore bridge.