“There he is!” exclaimed my Dad, pointing to a grey smudge on the screen. It is the earliest recollection I have of the sport of running, the first time I realised that running wasn’t just something you did to get away from the psychotic kids at school. (I did a lot of running at that school.)
Dad’s friend Hugh, a fellow member of his cycling club, doubled as a runner when he wasn’t testing the local ale. He must have been quite good as we were watching him ‘on the telly’ in some event at Crystal Palace. Dad knew it was Hugh because a man called David Coleman had just read his name out, though how he could have told one runner from another I have no idea as it seemed that all the runners wore grey. Also the grass was grey, the sky was grey (It was south London in the sixties; what did you expect?) and the spectators were grey. These were the days of ‘black and white’ television, a misnomer if ever there was one – nothing on the TV was black or white just grey, and very, very fuzzy. A 405 lines TV makes the screen on the back of your mobile phone look like HD, just as if the picture had been painted by Turner on one of his gloomier days.
We’d only just got our first TV so it must have been about 1963. I still remember Dad tuning the thing and adjusting the aerial while I sat glued to the image of the ITV test-card and my dinner got increasingly cold. By the time he had a good picture the food was just about frigid.
The test-card in those days was a photograph of the Houses of Parliament, an omen if ever there was one. Little did I know that I would be limping pathetically through the same scene less than 43 years later, trying to look dignified despite being beaten hollow by four pantomime rhinos and about 60 eccentrics who had all had the same hilarious notion to run the London Marathon dressed as Sponge Bob Square Pants.
I say it was the same scene, but I was disappointed to discover in 2007 that the barrage balloons had been removed from around Parliament.
The TV came just in time for us to see such varied but earth changing events as JFK’s failure to duck in time in Dallas and also the baffling reports of one Valentina Tereshkova becoming the first woman in space. Presumably the cosmonauts had given up on their plan to fit Soyuz craft with a reverse gear. Maybe parking isn’t an issue when you are the only person up there. Much was made of this event, which followed the entry into space of the presumably bold but barking mad Yuri Gagarin who obviously hadn’t learned much from the fate of Laika, the first dog in space. On quiet nights in the Ukraine you can still hear him yipping as he passes over his kennel every 80 minutes. Obviously Yuri Gagarin paid extra and got the return ticket.
I can’t recall how Hugh got on in his televised running race but he wasn’t invited to run in the Tokyo Olympics with the big boys, so maybe not too good then. Or maybe the other runners were a bit suspicious of those odd shoes he ran in, the ones with the nails sticking out of the bottoms of them. Those shoes must have been popular on the bus to Crystal Palace …
Also in those early years I remember being taken to watch a race, ‘Cyclists versus Harriers’, which was held annually on common land on the North Downs. Such was the mud that most years the harriers would win. It was surprising what those spiked shoes could do to a bike tyre.
We moved to Westwood near Bradford on Avon in 1965. Handy, as I was able to start reccying the Over The Hills course even before the current organiser was born. At the same time I was given my first bicycle and I set about exploring the locality on blissfully traffic free roads. The main danger came from the local Royal Enfield factory which periodically sent out its maddest employees to test the products. It was perfectly normal to be overtaken by some nutter doing about 90 on a gleaming new motorcycle, just out on its maiden run before being fitted with boring stuff like brakes.
My new school was a bit of a shock. No longer necessary to dodge the scarier boys at playtime, my main run of the week was chasing the cows up to one end of the field so that we could have our weekly games lesson. This was football in a minefield of cow-pats.
I don’t know why we chased the cows off. If we’d let the cows stay we’d have had enough players for a decent game, and at least half of them would have been better players than me.
With a field like that, cricket wasn’t played at our school. (Besides, have you seen a Friesian catch a ball? – blooming hopeless!) By the time I got to Trowbridge High School in 1968 I had developed into one of those kids who gets picked last for teams. (I thought I was quite good holding out until the end each week!) I tolerated the team games stoically every week but when you aren’t very good you get nagged at a lot and I wasn’t keen to sample married life at 12.
Rugby was the best of the games I suffered; it seemed to involve lots of anarchic milling about and I could go all afternoon without holding the ball. Best of all was the look of pleasure on my Mum’s face when I went home with such clean kit. If I found myself in possession of the ball I found that the best course of action was to run like hell, especially as all those psychotic kids seemed to have found me at last and were hell-bent on flattening me.
Eventually the games teacher must have spotted that if I couldn’t play, at least I could run away. One of my school reports of the era says “Ian shows potential as a middle distance runner.” Of course no-one thought to mention this to me at the time. Maybe they knew that they couldn’t count on the Second XV to show up on race days to chase me round the 1500 metres.
We had a rather unusual road run which I used to actually enjoy, a circuit of about 4km. (The kilometre hadn’t actually been invented yet. We made do with miles) A group of us used to run the circuit against the clock and I made such good progress that by the time I was fifteen I had become almost feeble, and not many of us were that good!
Of course it wasn’t long before a new teacher spotted how much pleasure we derived from our running, so just to spur us on and make the whole experience more satisfying, he made us run the circuit bare-foot. Initially I was horrified, having visions of cuts and blisters and, even worse, having to walk like you do on the beach. You know; as if the Home Guard had sprinkled anti-personnel carpet tacks amongst the shingle. Surprisingly though, running barefoot was a doddle. It really didn’t hurt, and the savings in shoe leather have appealed to the economist in me to this day. Our times round the circuit were no slower, rising to the dizzy heights of ‘pathetic’ on a good day.
I don’t think I ran again until I was an apprentice and we were pressed into taking part in the Civil Service sports day. In those days I had ‘Wally’ tattoed across my forehead, or so it seemed, as I was deemed the most suitable lad to run the 5000 metres. I was fit as I had been riding a lot of bike races at the time. As a tactic I had learned that you need to be at the front around the first corner. This tactic is not as suitable for long running races. For a start, a race around an oval track is one long corner so my starting effort was a bit of a long one, but not having run for about three years left me vulnerable to the more experienced runners who started at the correct speed, ran the middle of the event at the correct speed and, more importantly, reached the finish line without a spell of lying down gasping. DNF.
When I started working at the university I was still obsessed with cycle-racing but gradually began to run with work-mates, running in our lunch-hour. (Another misnomer - lunch-hour!) The university is well placed for runners, with plenty of footpaths and tracks both on Claverton Down and in the surrounding countryside. Most runs require a climb back up to the campus and I soon realised that off-road running, preferably as hilly as possible, was a great aid to getting some sleep in the afternoons.
Then one fateful day we all entered a running race. It was organised by a club called ‘Chippenham Harriers’. I was doomed…
Friday, 19 February 2010
Friday, 7 August 2009
LLanzarote - Welsh island in the sun.
Our holiday was a really good break and a good deal better than I imagined
it would be. Flew (by aeroplane) from Bristol on the Sunday, getting to
Arrecife in daylight so able to enjoy the strange scenery from the bus on
Day One. The hotel was immense but tolerably so. We were in an outlying
block with a sea view and not much noise. It had beds, A/C, patio and a bit
of garden, telly, not much else. The complex had seven swimming pools, a
gym, therapy-spa, several restaurants, a 'piano bar' (someone sneaked a
saxophone in but he escaped with only minor injuries and a caution from the
Guardia Civil), entertainments hall, (Butlins style but okay)
Lots of naked breasts, which oddly, I somewhat resent. (God, am I getting old,
but I don't like having to avert my gaze because some bloody exhibitionist
wants to flaunt her leathery skin. Some truly beautiful girls too; I often thought of Robert.) Generally relaxed on the first day though we had an
abortive attempt to do the '20 minute' walk to Playa Blanca (It actually
took about that long to run it - I know; I did it) I had already had a walk
along in the opposite direction to the local lighthouse but there were no
ship-wrecks and no people drowning, in fact nothing to laugh at, at all.
Second morning Lynne and I walked into Playa Blanca to pick up our hire car, a
Fiat Ulysses. This is an immense car, not quite a mini-bus. It had
electric side doors (great fun!) and bald tyres. Lynne did her strut and
got it changed, the hire car bloke not being a match for my minder. The
replacement had pretty naff tyres too but was deemed safe, rain not being
forecast before 2027.
First outing was from Playa Blanca to El Golfo where a blooming great volcano has
gone BANG! and made a hole in the ground which the ocean has obligingly
filled with briny stuff. Lynne bought a bit of volcano which has been
brought home in the hope that it will have dust-repellent properties.
