Reflections

Running solo

sarahjlewisbriggs2 Comments

I don’t like running on my own.

At least, I don’t like running new routes on my own. One of the problems I still have with running, even after all these years, is pacing myself. On my own I tend to run faster than I feel comfortable with for any length of time, and then find it hard: if I’m with a friend or a group then running along chatting means I pace myself better. If I can talk then I know I’m running at a ‘sensible’ pace. With an unknown route you don’t know where the testing sections of the route are going to be unless you’ve studied the map in detail (which I have to admit I rarely do); with routes you’ve run before you know exactly what to expect and how to feel when.

When the final two days of the Music Festival were cancelled (due to coronavirus risks) and the weather wasn’t bad, I thought I’d go for a long run somewhere I didn’t know. I chose a route where I could either do between 8-10km or double that: the idea was to explore a bit in the southern part of Wark Forest (which joins on to Kielder Forest). It was either that or a bike ride, but as the weather is still a bit on the chilly side at times I thought I’d be warmer running than cycling.

The drive up there is lovely: I drove along roads which I’ve been along many times by car and by bike, as far as Gilsland, thinking that I’d like to get out on my bike later if the weather stayed good. At Gilsland I turned up towards Spadeadam, thinking back to several years ago when David and the kids and I had driven up here to see where David could start a run into the middle of Kielder (he never did it). I remembered the somewhat unnerving drive across the MOD firing range and the remote road. Today it seemed to go on forever, becoming more and more remote. You pass the odd farm; at Butterburn you wonder if you’re going into someone’s farmyard but still the road continues.

As my car was getting extremely low on fuel I was getting a bit worried about how much further I had to go to get to Churnsike Lodge, where I’d thought of starting, and instead decided to stop in the gateway to one of the tracks I wanted to run along (making sure there was room for people to get out – the presence of a post box and some bins was evidence of a house further up, as the map confirmed).

A lot of trees had fallen down and as I got out of the car I realised that it was colder than I had thought. I started off on the forest track, which led gradually uphill and into the wind. It was easy to navigate – the forest track was well-maintained and I knew I just had to keep turning right.

It wasn’t exactly a thrilling run in terms of views or variety of track, and my quite large rucksack was banging around against my back (partly as I’d forgotten to repair the waiststrap) and annoying me. But it also dawned on me that I was missing the companionship of running with someone else and having someone to talk to. I was surrounded by trees and nothing else: and then it started to rain. It was incredibly solitary, and yet the presence of the forestry commission track made man’s effect all too obvious as well: even in this remote area human beings are not that far away.

Things got a bit more interesting when I had to turn on to a more grassy track, which was flooded at one point. This led down to a ford. From the map I knew there was a ford but also thought it looked as if there might be a pedestrian bridge: but no. It was difficult to tell how deep the water was, and it was running quite fast. I walked upstream a bit to see if there was somewhere more shallow to cross, without luck. As I walked/jogged back to the ford, I noticed there was a car on the opposite side: and also that just downstream of the ford there was a possible crossing place, although one short section looked deeper. At least if I fell in there might be people to rescue me – I didn’t really want to have to retrace my footsteps, as I was nearer the end of the run than the beginning by now.

Sure enough, having successfully waded through the burn (up to knee deep), it was only a mile or so to Churnsike Lodge, which I was curious to see. It’s a former hunting lodge and was owned by the Forestry Commission but is now a holiday let. The photos of it on the website look lovely.

The last short stretch of run was alongside the river Irthing – which ends up running through Lanercost and Brampton further west – and up over a small hill. I arrived back at the car, glad to be able to put on dry clothes. The large rucksack had been a pain to carry but as my legs had got soaking wet it was good to have a pair of tracksuit bottoms in it to put on.

As I drove back, the weather having brightened up again, I mulled over running alone and why I hadn’t particularly enjoyed it. Whilst I like having someone to talk to so I can pace myself, I also like exploring with someone else – and yet there are times when I enjoy the solitude, and certainly I’m almost as happy cycling on my own as I am with others. Perhaps it’s just that I find it so much more difficult to motivate myself to run. Perhaps it’s also a slight fear of being out in remote areas and something happening to me. Whatever it is, it’s one of the times when I think it would be really nice to have a new boyfriend – he would of course not only have to run, cycle and swim but also like music and good food and my kids.

