Category: Photos

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.

I took a bottle of water with me yesterday, despite the fact that I suspected I might have a short run.  This was less to do with not feeling like running, as I felt fine, but more to do with not feeling particularly inspired by any of my normal routes.

After a relatively dry period, it had been raining for a couple of days so there was a top layer of mud sitting on a more solid surface below.  This meant slippery conditions… actually very slippery in places as I was to find out.

As I headed out of town on Ockley Lane, so another runner appeared in front of me from a path and ran ahead of me.  He didn’t slow and it was only my devil-may-care approach to mud that allowed me to catch him as we ran towards Oldlands Mill.  He looked very familiar to me (like Ian that I used to hang out with 20 years ago) but we only chatted for a few minutes before he ran off to do a shorter loop.  This all may sound odd to non-runners, but when your feet are sliding every which way, your focus is pretty much on the ground rather than any running companion.

He did however ask if I was going to run up the beacon and since that suddenly seemed like a good focus, I said yes and off I ran in that direction.  At the bottom of Lodge Hill I took a dog-leg to the right and cut down to New Road across the fields to the West of Ditchling.  And there was a highly misleading sign from Mid Sussex District Council about the re-routing of a path.  Suffice to say I decided to have a look so turned right and ran along the road.

I’d obviously misread their map and as the path didn’t materialise, I turned left by Lodge Farm and headed towards the scarp slope.  On such a slippery day, climbing the scarp slope can be slow-going so my target was to run up what is locally called the tank-tracks, a path that has has been kind of tarmacked in a primitive way.  It’s a really steep climb and unlike my normal path to the top, it is relentless in its gradient.  It’s also really intriguing as the areas to the left is landscaped like a giant playground.  I made a mental note to find out why.

At the top, as I paused to catch my breath, a couple supplied the answer… it had been where the Canadian troops dug in during the war and the tank-tracks were just that.  The Canadians must have been made of sturdy stuff to drive up and (more to the point) down that gradient… NOT for the faint of heart!

Since I was running well, I turned right, away from the Beacon and headed for new territory… I had decided to take Wolstonbury for the Fosters.  This involved running down past the golf course to the Clayton Hill road, right up the permissive bridleway and then left up the long hill.  

At one point I was running along on a narrow elevated grass verge about a sea of cloggy mud, which was the path, when my left leg slid right to catch my right leg.  With my weight going left toward a clearly painful encounter with a barbed-wire fence (I was actually more worried about ripping my Gore jacket) I somehow managed to twist from my core to go straight down, landing safely on one knee but feeling poleaxed from suddenly tensing a whole bunch of muscles, particularly those around my groin.

As I approached Wolstonbury from the south, my aim to claim it for the Fosters was thwarted as I found a small boy sitting resolutely atop the trig-point.  He was guarded by a plucky younger sister twirling around so I retreated, gracefully.

The view from the top of the north slope was breathtaking, even on a misty day and their mother was able to clearly point out to me where the path led to the north.

Getting down the steep grass slope was hard work, feet searching for grip and legs pumping to absorb the descent and harder still when I reached the slippery mud further down, but it took only moments.  Having stopped for a pee, negotiated a bunch of little wooded paths and deeply mudded tracks and finally reached the road, I took the next photo only ten minutes after the last.

I then ran on and finally managed to find Danny House.  It really is an awe-inspiring place.

A compass might not have gone amiss at this point, as, hoping for the most direct route back (I was already knackered) I ended up on the Brighton Road approaching the Hurstpierpoint church from the south.  Cutting east through Hurst was interesting, looking at all the dwellings that have been shoehorned into this charming little village.  The rest of the run, north to Hammonds Mill Farm, then dog-legging north east to the railway bridge and back along the railway, was hard work… I seldom stop when I’m running but I had to stop twice in the last 20 minutes.

14.1 miles took me 2 hours 35 minutes, a dismal 5.45mph, but I really enjoyed the challenge of the run and Wolstonbury is well worth trying to storm again, if only for the view!

PS.  If anyone lost a pair of sheepskin boots on Saturday night, this is where they are.

After a late and boozy evening in London on Friday night, and a freezing walk home from the station, Saturday dawned bright and sunny.  One of the great things about having your own sun-trap is that it’s possible to sit outside on otherwise quite chilly days and since the sculpture that I had started last year was calling to me, I sat outside and tapped away for a while.

Within an hour or so I had shed fleece, socks, sweatshirt, T-shirt and jeans in favour of an old pair of shorts, it was that warm, although I had to put more clothes on to cut the grass as the micro climate did not extend more than a few feet away from the house.

An hour of sculpting turned into four or five in the end at the end of which the still-really-unfinished piece returned to the house as polished as it had started, just a little lighter!

This morning I would have been quite happy to replay the whole of yesterday, maybe just sitting quietly reading in the sun, but the longer you don’t run, the more difficult it is to persuade yourself to go.  So on went the running shorts and my caked-in-mud trainers and out I went into another chilly, but bright morning.

Oh boy, it was hard running down the road!  Neither mind nor body were totally enamoured by the idea, and it was a good ten minutes before I managed to put those feelings behind me.  By then I had run down towards Oldlands Mill, with the loose goal of running into Ditchling and back again.

Ditchling Beacon is on the other side of the village and I was not entirely surprised to find myself running towards it, feet following well-run paths, almost before I realised what was happening.  

I always think of the climb as a test of resolve, something which is a really useful attribute when you run your own company… and especially one that specialises in change management.  I make myself run every last step to the very top… people must think I’m mad!

I think that one day last year I made the top in 45 minutes, so to get there in 52 was pretty pleasing bearing in mind how little running I’ve been doing. 

I then retraced my steps home again, pausing only to take a couple of photos of the view, making it back in one hour 42 minutes… pretty much 6mph for the 10.25 miles.

That’s the first long run since December, which is pretty appalling, but maybe now I can get back into the swing of things!