On from El Golfo we stopped at the National Park which is a sort of volcano
museum. You have to go round it in a bus. Rather them than me, a VERY
challenging drive and one I would rather not be attempting in a Fiat the
size of the Titanic. Stunning scenery, looking like a place where a lot of rock has
got very hot and crashed down from a great height - which it had. Watched
them cooking meat over a five foot deep hole in the ground - the heat is
enough to blister your skin just a foot below the surface - and some mush
poured a bucket of water down a hole in the ground which went off like a
blunderbuss nearly taking poor Pedro's head with it. (I called him 'some
mush'. Maybe he was 'some geyser'...) A very impressive display without
the benefit of a piece of blue paper to light before retiring. Across the
way someone was chucking hay into a similar hole in the ground which was
self-igniting. You have to ask yourself how they dug these holes. Maybe
Pat and Mick did it with their shovels. So far Jess and Will, the children
of our friend Jackie, had played computer games and been totally bored
throughout. What would it take to raise any interest? I wonder if they
would be excited by being on the next shuttle launch...
We went on a bit of a trek the next day, firstly to Cesar Manrique's house
which is a load of rooms built in holes in the ground (more blooming holes,
these ones somewhat cooler luckily!) He was an artist contemporary with
Pablo Picasso and, as far as I can see, nearly as potty. Smashing house but
rather tellingly he moved out and changed its use to a convention centre and
gallery for potty artists so maybe it was a bit of a 'mare to live in.
Then we went to Jameos del Agua which is a natural cave in the lava which
contains a very rare type of blind cave crab. Manrique had been there first
and turned the place into a strange auditorium and café etc. Good, very
restful - unless you are Jess and Will who found it a bit...boring.
Went into Playa Blanca by car that evening, a very hot version of Burnham on
Sea but without as many parking spaces, which in an ocean tanker named Fiat
was a bit of a challenge.
I took the car back next day (Thursday) at the crack of dawn and ran back, the only running I did all holiday despite my very best intentions. Slobbed for a while and then came over all energetic and went looking for some scuba action...
CLICK here for diving posting
Well that gets us to Friday...and to be honest the time was rattling by and
a routine had built up of get up, scoff up, lie down, get up for more scoff,
lie down, swim, lie down, scoff up, lie down, swim, scoff up, sleep.
The scoffing was amazing. Jackie had wanted to go for 'all-inclusive'
catering, something I greeted somewhat coolly as I had visions of a vast
greedy orgy of Dutch and German gluttons being paid for by... us. I have to
admit that we gave as good as we got, or rather we scoffed in most impressive
style and put on a stone each. I just hope the Germans were impressed as we
picked up four puddings each at every meal. For once Jess and Will were
paying it their full attention. Beer was 'free' as was wine etc though they
were of average quality to be kind. The range and quality of food was very
good and even Lynne, so hard to cater for normally, was generally very
pleased with her food and smiled several times until she realised we were
watching her!
The heat was the other notable thing. It got hotter and hotter with a
breeze blowing from the general direction of the Moroccan Sahara, maybe
cooling a tad over the Atlantic before passing over the Rubicon Desert on
Lanzarote, a huge field of almost jet black rock. Even then you'll be
amazed to hear the temperature reached 48 degrees one day. Ouch. None of
us really felt good in that heat. You could only get away from it in the
pool and to add to the discomfort we realised that the A/C was playing up
and we were not cooling down a lot at night. Eventually even the mosquitoes
gave up trying to fly, but not before giving one or two of us a nasty nip,
especially Jackie, who is pretty tasty.
it would be. Flew (by aeroplane) from Bristol on the Sunday, getting to
Arrecife in daylight so able to enjoy the strange scenery from the bus on
Day One. The hotel was immense but tolerably so. We were in an outlying
block with a sea view and not much noise. It had beds, A/C, patio and a bit
of garden, telly, not much else. The complex had seven swimming pools, a
gym, therapy-spa, several restaurants, a 'piano bar' (someone sneaked a
saxophone in but he escaped with only minor injuries and a caution from the
Guardia Civil), entertainments hall, (Butlins style but okay)
Lots of naked breasts, which oddly, I somewhat resent. (God, am I getting old,
but I don't like having to avert my gaze because some bloody exhibitionist
wants to flaunt her leathery skin. Some truly beautiful girls too; I often thought of Robert.) Generally relaxed on the first day though we had an
abortive attempt to do the '20 minute' walk to Playa Blanca (It actually
took about that long to run it - I know; I did it) I had already had a walk
along in the opposite direction to the local lighthouse but there were no
ship-wrecks and no people drowning, in fact nothing to laugh at, at all.
Second morning Lynne and I walked into Playa Blanca to pick up our hire car, a
Fiat Ulysses. This is an immense car, not quite a mini-bus. It had
electric side doors (great fun!) and bald tyres. Lynne did her strut and
got it changed, the hire car bloke not being a match for my minder. The
replacement had pretty naff tyres too but was deemed safe, rain not being
forecast before 2027.
First outing was from Playa Blanca to El Golfo where a blooming great volcano has
gone BANG! and made a hole in the ground which the ocean has obligingly
filled with briny stuff. Lynne bought a bit of volcano which has been
brought home in the hope that it will have dust-repellent properties.
On from El Golfo we stopped at the National Park which is a sort of volcano
museum. You have to go round it in a bus. Rather them than me, a VERY
challenging drive and one I would rather not be attempting in a Fiat the
size of the Titanic. Stunning scenery, looking like a place where a lot of rock has
got very hot and crashed down from a great height - which it had. Watched
them cooking meat over a five foot deep hole in the ground - the heat is
enough to blister your skin just a foot below the surface - and some mush
poured a bucket of water down a hole in the ground which went off like a
blunderbuss nearly taking poor Pedro's head with it. (I called him 'some
mush'. Maybe he was 'some geyser'...) A very impressive display without
the benefit of a piece of blue paper to light before retiring. Across the
way someone was chucking hay into a similar hole in the ground which was
self-igniting. You have to ask yourself how they dug these holes. Maybe
Pat and Mick did it with their shovels. So far Jess and Will, the children
of our friend Jackie, had played computer games and been totally bored
throughout. What would it take to raise any interest? I wonder if they
would be excited by being on the next shuttle launch...
We went on a bit of a trek the next day, firstly to Cesar Manrique's house
which is a load of rooms built in holes in the ground (more blooming holes,
these ones somewhat cooler luckily!) He was an artist contemporary with
Pablo Picasso and, as far as I can see, nearly as potty. Smashing house but
rather tellingly he moved out and changed its use to a convention centre and
gallery for potty artists so maybe it was a bit of a 'mare to live in.
Then we went to Jameos del Agua which is a natural cave in the lava which
contains a very rare type of blind cave crab. Manrique had been there first
and turned the place into a strange auditorium and café etc. Good, very
restful - unless you are Jess and Will who found it a bit...boring.
Went into Playa Blanca by car that evening, a very hot version of Burnham on
Sea but without as many parking spaces, which in an ocean tanker named Fiat
was a bit of a challenge.
I took the car back next day (Thursday) at the crack of dawn and ran back, the only running I did all holiday despite my very best intentions. Slobbed for a while and then came over all energetic and went looking for some scuba action...
CLICK here for diving posting
Well that gets us to Friday...and to be honest the time was rattling by and
a routine had built up of get up, scoff up, lie down, get up for more scoff,
lie down, swim, lie down, scoff up, lie down, swim, scoff up, sleep.
The scoffing was amazing. Jackie had wanted to go for 'all-inclusive'
catering, something I greeted somewhat coolly as I had visions of a vast
greedy orgy of Dutch and German gluttons being paid for by... us. I have to
admit that we gave as good as we got, or rather we scoffed in most impressive
style and put on a stone each. I just hope the Germans were impressed as we
picked up four puddings each at every meal. For once Jess and Will were
paying it their full attention. Beer was 'free' as was wine etc though they
were of average quality to be kind. The range and quality of food was very
good and even Lynne, so hard to cater for normally, was generally very
pleased with her food and smiled several times until she realised we were
watching her!
The heat was the other notable thing. It got hotter and hotter with a
breeze blowing from the general direction of the Moroccan Sahara, maybe
cooling a tad over the Atlantic before passing over the Rubicon Desert on
Lanzarote, a huge field of almost jet black rock. Even then you'll be
amazed to hear the temperature reached 48 degrees one day. Ouch. None of
us really felt good in that heat. You could only get away from it in the
pool and to add to the discomfort we realised that the A/C was playing up
and we were not cooling down a lot at night. Eventually even the mosquitoes
gave up trying to fly, but not before giving one or two of us a nasty nip,
especially Jackie, who is pretty tasty.