As I drove back across the MOD ranges I noticed the warning signs more clearly, and was once again struck by the slight eeriness of the place. Whilst I thought of stopping to take some more photos, I almost didn’t dare…

Perhaps I just have too vivid an imagination, particularly when on my own.

The Lake District: on two wheels and two feet

sarahjlewisbriggs3 Comments

The first time I ever visited the Lake District was for a mountain biking weekend one cold but sunny November. It was the days before digital cameras, so the photo of me falling into a stream as I tried to cycle through it is buried in an album somewhere: but what I do remember is that the weather was beautiful and that I immediately fell in love with the area.

Living in Cumbria (it’s 12 years next month), I still love the county and a trip to the Lakes usually engenders feelings of going on holiday, even if only for a half day. There’s also plenty I have yet to explore and to learn.

Despite my pre-children mountain biking weekends all those years ago, I haven’t cycled much in the area. So when my friend Jeremy suggested a 20-mile bike ride in Borrowdale and around Derwentwater I accepted eagerly.

He picked up my bike, Edward and me in his van and having dropped Edward at school we drove down to Keswick. As we cycled up the Borrowdale valley I thought back to running around and swimming in Derwentwater, and how each activity gives a slightly different aspect to the lake and its valley. The river near Grange was higher than it had been when Penny and I ran from Grange to Seatoller and back but whilst it was cooler, the weather was dry. We stopped to admire the Bowder Stone, which I hadn’t seen before, and its new steps, as someone Jeremy knows had something to do with them. I tried to imagine Victorian women in crinolines climbing up to admire the view, parasols in hand, and was glad to be clad in flexible lycra.

We cycled as far as the NT farm and cottages at Seathwaite before turning round and retracing our wheels to Grange. Here we turned to the west to go up the road that runs along the foot of Cat Bells, and I thought back to swimming in Derwentwater below there just a few months ago. I have loads of similar photos but it’s such a lovely view and one of my favourite lakes, by now dressed in its autumnal colours. How rapidly the seasons change and the temperature drops: various hardy swimmers are still open water swimming (without wetsuits) even now, and will continue throughout the winter, but I’m not yet anything like acclimatised!

We cycled back through Portinscale, discussing wanting to try some of the mountain passes and debating which would be the best to try first, and arrived back in Keswick in plenty of time for cake (Jeremy) and smashed avocado (etc. – me). On the way home we dropped into Rheged to look at Jeremy’s exhibit in a national landscape exhibition: I’ll leave the photos to tell their own story. I love the way Rheged have positioned it so the light creates a map in the shadow.

Only a short while later and I was down in the Lake District again, this time based at Monk Coniston for an assessment weekend to see whether I’d be good enough to be a walking holiday leader. As I drove down – over the Kirkstone Pass, as I love that route and it’s the most direct – the sun was setting and there was Windermere below me, shining as the sun went down. I never tire of getting to the top of the Kirkstone Pass and seeing the lake all the way down below me – I rarely stop to take a photo though.

I felt a little apprehensive about the weekend but before long Rachel, the other woman on the assessment (there were 3 men as well), and I were chatting away, comparing notes about 3 children, being divorced and life generally.

The following day the two of us were walking with Paul while the 3 men went off with a different assessor. We headed in a north-westerly direction up the Yewdale valley, alongside the Yewdale Beck for much of the way and seeing lots of remains of mines and quarries – we stopped for coffee in one, gazing around a corner at snow on the higher fells. There was a real feeling of human industry having returned to nature.

That evening was night navigation and we spent an enjoyable couple of hours trying to find our way in the dark up to Tarn Hows and back. I realised that either the battery on my headtorch was getting a bit low (it’s rechargeable) or I need a better headtorch; and we ‘calibrated’ my paces – I now know that c.63 of my double paces equals 100m.

