This morning I took Avishai, our weekend house guest up to Jack & Jill to see the view from the top of the Downs. Alas, what I had hoped would be a beautiful, warm run was anything but. First, the wind was sharp and cold (added to which we were both wearing shorts) and second, there was a low cloud base so that the view was largely obscured.
We ran the 1.4 km from the car-park to the top of the hill (a height gain of 85 metres) and then in a bid to get out of the wind and get up to working temperature, took the tank tracks down to the very bottom again. This was a height loss of 145 metres in 1km. I had in mind to turn round and go straight back up again, but was persuaded, sensibly, to instead run along Underhill Lane.
On the basis that what goes down usually has to go back up again, we ended up taking my favourite route to the top of the Beacon. With a height gain of 140 metres in about 1.3 miles, it is clearly not as steep as the tank tracks, but as a city dweller & largely flat tarmac runner, Avi proved his metal by keeping up with me the whole way without stopping.
At the top he looked a little like this:
Suitably warmed we headed away from the car along the top of the Downs to Streat Hill and then turned around and ran back. The cloud was slowly clearing and we could at least get some sense of the view, whilst there was a vague warmth to be detected in the wind.
Having passed Ditchling Beacon for a second time we came upon a most amazing pastoral scene: The sun came out just as we reached a huge field of closely cropped grass, with slightly rugged-looking cattle neatly spaced out either laying down or standing… it was a little like a child had placed a load of model cows there. For some reason it looked just weird.
We ran on and reached Jack and Jill having covered 7.9 miles in one hour 25 minutes. 5.6mph is not bad bearing in mind the fact that we threw Ditchling Beacon in for good measure.
Then it was back to base where I aired out the parasol after its long winter incarceration and Kim treated us to a delicious Sunday roast.