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Going down in the world
This year's holiday stands out from many of the others as I didn't have my bike with me. You could hire them in Lanzarote but the roads were unappealing and the heat fearsome so I never got round to it. But very soon we realised that there were several scuba diving schools in the area around Playa Blanca where we were staying (Playa Blanca - White beach. Someone should be prosecuted under the Trades Descriptions Act) The hotel rep suggested a good scuba school and so we wandered along trying to look like cool water-sports dudes amongst all the tanned and muscular divers. I think my favourite tanned and muscular divers were the girls. Does diving do something to women? Why are they all gorgeous?
The school was essentially a shed with a small pool in front of it, this being just like a normal swimming pool but with no shallow end (It's a diving school after all!) In it we experienced the strange but exhilarating feeling of using the breathing apparatus. I tend to breath through my mouth anyway so it was just like walking around in the living room with the exception that there was a foot of water above my head. It's odd how quickly you accept that strange fact.
Lisa and I both tried the pool experience. She is a fearless and strong swimmer and I am, well, too timid to admit terror, so we booked a 'Try-Dive' on the Friday afternoon. Lynne, infected by our enthusiasm said she would come along and try the scuba gear or at least a snorkel. As time went past she demonstrated such a considerable talent for back-pedalling; she should ride fixed-wheel bicycles. Anyway Friday dawned as ferociously hot as every other day that week and we nervously checked in for our dive. Some form filling followed, followed by a short but useful explanation of theory and hand signals. Then there was a sizing up of feet and leg-length etc. in order to get the right size of wetsuit and fins. It was my first experience of rubber clothing - what a laugh! The legs are the main problem. It was one of the few times when I might have been grateful to have skinnier legs. Got the bottoms pulled up eventually and then it was time to struggle into the top half too. The thing to do is to plunge into the pool to fill the suit up with water as it keeps a constant temperature. It's hard to over-state the value of this as it limits the cold shock of getting into the sea and even more importantly in Lanzarote in August, it keeps the heat at bay. The temperature was 46 degrees that day! When I got back out of the pool Lisa was still struggling with her legs and the wet-suit. Three pairs of hands makes light work though and eventually we shoe-horned her into it.
Of course it takes more than a stylish rubber suit to make a diver and next I was fitted with a belt with lead weights on it. "Don't go near the pool!" I was told - not bad advice as the belt must have weighed about 20 pounds. It certainly pressed down on the hips.
The breathing gear goes on next. Obviously there is a tank of air, but also a waistcoat which can be inflated to give you buoyancy. I haven't seen James Bond in one of these (I kept thinking of dear old James; I shall never see him in scuba gear again without laughing) but it was a fantastic bit of kit.
The final touch to the ensemble is a mask, a tight fit on the face to keep the water out.
"Spit on it; think of it as a Chelsea Mask!" said the instructor, adding "unless you happen to be a Chelsea supporter. Keep it to yourself if you are..."
Saliva prevents the mask from misting up; there's not much point in going to the bottom of the sea and not being able to see through the window!
Then at last it was time to 'take the plunge' and our group of about 8 novices and 2 (or 3?) instructors, partly English and partly German, strode off purposefully to the nearby beach. (Could we not have been lifted there by crane? I must have weighed 18 stone). Walking across the stones of the beach was agony, weighing as much as a beached whale and having no shoes on. It was like heaven when the instructor called on us to sit down in the water and lie back and let the inflatable jacket do all the work. You can't walk with the fins on; they are about 18 inches long so you have to put them on once you are floating. Maybe it's just me but I found that quite a challenge. What with the buoyancy, the exaggerated weight and my general lack of flexibility (especially in all that crazy gear) I found myself rolling madly all over the Atlantic Ocean. The instructors were good though and noticed a geriatric and struggling baby diver when they saw one so I was unable to drown quite yet.
We were told to move forwards, as if crawling, into the water. This was done gradually until all the party are in the water, with head submerged, and hopefully all breathing the tank air. On our initial dive the instructors kept control of our buoyancy. I was unaware of it as the air was released from the jacket to make us float with neutral buoyancy in the sea. There is a mad rolling time as the jacket and air tank interfere with your stability then suddenly all is serene and you are apparently weightless.
As we moved into the water, and it shelves down steeply there, the instructor moved a few feet away from us and then beckoned us forward. So we moved forwards into the sea in a series of stop-start movements as the instructor moved back and then beckoned us on.
The instructors were understandably anxious that we should not swim all over the place but remain instead in a tightly packed group where they could see us and count us at all times. This lead to a bit of bumping and the odd elbow or hand knocking you as eleven or twelve scuba divers occupied the space which might be quite intimately cosy with just two or three rubber clad nutters.
The stop-start advance continued for a few minutes and we started to gain a little depth. Very soon the pressure became apparent. The water in your body is virtually incompressible and your body doesn't change shape much as you dive - not so the air in your body, as the air in your lungs slowly becomes more compressed and the air in your sinuses gets squeezed down small. It is the sinus cavities compressing that cause some ear pain. I have rather waxed up ears and I found it hard to 'equalise' the pressure difference across my ears. This led to a few minutes of quite unpleasant ear pain but it soon faded.
Once I got lower in the water and started to feel more relaxed I felt confident to look around me and see my new universe, about a hundred feet across with no obvious North, South, East or West. (No wonder they don't want you swimming off - which way is home?) Under Lanzarote's sunshine there is much light and plenty to see. I checked to see where Lisa was and she was giving me the 'OK' signal and obviously having a good time. Shoals of fish came to check us out, fascinating colours and patterns. Above us was the inflatable boat belonging to the dive school. How odd to see an anchor in use from the business end! Plenty of noise down there too, mostly the sound of me breathing but also the general hubbub of the ocean smashing itself tirelessly against the shore and various other things banging about including the gentle tinkle of the boat's anchor cable. One of the instructors had clearly got the family relationships sorted out in advance as he was taking photos and getting shots of mother/daughter and father/son groups etc and photoed Lisa and I together.
Our group was still tightly packed but we moved around the sea-bed a short way, wheeling in formation like rubber soldiers in a very odd military parade. In time we made it back to the same place as we had embarked from and in no time we were floating on the surface again, not before taking part in the rolling motion of the sea which was a mildly alarming experience as the environment seemed to go backwards and forwards past us in time to the waves. Standing up we were reminded of how heavy and ungainly we were on land. I felt like I weighed a ton! Naomi, one of the instructors, help me stand and haul myself back up the shingle and stone slope of the beach. Normally I would be embarrassed to be helped to walk by a girl but I was prepared to make an exception for blond, tanned Kiwi Naomi, partly because she was a great advert for the benefits of the outdoor life and partly because my tired old legs could only just hold me up!
Then it was back to the 'school' to divest ourselves of all this weight, having help to remove the breathing gear and jacket and Oh-so-carefully taking off that lead belt. (It was foremost in my mind that the heavy belt was vertically above the delicate and unprotected toes!) The wet-suit seemed to peel off somewhat more easily than it went on and off we went to see the photos of ourselves. Everyone seemed to have a good time and when it was suggested that we did another dive the next day Lisa and I agreed immediately.
The next day the preliminaries were sorted out more quickly and then Lisa and I were shown the workings of the jackets so that we could control our own buoyancy and set the height we floated at in the water on our own. This is done with three possible release valves which discharge air from the jacket. Air rises in water so generally you use whichever valve is at the top. If you try to use a valve which is at the bottom the air just stays inside the jacket! We quickly got dressed in our scuba gear this time and Lisa was issued with a different suit, one which she managed to put on in no time.
Somehow we contrived to enter the water from a sandy part of the beach, (why couldn't we do that the day before?) and even the fin-fitting acrobatics were less embarrassing. As old hands we entered the water somewhat more quickly which for me was not a good thing and the compression and the struggle with equalising my ear pressure etc never went well. I was in some pain for quite a while. This does diminish however and I was just getting comfortable in the water again when I realised everyone else had gone back to the surface. Not sure if I had missed some signal to go back up I followed like a lemming, only to discover that Lisa had risen to the top somewhat involuntarily and the instructor had gone with her to see that she was okay. Of course this meant that we all had to dive back down again from the surface and I had to endure the ear pain all over again. I was equalising my ear pressure as much as I could but it was still very painful for about two or three minutes. Then it fades away slowly and is soon forgotten in the fascinating submarine world. I started to experiment with the buoyancy control which is when I realised why Lisa had gone to the surface so unexpectedly. As you start to rise the air in the jacket expands, thus causing even more buoyancy and making you rise still more in a chain reaction. Anyway my experiments led to me hitting the surface suddenly and sheepishly explaining that nothing was actually wrong; I just didn't weigh enough... The instructor later explained that even quite experienced divers often surface quite involuntarily which made me feel quite a lot better.