The following day all 5 of us ‘candidates’ were out together with two assessors, starting at the New Dungeon Ghyll and walking up towards the Langdale Pikes. I had never walked further than the first waterfalls and pools before, and the stunning weather – the sky was a vivid cloudless blue until the afternoon – combined with the beauty of the fells made for a hugely enjoyable walk. I’m really looking forward to next summer and swimming in Stickle Tarn; there was also a small pool looking over Stickle Tarn: both reflected the sky and fells like mirrors. One day I shall do the entire Pavey Ark – Harrison Stickle – Pike of Stickle walk.

As we walked back down I could see Blea Tarn in the distance, and again thought back to swimming there not so very long ago. We could also see Windermere and Morecambe Bay, including Heysham power station; there’s something very gratifying about being able to orientate yourself because you recognise landscape features.

While writing this I’m studying the map again and my eyes are caught by ‘Castle Howe’ and ‘Ting Mound’ at the eastern end of the Wrynose Pass (the pass of my 3-hour wait for the breakdown lorry after swimming in Wastwater). Googling what they were, I discover that this could be an iron age fort of some sort and that the Ting Mound was used in the 7th-9th centuries as an open air meeting place. Apparently the route through Wrynose Pass might have been in use since neolithic times.

Perhaps this is what appeals to me most of all about living in this fairly remote, underpopulated part of the UK. The relative lack of development means that history of all periods surrounds you: the neolithic route and iron age hill fort; the roads, forts and great wall of the Romans; the names of Saxon and Viking settlements; the ruined castles of medieval times; the industrial archaeology of the Elizabethans and Georgians; and the tourism industry which more or less started with Wordsworth and continues to this day. The multiple layers of varying waves of human interest and influence; but over it all nature continuing with its own awe-inspiring beauty, ranging from the grandeur of the highest fells to the delicacy of a mountain flower.

London: walking through memories

sarahjlewisbriggs3 Comments

My Devon aunt and uncle – who are extremely well-travelled – went to London to Kensington Palace, and reported on Facebook about seeing Princess Diana’s dresses.  I realised that despite living in London when I was younger for about 14 years, I’d never been to Kensington Palace (or even Kensington Palace Gardens). I hadn’t even realised it was open to the public. 

A few days later Virgin trains sent me an offer of 40% off train fares.  On an impulse, I checked out how much it was going to cost to get down to London and back in a day (I’d been down to London and back in a day for work, so I knew it that a day trip from one end of the country to the other was actually OK by train – it’s really quick to get from Carlisle to London as the trains don’t stop much so you can do the trip in about 3 hours 15).  It was such a bargain I booked the tickets then and there, plus a ticket to Kensington Palace – which not only had an exhibition of Diana’s dresses but also of costumes from The Favourite, a film about Queen Anne which I was interested in seeing.  I also arranged to meet another aunt, who lives in London and who I have seen very few times since moving to Cumbria (and having three children, despite having been close to her when I was younger – she was always quite a role model for me, along with another aunt who lived in Edinburgh. They both demonstrated that you could be single and have an interesting life: that women are definitely not dependant on some man or other for their happiness… an old-fashioned view I know but my parents demonstrated that being a couple was what made life worth living…).

So at about 6.30 on a cold winter Saturday morning I was standing at Carlisle station waiting for the London train.  The train goes through all sorts of places with which I have connections: Warrington, where NWDA’s head office was; past stretches of the Grand Union canal which I dealt with when I was at British Waterways; Watford which was my home for 6 or 7 years; Wembley where I worked for Brent Council.  As we travelled further south the sky grew lighter and the snow lying on the ground heavier; it always feels as if there’s something wrong when it’s snowier and colder in the south than in the northern border counties (what I like to think of as the ‘real’ north – Manchester is two hours south of me and yet to a southern – which I was until I was 40-something – Manchester and the industrial areas around there was the north. How wrong I was!).

From Euston I decided to walk to Kensington Palace.  It was a trip through the past, without being in any sort of chronological order.  I crossed the road opposite 355 Euston Road, where Railtrack Property once had its offices; I remembered looking out of the window and seeing the demolition ball swinging and the walls coming down of a building on the northern side of the road. There’s now a swanky new office development there, with cafes and restaurants around a central square.