Well, off we went again back down into the 'depths', more ear pain and more exhilaration as a reward for my suffering. This was still, after all, my first hour under water so I didn't expect it to come too easily. We started to swim out across a large expanse of light coloured sand, moving quite slowly - in fact the instructor seemed to hang in the water like a true amphibian. I've seen newts do the very same thing. It was interesting to watch the experienced divers too; they seemed to breath so slowly whereas Lisa and I were a steady stream of bubbles. They were using their air intake to vary their depth very accurately. We beginners seemed more preoccupied with just making sure each breath was followed by another one!
After a distance of maybe a hundred yards we came to a length of old anchor rope, maybe lost from a fishing boat. Our instructor slowly pulled on it; I couldn't make out why at first but he was examining it. He had hoped to find a seahorse clinging to it but when he came to the end of his rope he produced an underwater notebook and showed us the words "SEA HORSE GONE" As a consolation he handed us a crab which ran up and down our arms and amused me by running in 'mid air' as it fell back to the sea bed. As soon as it reached the sea bed it buried itself in the sand, very aware that there are things out there that eat crabs, and not knowing if I was one of them. Twice during the dive he caught octopuses, the first one conforming to Hollywood stereo-types of scary undersea monsters by glueing itself to the front of his mask and squirting brown ink all over us all. Having failed to find any seahorses we swam back to shallower water and looked at the fish in a great grassy reed bed, many small yellow fish, some amazingly bright. On a nearby rock reef, an outcrop of volcanic lava, were more brightly coloured fish, some of electric blue, some multi coloured Wrasse and a few seriously ugly things skulking where the nasty divers couldn't see them. Bigger disc shaped fish, many with a large black spot half way along their lateral line came to view us and inspect the sand we stirred up.
All too soon it was time to leave the water though and experience the effects of gravity on very heavy people again. I asked where we had been and had it pointed out on the sea's surface before us. Our depth had been about 6.5 metres, not a great depth but that's not the point. Just going where people don't normally go is the point.
Both Lisa and I are left wondering whether to go for diving qualifications, if only to find out what on earth PADI stands for.
Pool experience free, try-dive 58euros, further dive 44euros
The school was essentially a shed with a small pool in front of it, this being just like a normal swimming pool but with no shallow end (It's a diving school after all!) In it we experienced the strange but exhilarating feeling of using the breathing apparatus. I tend to breath through my mouth anyway so it was just like walking around in the living room with the exception that there was a foot of water above my head. It's odd how quickly you accept that strange fact.
Lisa and I both tried the pool experience. She is a fearless and strong swimmer and I am, well, too timid to admit terror, so we booked a 'Try-Dive' on the Friday afternoon. Lynne, infected by our enthusiasm said she would come along and try the scuba gear or at least a snorkel. As time went past she demonstrated such a considerable talent for back-pedalling; she should ride fixed-wheel bicycles. Anyway Friday dawned as ferociously hot as every other day that week and we nervously checked in for our dive. Some form filling followed, followed by a short but useful explanation of theory and hand signals. Then there was a sizing up of feet and leg-length etc. in order to get the right size of wetsuit and fins. It was my first experience of rubber clothing - what a laugh! The legs are the main problem. It was one of the few times when I might have been grateful to have skinnier legs. Got the bottoms pulled up eventually and then it was time to struggle into the top half too. The thing to do is to plunge into the pool to fill the suit up with water as it keeps a constant temperature. It's hard to over-state the value of this as it limits the cold shock of getting into the sea and even more importantly in Lanzarote in August, it keeps the heat at bay. The temperature was 46 degrees that day! When I got back out of the pool Lisa was still struggling with her legs and the wet-suit. Three pairs of hands makes light work though and eventually we shoe-horned her into it.
Of course it takes more than a stylish rubber suit to make a diver and next I was fitted with a belt with lead weights on it. "Don't go near the pool!" I was told - not bad advice as the belt must have weighed about 20 pounds. It certainly pressed down on the hips.
The breathing gear goes on next. Obviously there is a tank of air, but also a waistcoat which can be inflated to give you buoyancy. I haven't seen James Bond in one of these (I kept thinking of dear old James; I shall never see him in scuba gear again without laughing) but it was a fantastic bit of kit.
The final touch to the ensemble is a mask, a tight fit on the face to keep the water out.
"Spit on it; think of it as a Chelsea Mask!" said the instructor, adding "unless you happen to be a Chelsea supporter. Keep it to yourself if you are..."
Saliva prevents the mask from misting up; there's not much point in going to the bottom of the sea and not being able to see through the window!
Then at last it was time to 'take the plunge' and our group of about 8 novices and 2 (or 3?) instructors, partly English and partly German, strode off purposefully to the nearby beach. (Could we not have been lifted there by crane? I must have weighed 18 stone). Walking across the stones of the beach was agony, weighing as much as a beached whale and having no shoes on. It was like heaven when the instructor called on us to sit down in the water and lie back and let the inflatable jacket do all the work. You can't walk with the fins on; they are about 18 inches long so you have to put them on once you are floating. Maybe it's just me but I found that quite a challenge. What with the buoyancy, the exaggerated weight and my general lack of flexibility (especially in all that crazy gear) I found myself rolling madly all over the Atlantic Ocean. The instructors were good though and noticed a geriatric and struggling baby diver when they saw one so I was unable to drown quite yet.
We were told to move forwards, as if crawling, into the water. This was done gradually until all the party are in the water, with head submerged, and hopefully all breathing the tank air. On our initial dive the instructors kept control of our buoyancy. I was unaware of it as the air was released from the jacket to make us float with neutral buoyancy in the sea. There is a mad rolling time as the jacket and air tank interfere with your stability then suddenly all is serene and you are apparently weightless.
As we moved into the water, and it shelves down steeply there, the instructor moved a few feet away from us and then beckoned us forward. So we moved forwards into the sea in a series of stop-start movements as the instructor moved back and then beckoned us on.
The instructors were understandably anxious that we should not swim all over the place but remain instead in a tightly packed group where they could see us and count us at all times. This lead to a bit of bumping and the odd elbow or hand knocking you as eleven or twelve scuba divers occupied the space which might be quite intimately cosy with just two or three rubber clad nutters.
The stop-start advance continued for a few minutes and we started to gain a little depth. Very soon the pressure became apparent. The water in your body is virtually incompressible and your body doesn't change shape much as you dive - not so the air in your body, as the air in your lungs slowly becomes more compressed and the air in your sinuses gets squeezed down small. It is the sinus cavities compressing that cause some ear pain. I have rather waxed up ears and I found it hard to 'equalise' the pressure difference across my ears. This led to a few minutes of quite unpleasant ear pain but it soon faded.
Once I got lower in the water and started to feel more relaxed I felt confident to look around me and see my new universe, about a hundred feet across with no obvious North, South, East or West. (No wonder they don't want you swimming off - which way is home?) Under Lanzarote's sunshine there is much light and plenty to see. I checked to see where Lisa was and she was giving me the 'OK' signal and obviously having a good time. Shoals of fish came to check us out, fascinating colours and patterns. Above us was the inflatable boat belonging to the dive school. How odd to see an anchor in use from the business end! Plenty of noise down there too, mostly the sound of me breathing but also the general hubbub of the ocean smashing itself tirelessly against the shore and various other things banging about including the gentle tinkle of the boat's anchor cable. One of the instructors had clearly got the family relationships sorted out in advance as he was taking photos and getting shots of mother/daughter and father/son groups etc and photoed Lisa and I together.
Our group was still tightly packed but we moved around the sea-bed a short way, wheeling in formation like rubber soldiers in a very odd military parade. In time we made it back to the same place as we had embarked from and in no time we were floating on the surface again, not before taking part in the rolling motion of the sea which was a mildly alarming experience as the environment seemed to go backwards and forwards past us in time to the waves. Standing up we were reminded of how heavy and ungainly we were on land. I felt like I weighed a ton! Naomi, one of the instructors, help me stand and haul myself back up the shingle and stone slope of the beach. Normally I would be embarrassed to be helped to walk by a girl but I was prepared to make an exception for blond, tanned Kiwi Naomi, partly because she was a great advert for the benefits of the outdoor life and partly because my tired old legs could only just hold me up!
Then it was back to the 'school' to divest ourselves of all this weight, having help to remove the breathing gear and jacket and Oh-so-carefully taking off that lead belt. (It was foremost in my mind that the heavy belt was vertically above the delicate and unprotected toes!) The wet-suit seemed to peel off somewhat more easily than it went on and off we went to see the photos of ourselves. Everyone seemed to have a good time and when it was suggested that we did another dive the next day Lisa and I agreed immediately.
The next day the preliminaries were sorted out more quickly and then Lisa and I were shown the workings of the jackets so that we could control our own buoyancy and set the height we floated at in the water on our own. This is done with three possible release valves which discharge air from the jacket. Air rises in water so generally you use whichever valve is at the top. If you try to use a valve which is at the bottom the air just stays inside the jacket! We quickly got dressed in our scuba gear this time and Lisa was issued with a different suit, one which she managed to put on in no time.
Somehow we contrived to enter the water from a sandy part of the beach, (why couldn't we do that the day before?) and even the fin-fitting acrobatics were less embarrassing. As old hands we entered the water somewhat more quickly which for me was not a good thing and the compression and the struggle with equalising my ear pressure etc never went well. I was in some pain for quite a while. This does diminish however and I was just getting comfortable in the water again when I realised everyone else had gone back to the surface. Not sure if I had missed some signal to go back up I followed like a lemming, only to discover that Lisa had risen to the top somewhat involuntarily and the instructor had gone with her to see that she was okay. Of course this meant that we all had to dive back down again from the surface and I had to endure the ear pain all over again. I was equalising my ear pressure as much as I could but it was still very painful for about two or three minutes. Then it fades away slowly and is soon forgotten in the fascinating submarine world. I started to experiment with the buoyancy control which is when I realised why Lisa had gone to the surface so unexpectedly. As you start to rise the air in the jacket expands, thus causing even more buoyancy and making you rise still more in a chain reaction. Anyway my experiments led to me hitting the surface suddenly and sheepishly explaining that nothing was actually wrong; I just didn't weigh enough... The instructor later explained that even quite experienced divers often surface quite involuntarily which made me feel quite a lot better.
Well, off we went again back down into the 'depths', more ear pain and more exhilaration as a reward for my suffering. This was still, after all, my first hour under water so I didn't expect it to come too easily. We started to swim out across a large expanse of light coloured sand, moving quite slowly - in fact the instructor seemed to hang in the water like a true amphibian. I've seen newts do the very same thing. It was interesting to watch the experienced divers too; they seemed to breath so slowly whereas Lisa and I were a steady stream of bubbles. They were using their air intake to vary their depth very accurately. We beginners seemed more preoccupied with just making sure each breath was followed by another one!
After a distance of maybe a hundred yards we came to a length of old anchor rope, maybe lost from a fishing boat. Our instructor slowly pulled on it; I couldn't make out why at first but he was examining it. He had hoped to find a seahorse clinging to it but when he came to the end of his rope he produced an underwater notebook and showed us the words "SEA HORSE GONE" As a consolation he handed us a crab which ran up and down our arms and amused me by running in 'mid air' as it fell back to the sea bed. As soon as it reached the sea bed it buried itself in the sand, very aware that there are things out there that eat crabs, and not knowing if I was one of them. Twice during the dive he caught octopuses, the first one conforming to Hollywood stereo-types of scary undersea monsters by glueing itself to the front of his mask and squirting brown ink all over us all. Having failed to find any seahorses we swam back to shallower water and looked at the fish in a great grassy reed bed, many small yellow fish, some amazingly bright. On a nearby rock reef, an outcrop of volcanic lava, were more brightly coloured fish, some of electric blue, some multi coloured Wrasse and a few seriously ugly things skulking where the nasty divers couldn't see them. Bigger disc shaped fish, many with a large black spot half way along their lateral line came to view us and inspect the sand we stirred up.
All too soon it was time to leave the water though and experience the effects of gravity on very heavy people again. I asked where we had been and had it pointed out on the sea's surface before us. Our depth had been about 6.5 metres, not a great depth but that's not the point. Just going where people don't normally go is the point.
Both Lisa and I are left wondering whether to go for diving qualifications, if only to find out what on earth PADI stands for.
Pool experience free, try-dive 58euros, further dive 44euros
Wednesday, 8 October 2008
Joggers in the Fossil Record
Wikipedia: Joggers in the Fossil Record.
You know those dinosaur footprints that you see in rock that was once the sea shore or a river bank? Well there were a certain two fossils out for a lunchtime run around the uni campus and to get back to the buildings they had to run through the car-park of the golf club, a public footpath. The car-park encroaches on the path a bit at this point and one gentleman golfer with a flash Porsche was getting into his car, with the aid of a shoe horn to prize his grossly fat backside into the unfeasible bucket that passes for a seat. Naturally he had his door wide open and it took up most of the path. As the elderly joggers got to this point they had to step aside from the path and one elderly fossilised jogger, a guy with receding frizzy grey/brown hair, had to step on the doorstep of the groundsman's shed to get by. This was an interesting and novel experience as yesterday the groundsman had no step to his shed. It turned out to be a mass of wet concrete and the grey haired jogger sank in to the top of his expensive trainers, leaving a fossil record of the day two prehistoric runners passed through. The prehistoric runners felt obliged to scarper quickly despite the taller one (he with the grey/brown hair) wanting to claim for cement damage to a pair of Nike Air Pegasus Trail shoes. The shorter jogger, with almost no hair and laughing like a drain, said that it had added new miles to the shoes which, in scientific parlance, were said to be sh*gged months ago anyway.
One day those footprints will be in a human museum - proof of the existence of the fabled Laughing Jogger or Joggus Fossilus. Until then it would be best to stay out of reach of the groundsman who is probably hoping to give the Nike Air Pegasus Trail shoes a decent burial in a sixth hole bunker, ideally with the tall grey/brown haired jogger still wearing them.
You know those dinosaur footprints that you see in rock that was once the sea shore or a river bank? Well there were a certain two fossils out for a lunchtime run around the uni campus and to get back to the buildings they had to run through the car-park of the golf club, a public footpath. The car-park encroaches on the path a bit at this point and one gentleman golfer with a flash Porsche was getting into his car, with the aid of a shoe horn to prize his grossly fat backside into the unfeasible bucket that passes for a seat. Naturally he had his door wide open and it took up most of the path. As the elderly joggers got to this point they had to step aside from the path and one elderly fossilised jogger, a guy with receding frizzy grey/brown hair, had to step on the doorstep of the groundsman's shed to get by. This was an interesting and novel experience as yesterday the groundsman had no step to his shed. It turned out to be a mass of wet concrete and the grey haired jogger sank in to the top of his expensive trainers, leaving a fossil record of the day two prehistoric runners passed through. The prehistoric runners felt obliged to scarper quickly despite the taller one (he with the grey/brown hair) wanting to claim for cement damage to a pair of Nike Air Pegasus Trail shoes. The shorter jogger, with almost no hair and laughing like a drain, said that it had added new miles to the shoes which, in scientific parlance, were said to be sh*gged months ago anyway.
One day those footprints will be in a human museum - proof of the existence of the fabled Laughing Jogger or Joggus Fossilus. Until then it would be best to stay out of reach of the groundsman who is probably hoping to give the Nike Air Pegasus Trail shoes a decent burial in a sixth hole bunker, ideally with the tall grey/brown haired jogger still wearing them.
Wednesday, 12 March 2008
A race called Grizzly
I took part in the 2008 Grizzly. It's a race across a variety of terrains (all of them horrid) which is now about 19 miles in length, though the race varies from year to year for operational reasons. There were about 1400 starters. The race is always fully subscribed so you have to enter quite early to stand a chance of getting in. The question that burns a hole in your head is why would 1400 people develop such insanity simultaneously?
The start is on the sea-front at Seaton, Devon, a quiet and pleasant place to be on a sunny morning in March. I travelled down to Seaton with Allan Cox, a member of Corsham Running Club and also one of my work colleagues. Seaton was still quiet when we arrived though the streets were quickly filling up with people in strange attire and talking loudly about PBs and racing flats etc.
Then the real noise started and the sleepy residents of the town were shaken from their slumbers by the Tannoy.
Soon the front was rather full and people were gathering at the start line (still being hastily marked on the road with a chunk of rock-chalk) I managed to bump into a few of the other Chippenham runners who had entered, Bumble, Nelo, Dave Jones, Sue and Tom and there was time for a crafty 'pee' in the sea (working on the theory that there is no-one out there whose decency I might outrage - it works at Weston Super Mare too) Looking around me on the start line, there were all the usual suspects but worryingly most were carrying drink bottles, wearing 'bum-bags' and sporting gel sachets pinned to their racing vests. In contrast I was not carrying anything edible. This did little to calm my nerves, though the nerves were soon forgotten as someone sounded the 'off' and we were all tripping over each other to get going. The race immediately turned left onto the beach, a shingly affair with a steep slope and big waves crashing against it. We turned through 180 degrees and headed east for about a quarter mile, some of the runners so far down that they were almost in the sea (some were even less lucky) while some runners were high on the shingle trying to run on the very biggest of the stones. Which is best? - I never found out but soon we were leaving the beach and pounding amongst small craft over-wintering high above the water on the 'hard'. Then we came back through the start area and set off for Beer, which means a wicked steep climb over into the next bay.