At Portland Street station there was still a minimarket.  I sometimes used to walk along there to buy a sandwich and a bottle of Oasis for lunch.  We’d also often have pool cars and be heading out this way by car on site visits; the office had a garage underneath which was where I parked my bike when I cycled to work, from Beckenham up through Crystal Palace, round Elephant & Castle roundabout, round Trafalgar Square, and up Charing Cross and Tottenham Court Road, racing cyclists who jumped the red lights while I virtuously stopped.

I crossed Portland Place – memories of going to see friends who worked at Broadcasting House and sometimes seeing famous faces in the canteen – and headed past various mews.  One of them had once had a building which Westminster City Council owned, which I let to Crisis at Christmas.  It’s been redeveloped now – I wasn’t even sure which mews it had been in.  At Marylebone Road I had a vague recollection of being somewhere for a London Junior Branch meeting of the RICS; I admired the shops and thought how I’d all too rarely visited this street, which was somewhere I visited I think on my very first visit to London. At the age of 6 my mother had taken me to London and we’d met a friend of hers and had lunch at the Cordon Bleu cookery school. 

As I moved further west I was reminded how cosmopolitan London is, which was one of the things I’ve always loved about it.  The Turkish restaurants changed to Lebanese and Middle Eastern on Edgware Road, the air smelling sweetly of something which I suspect may not have been totally legal, men of a middle eastern demeanour sitting outside drinking coffee, discussing matters and sometimes smoking. I was pleased to see that Seymour Leisure Centre, which I’d dealt with when I was at Westminster City Council, has had its 30 metre swimming pool restored: one of the tasks I had had was commissioning valuation work to see if part of the site could be redeveloped for residential units in order to fund the necessary repairs needed to the pool hall.  I was tempted to walk in and ask to have a look round but didn’t.  After all, it was 25 years ago or more.

I dropped down Edgware Road past shops and restaurants with signs in Arabic, to cross over into Hyde Park at Marble Arch.  Where the cinema and hotel used to be is being redeveloped, but on the whole the streetscape of this part of London had changed remarkably little since I had last walked, cycled or driven around here. 

Hyde Park was where I ran my first ever 10 km race – in just under 50 minutes, much to my surprise at the time – and plenty of runners were out today enjoying the winter sun.  A father ran past pushing a running buggy, asking his child in French if he/she were ready to go home; groups of French tourists of various ages milled around; a lady walked past in the opposite direction speaking German into her phone.  Later on as I travelled back on the tube a group of Italians was talking near me: I love the multi-culturalism of London, where everybody rubs shoulders whether they live in the capital or are visitors.

At Kensington Palace it was interesting to see where initially William & Mary (‘the Orange’ – 1066 and all that) and later George II and Queen Caroline had entertained their court, or had some private time, and to see the costumes from The Favourite.  But Diana’s dresses were, to be honest, just a bunch of evening dresses with queues of people staring at them; and the ‘Victoria revealed’ exhibition which I’d thought would be interesting wasn’t open.  The shop had some rather expensive and quite nice things to buy and the café was full.  I bought some chocolate for my kids, a book for my Mum and a couple of small gifts for my London-Aunt and then headed away, grabbing a sandwich from a nice Italian snack bar in the gardens en route, fending off the starlings who were begging for crumbs.

Funny how when I go on the tube I resort to being the person I always used to be on the tube – impatient to pass people, walking or running up escalators – and that I still mostly remember which tube lines to take where and which stations to change at.  It took me remarkably little time to get to my aunt’s in Hampstead and I spent a lovely afternoon having a long chatty catch-up with her and eating cake. In fact really that was the best part of the day and the best reason for going to London.

I was back at Euston in plenty of time for the train.  Whilst in the morning I’d been smiling to myself as I walked across London in the sunshine, now I smiled to myself as I got on my train.  I love rail travel: the mainline trains always feel quite luxurious as you speed from the bottom of the country to the top; and I’ll be home before the evening is even that old.  Coniston tomorrow.

NB. Footnote: Coniston (running round it) didn’t happen as it was -5 overnight and my car handbrake wouldn’t release. Probably just as well as Penny and I ran just over 10 miles around Ridge Woods, up the Dandy and through Gelt Woods instead and from beautifully snowing it turned to rain and ice – and conditions in the Lakes are possibly worse than up here.