I had never been to Beer before which is odd, given that it has a youth hostel and sports a name I might normally be attracted to. It was a steep and slightly worrying place. Off-road shoes are quite poor when worn on tarmac and the road was slippery.
Beer is a small place and we were soon through it and on our way up through a static caravan site, a steep place with a huge view. (The whole area has a similarly comprehensive view of the caravan site which is a bit of a shame but it brings in holiday makers in a place with no industry)
Above the caravan site is a flatter area, agricultural in nature, which was hugely enhanced by a Scotsman (to judge by his attire) playing the bagpipes to everyone in the neighbouring fifty square miles. Excellent! I forgot to suffer briefly though we were all breathing quite heavily after the first few minutes of the Grizzly.
The fields continued and we were treated to superb views of the Devon coastline stretching way ahead of us. Then we started to descend quite sharply and we arrived at a beach; it is Branscombe where the course had been crafted to send 1400 willing idiots through almost waist deep water. Luckily my waist is higher than most...
At Branscombe a man was standing on the roof playing a saxaphone. We ran past,trying not to look surprised.
The next hour or so was spent up hill and down dale through woods and fields with all-too-frequent visits to boggy morasses. In one bog I pulled myself out using the over-hanging branch of a small tree which cracked and collapsed under my weight, making me no friends at all amongst my fellow strugglers.
We ran into a farm-yard where there was a drum band playing a thunderous but unrecognisable tune. Shortly after this the sky darkened and it grew colder. Hail started to beat down like machine gun fire. I could hear squeals and groans from all around. It really was painful and it went on for quite a while. Of course it did end eventually as we dropped down into a wooded valley, having passed the farm with the drummers again.
The miles passed by, many with mileage markers -useful, if only to tell how much more hell to expect. A sharp descent led to a dash through the patio area of a pub and for a few short seconds applause filled our ears and it was necessary to dodge someone carrying a loaded tray of drinks. Beyond the pub was tarmac but that was one of the hardest parts of the course, a serious climb which saw all around me walking.
A woodland climb had me puzzled. I could smell incense, not a normal woodland smell. As we mounted a sticky wooded track there was a Buddhist temple complete with prayer flags, incense burners and Buddha himself. The 'monks' handed me a couple of jelly babies as I grafted my way past and up round to the left and more woodland climbing.
In a while the runners emerged onto Branscombe beach where we ran past the wreck of the Napoli, a ship which had achieved some fame the previous year when it was wrecked there. Certain of the locals discovered that the ship contained a fortune in imported products, even some brand new BMW motorbikes. By the time we arrived all the goodies had been 'saved' from the ship and it was in the process of being broken up to remove it from the beach. The beach turned out to be memorable in other ways, most notably that once again it was necessary to run across the slope of nasty shifting shingle, hard at the best of times but evil as we tired in these later stages of the race. This shingle section seemed to go on for some while, certainly not less than a mile, before the marshal pointed the way off the stones...and up the cliff!
During the climb of the cliff I was caught up by Jason, a newly joined member of the Harriers. Jason lives for these odd off road epics and runs a diet of Long Distance Walking Assoc events, some of which are as much as 100 miles long. Given that he had taken about 14 miles to catch me, he seemed strong and on the cliff, while I increasingly looked like 'the deceased', he strode up purposefully and was quickly lost to sight. The ascent of the cliff was windy and steep, single file all the way, so we all went at the same speed up that bit. (Sorry to all behind me; you went at my speed!)
At the top of the cliff was, not suprisingly, a cliff top and some mercifully easy running for a short while. This is shortly followed by descent through the caravan site and return via Beer to Seaton. By this time I had started to really fade, so much so that I couldn't run down the slopes and was more or less walking up and down hills with a sort of jogging-like-a-statue on the flat bits.(What flat bits?) The beach had one last nasty go at us all as we ran in to the Start/Finish line. Within seconds of crossing the line, Bumble, a pretty and phenomenally tough member of the Chippenham, was telling me that she had almost caught me - it was down to just a few seconds after almost 4 hours.
to be continued
The start is on the sea-front at Seaton, Devon, a quiet and pleasant place to be on a sunny morning in March. I travelled down to Seaton with Allan Cox, a member of Corsham Running Club and also one of my work colleagues. Seaton was still quiet when we arrived though the streets were quickly filling up with people in strange attire and talking loudly about PBs and racing flats etc.
Then the real noise started and the sleepy residents of the town were shaken from their slumbers by the Tannoy.
Soon the front was rather full and people were gathering at the start line (still being hastily marked on the road with a chunk of rock-chalk) I managed to bump into a few of the other Chippenham runners who had entered, Bumble, Nelo, Dave Jones, Sue and Tom and there was time for a crafty 'pee' in the sea (working on the theory that there is no-one out there whose decency I might outrage - it works at Weston Super Mare too) Looking around me on the start line, there were all the usual suspects but worryingly most were carrying drink bottles, wearing 'bum-bags' and sporting gel sachets pinned to their racing vests. In contrast I was not carrying anything edible. This did little to calm my nerves, though the nerves were soon forgotten as someone sounded the 'off' and we were all tripping over each other to get going. The race immediately turned left onto the beach, a shingly affair with a steep slope and big waves crashing against it. We turned through 180 degrees and headed east for about a quarter mile, some of the runners so far down that they were almost in the sea (some were even less lucky) while some runners were high on the shingle trying to run on the very biggest of the stones. Which is best? - I never found out but soon we were leaving the beach and pounding amongst small craft over-wintering high above the water on the 'hard'. Then we came back through the start area and set off for Beer, which means a wicked steep climb over into the next bay.
I had never been to Beer before which is odd, given that it has a youth hostel and sports a name I might normally be attracted to. It was a steep and slightly worrying place. Off-road shoes are quite poor when worn on tarmac and the road was slippery.
Beer is a small place and we were soon through it and on our way up through a static caravan site, a steep place with a huge view. (The whole area has a similarly comprehensive view of the caravan site which is a bit of a shame but it brings in holiday makers in a place with no industry)
Above the caravan site is a flatter area, agricultural in nature, which was hugely enhanced by a Scotsman (to judge by his attire) playing the bagpipes to everyone in the neighbouring fifty square miles. Excellent! I forgot to suffer briefly though we were all breathing quite heavily after the first few minutes of the Grizzly.
The fields continued and we were treated to superb views of the Devon coastline stretching way ahead of us. Then we started to descend quite sharply and we arrived at a beach; it is Branscombe where the course had been crafted to send 1400 willing idiots through almost waist deep water. Luckily my waist is higher than most...
At Branscombe a man was standing on the roof playing a saxaphone. We ran past,trying not to look surprised.
The next hour or so was spent up hill and down dale through woods and fields with all-too-frequent visits to boggy morasses. In one bog I pulled myself out using the over-hanging branch of a small tree which cracked and collapsed under my weight, making me no friends at all amongst my fellow strugglers.
We ran into a farm-yard where there was a drum band playing a thunderous but unrecognisable tune. Shortly after this the sky darkened and it grew colder. Hail started to beat down like machine gun fire. I could hear squeals and groans from all around. It really was painful and it went on for quite a while. Of course it did end eventually as we dropped down into a wooded valley, having passed the farm with the drummers again.
The miles passed by, many with mileage markers -useful, if only to tell how much more hell to expect. A sharp descent led to a dash through the patio area of a pub and for a few short seconds applause filled our ears and it was necessary to dodge someone carrying a loaded tray of drinks. Beyond the pub was tarmac but that was one of the hardest parts of the course, a serious climb which saw all around me walking.
A woodland climb had me puzzled. I could smell incense, not a normal woodland smell. As we mounted a sticky wooded track there was a Buddhist temple complete with prayer flags, incense burners and Buddha himself. The 'monks' handed me a couple of jelly babies as I grafted my way past and up round to the left and more woodland climbing.
In a while the runners emerged onto Branscombe beach where we ran past the wreck of the Napoli, a ship which had achieved some fame the previous year when it was wrecked there. Certain of the locals discovered that the ship contained a fortune in imported products, even some brand new BMW motorbikes. By the time we arrived all the goodies had been 'saved' from the ship and it was in the process of being broken up to remove it from the beach. The beach turned out to be memorable in other ways, most notably that once again it was necessary to run across the slope of nasty shifting shingle, hard at the best of times but evil as we tired in these later stages of the race. This shingle section seemed to go on for some while, certainly not less than a mile, before the marshal pointed the way off the stones...and up the cliff!
During the climb of the cliff I was caught up by Jason, a newly joined member of the Harriers. Jason lives for these odd off road epics and runs a diet of Long Distance Walking Assoc events, some of which are as much as 100 miles long. Given that he had taken about 14 miles to catch me, he seemed strong and on the cliff, while I increasingly looked like 'the deceased', he strode up purposefully and was quickly lost to sight. The ascent of the cliff was windy and steep, single file all the way, so we all went at the same speed up that bit. (Sorry to all behind me; you went at my speed!)
At the top of the cliff was, not suprisingly, a cliff top and some mercifully easy running for a short while. This is shortly followed by descent through the caravan site and return via Beer to Seaton. By this time I had started to really fade, so much so that I couldn't run down the slopes and was more or less walking up and down hills with a sort of jogging-like-a-statue on the flat bits.(What flat bits?) The beach had one last nasty go at us all as we ran in to the Start/Finish line. Within seconds of crossing the line, Bumble, a pretty and phenomenally tough member of the Chippenham, was telling me that she had almost caught me - it was down to just a few seconds after almost 4 hours.
to be continued
Wednesday, 5 March 2008
Good Samaritan or suspicious Brit?
Have you ever wished you weren't such a kindly sort? I sometimes do, wishing I hadn't got involved or getting duped by someone a bit less scrupulous than me.
Last night I was driving home from work and as I came up the slope from Chapel Plaister to Rudloe, I caught sight of a figure desperately waving, flagging me down to stop. Initially I thought there was debris in the road or something like that but as I slowed I sensed that the man wanted my help and I jumped to the conclusion that he was broken down and needed a lift. Easy, and my humane duty too, except that this encounter lead to a situation which plumbed my suspicions and prejudices and caused me to question myself and whether I live up to my own ideals.
I opened the car door and the man outside pointed to himself and said "Turkey, Istanbul!" So we had established his nationality in the first two words, (and liking Turks, I had already accepted him as friendly - why?) but what was his problem? Basically the story went that he needed money to refill his petrol tank to get to London. Whether London was home or whether he wanted to get to the airport I never found out but he claimed to be so desperate that he was willing to part with his very large gold ring, "18 carat Turkish gold!" he told me, in exchange for £20. I have little experience of rings but this was huge and under the car's interior light it did indeed feel and look like real gold but I am a suspicious old soul and have no great desire for Turkish gold. The other snag here is that it is a rare day when I actually have £20 in my pocket. It took me five minutes or more to persuade him that I really could not or would not help him and the last I saw was of him walking dejectedly back to his estate car, an elderly white Peugeot 405.
It could of course have been a scam, or he could have had a whole estate car's worth of big vicious mates hiding behind a bush, or he could have grabbed my wallet and run with it (it's not heavy so that would have been easy but hardly lucrative) but somehow it just seems such a mad place to launch such a scam and he really seemed very genuine and very desperate. So instead of helping a man in need I just feel that I slammed the door in his face.
His car wasn't there this morning.
Last night I was driving home from work and as I came up the slope from Chapel Plaister to Rudloe, I caught sight of a figure desperately waving, flagging me down to stop. Initially I thought there was debris in the road or something like that but as I slowed I sensed that the man wanted my help and I jumped to the conclusion that he was broken down and needed a lift. Easy, and my humane duty too, except that this encounter lead to a situation which plumbed my suspicions and prejudices and caused me to question myself and whether I live up to my own ideals.
I opened the car door and the man outside pointed to himself and said "Turkey, Istanbul!" So we had established his nationality in the first two words, (and liking Turks, I had already accepted him as friendly - why?) but what was his problem? Basically the story went that he needed money to refill his petrol tank to get to London. Whether London was home or whether he wanted to get to the airport I never found out but he claimed to be so desperate that he was willing to part with his very large gold ring, "18 carat Turkish gold!" he told me, in exchange for £20. I have little experience of rings but this was huge and under the car's interior light it did indeed feel and look like real gold but I am a suspicious old soul and have no great desire for Turkish gold. The other snag here is that it is a rare day when I actually have £20 in my pocket. It took me five minutes or more to persuade him that I really could not or would not help him and the last I saw was of him walking dejectedly back to his estate car, an elderly white Peugeot 405.
It could of course have been a scam, or he could have had a whole estate car's worth of big vicious mates hiding behind a bush, or he could have grabbed my wallet and run with it (it's not heavy so that would have been easy but hardly lucrative) but somehow it just seems such a mad place to launch such a scam and he really seemed very genuine and very desperate. So instead of helping a man in need I just feel that I slammed the door in his face.
His car wasn't there this morning.
Thursday, 17 January 2008
French Alps 2005
Composed originally after a tour in 2005, an incomplete account that I wanted to save.
I've started to feel human again after the holiday tour of the French Alps..
We flew to Geneva from E.Midlands (Easy Jet) (That's Hugh, Dick, Colin, Martin White, Fred Gascoigne & me. ) and made a bee line for the French border on the SE eastern side of the city, making sure not to buy anything at Swiss prices! It is possible to get into France straight from the airport gate but we were going to the Alps and that meant crossing Geneva. (Fun that was as well!) Finally escaped into a suburb of Geneva called Annemasse which is actually in France. A quaint place, think Croydon. This was our first and last night's stays.
Next day Dick had to go back into Geneva to get a front mechanism as his had not survived the ride on an hairyplane. (Mostly down to extreme old age - you should see Dick's bike; it's a modern day miracle) While it took four of them to go and get a front changer, Colin and I cleared off up the valley towards the mountains. We took the opportunity to buy the first of the picnic lunches which we always eat. This saves money that might more readily be used for alcohol. Then we sat in a bar and waited for the others. They never arrived as they had overtaken us while we waited at one junction and they were at another. After a while I remembered the mobile phone I no longer use much and we got in contact and arranged to meet at the top of the first big hill through a huge gorge, the Gorge des Eveaux, so we sat and ate our belated picnic outside a bar where we had supped a few bargain price French beers ( bit of irony there - it was great to get back to the British £2.40 pint!) The ride took us eventually via the Col des Aravis, to a small town called Flumet, distinguished by me having forgotten everything about the place! The reason for this was that we found nowhere to stay and so were directed to the nearby village of St Nicholas la Chapelle. Here we stayed in a chalet beside a Hotel which was stuffed full of English walkers from Kent, most of them in their sixties and raring to get up the next alp. Their walks were bus assisted to the high land then walking on to places inaccessible by road then down to a rendezvous (presumably with a couple of glasses!)
The walkers overtook us in their minibuses the next morning as we rode the first hard kilometres of the Col des Saisies up through the ski village of Notre Dame de Bellecombe. I had quite a hankering to walk with them in the quiet paths up near the snow line, looking out for chamois and eagles but there were miles to be covered and the beautiful Cormet de Roselend to cross, a pass with lakes and reservoirs and beautiful views. A few days later the Dauphin, the local paper showed Lance Armstrong riding past the same chapel at the top of the Cormet, but we had got there first.
After the descent of Roselend we found ourselves in Bourg St Maurice, a bustling place with narrow interesting streets and sprawling modern outskirts, in which we found a supremely unmemorable night's digs on the main 'drag'.
Had little to do with the town but bought a new map as I had fallen clean off of the Michelin sheet 328 and now needed sheet 333, the two maps overlapping frustratingly so that I only ever got three 3 euros worth, not the full 6!
The new map showed our way out of town, heading towards the Col de Petit St Bernard. I quite fancied seeing this little Saint Bernard with presumably a little barrel of brandy hanging from it's collar. This is undoubtedly an eccentric place to store spirits. However we turned off before this mighty climb as we were off to climb a still mightier one. Lunch was sought, and not found, in the depressing and empty Val d'Isere, a place I had seen full of clamour as it hosted various winter sports events on the TV but today a useless and ugly blot on the landscape where even the Spar shops were closed for the summer. So we climbed the Col de L'Iseran on empty stomachs. At least that kept the weight down! At 2764, (nearly 9000ft.) Col de L'Iseran is the highest tarmac pass in the French Alps and by the top we were passing snow drifts higher than our heads though the summer sun had got the snow well and truly on the run and it was pouring itself into the mountain streams as fast as possible. Until that morning we had kept Mont Blanc to our left, hardly glimpsing it despite it being one of the bigger items in the general area. Now we had our backs to it though with the twists and turns of a mountain climb it is behind you, in front of you, now to the left, now to the right. A a sign of my general lack of condition and encroaching age I found myself walking stretches of the pass, a habit which I never got out of in the whole holiday but which kept my back and knees from getting too sore. I'm not proud. The pass top came at last and as with all passes, if there is a view to be seen, which is rare, you are too cold to linger and look at it and I was away almost immediately in a quest for warmth.
I can't resist mountain pass descents and I was well into my stride down this one when I saw something in the road ahead of me. An animal. My initial reaction was "badger" but it wasn't a badger; it was a marmot. Marmots are actually members of the squirrel family, as you realise when you see them in their characteristic sitting up pose, but a squirrel that you can confuse with a badger? That is one big squirrel!
The southern side of the Col is steeper and bumpier and dropped us quickly down to a quiet valley where, after a couple of beers as a reward for all that hard pedalling, we found accommodation in a village called Bessans in a comfortable and quiet gîte.
The ride in the morning took us on downhill for many a mile but the first village provided amusement as we could see a huge clamour of people milling around in the middle of the N6. Initially I thought that we had stumbled into some violent scene like a political demonstration gone out of control. But as we entered the main street of the town we realised that the village was having it's communal photo taken with all sorts of people gathered on the church steps and such a huge throng of onlookers that they were being man-handled off of the road by desperate marshals.
100 metres each side of this odd event there was the usual alpine peace and quiet.
From there the road got busier as we neared a town called Modane, the entrance to the Frejus Tunnel. At Modane the road meets a motorway and the railway twists and turns to find it's own tunnel . The trains were busy, scurrying under the mountains into Italy but the motorway was almost empty; a fire a few days earlier had closed the road tunnel. We headed out of town expecting a quiet time of it on deserted roads but came to a place were the main road was blocked by 'Route Barré' signs which ordinarily we ignore. On this occasion the presence of a two gendarmes made us follow the diversion. In fact they were quite insistent. This turned out to be hilly and by the time we reached the end of the diversion, a significant pass in its own right, we had lost Fred. After much seeking he turned up, unaware that we had been concerned, having punctured. It was to be the only puncture of the tour. A picnic was had on the side of the deserted dual carriageway with trains behind us and, in front, a very few cars. Not the most idyllic of sites but we had got hungry in the morning's confusions.
Following this valley we rode on an empty road beside and under the deserted motorway, beside the River Arc and the very steep railway until we reached St Michel du Maurienne. Here we were able to abandon this modern concrete ribbon and start the climb of the day, the Col du Telegraphe.
The Col du Telegraphe is a steep pass and, frustratingly for the photographers amongst us, almost entirely wooded so that opportunities to take pictures were few. I always enjoy the wildlife and the flowers on these passes so it was no hardship to be pedalling along through orchids and butterflies on a hot summer's afternoon. The top came at 1566 metres. We treated ourselves to a beer (more than one actually,) and then dropped quickly down to the town of Valloire. By one of those foibles of my memory and the onset of fatigue, I can't remember a darned thing about Valloire! I must have slept well.
The next morning we climbed the Col du Galibier. It is a magnificent road, climbing to 2646 metres. Actually we didn't climb very far as Valloire had been so high anyway that we had done most of the work during the climb of the Col du Telegraphe. But the bit we did climb was so spectacular, with the road glimpsed as bridges and buttments above us, hairpins hanging out into space above more hairpins and the view below of the road stretching away below us like a narrow grey ribbon, snaking all over the hill side. The road cuts through a tunnel near the top which probably keeps the pass open for quite a few extra weeks each year. Bikes are banned from the tunnel and quite right too. Who wants to miss the roof of the world? At the top is a rather surreal gift shop selling the usual knick-knacks including road racing vests, T. de F. tee-shirts and very welcome coffee. Nearby is the monument to Henri Desgranges, 'inventor' of the Tour de France. Had 'mon courage' complimented by various Belgian lady motorists for having ridden up one hill (didn't feel very courageous; I save that for the crazy descent) Maybe it was a Belgian chat up line, a bit late to find out now.
The descent was, of course, delicious but surprisingly not very long. At the BOTTOM of the pass is a sign telling us we are at the TOP of a pass, the Col du Lautaret. This seems a joke to have descended to the summit. We started to descend again, aware of a great convoy of trucks, with trailers, all carrying caravans and motorhomes. I let them get ahead; I didn't want to mix it with tons and tons of HGVs. What I hadn't realised was that the Col du Lautaret was the best alternative for many of the trucks and cars that couldn't get get through that fire damaged tunnel.
As we sat and ate our picnic in a purpose made area and a large number of trucks hurtled as hard as they could to, or from, Lautaret, we realised we were all sitting directly opposite a glacier, the first I had ever seen. To be honest it was nothing to write home about, just a streak of very mucky ice 5 miles away. Still, I can cross that off the list...glacier, yeah, seen one of those!
That evening we stayed in Briançon, a bustling town made more bustling by the road being so abnormally busy. The Tour de France would finish a stage here in July. One has to hope they sorted the tunnel out by then!
Next morning we woke to the only rain of the holiday and this caused a flurry of sight seeing around the old town of Briançon, with narrow streets and a gloomy and austere cathedral. Around 11 am it dried up a bit but we had already decided to cancel our assualt on the Col d'Izoard. None of us had any appetite for climbing for two hours in the cloud with no views to enjoy so we rode down the Durance valley instead. The main road is fairly busy but we found a pleasant way out of town and it was 10 km before we were forced to join the main road. The rain had stopped and all was fresh and cool; how soon you miss that when you are in sunshine every day.
I've started to feel human again after the holiday tour of the French Alps..
We flew to Geneva from E.Midlands (Easy Jet) (That's Hugh, Dick, Colin, Martin White, Fred Gascoigne & me. ) and made a bee line for the French border on the SE eastern side of the city, making sure not to buy anything at Swiss prices! It is possible to get into France straight from the airport gate but we were going to the Alps and that meant crossing Geneva. (Fun that was as well!) Finally escaped into a suburb of Geneva called Annemasse which is actually in France. A quaint place, think Croydon. This was our first and last night's stays.
Next day Dick had to go back into Geneva to get a front mechanism as his had not survived the ride on an hairyplane. (Mostly down to extreme old age - you should see Dick's bike; it's a modern day miracle) While it took four of them to go and get a front changer, Colin and I cleared off up the valley towards the mountains. We took the opportunity to buy the first of the picnic lunches which we always eat. This saves money that might more readily be used for alcohol. Then we sat in a bar and waited for the others. They never arrived as they had overtaken us while we waited at one junction and they were at another. After a while I remembered the mobile phone I no longer use much and we got in contact and arranged to meet at the top of the first big hill through a huge gorge, the Gorge des Eveaux, so we sat and ate our belated picnic outside a bar where we had supped a few bargain price French beers ( bit of irony there - it was great to get back to the British £2.40 pint!) The ride took us eventually via the Col des Aravis, to a small town called Flumet, distinguished by me having forgotten everything about the place! The reason for this was that we found nowhere to stay and so were directed to the nearby village of St Nicholas la Chapelle. Here we stayed in a chalet beside a Hotel which was stuffed full of English walkers from Kent, most of them in their sixties and raring to get up the next alp. Their walks were bus assisted to the high land then walking on to places inaccessible by road then down to a rendezvous (presumably with a couple of glasses!)
The walkers overtook us in their minibuses the next morning as we rode the first hard kilometres of the Col des Saisies up through the ski village of Notre Dame de Bellecombe. I had quite a hankering to walk with them in the quiet paths up near the snow line, looking out for chamois and eagles but there were miles to be covered and the beautiful Cormet de Roselend to cross, a pass with lakes and reservoirs and beautiful views. A few days later the Dauphin, the local paper showed Lance Armstrong riding past the same chapel at the top of the Cormet, but we had got there first.
After the descent of Roselend we found ourselves in Bourg St Maurice, a bustling place with narrow interesting streets and sprawling modern outskirts, in which we found a supremely unmemorable night's digs on the main 'drag'.
Had little to do with the town but bought a new map as I had fallen clean off of the Michelin sheet 328 and now needed sheet 333, the two maps overlapping frustratingly so that I only ever got three 3 euros worth, not the full 6!
The new map showed our way out of town, heading towards the Col de Petit St Bernard. I quite fancied seeing this little Saint Bernard with presumably a little barrel of brandy hanging from it's collar. This is undoubtedly an eccentric place to store spirits. However we turned off before this mighty climb as we were off to climb a still mightier one. Lunch was sought, and not found, in the depressing and empty Val d'Isere, a place I had seen full of clamour as it hosted various winter sports events on the TV but today a useless and ugly blot on the landscape where even the Spar shops were closed for the summer. So we climbed the Col de L'Iseran on empty stomachs. At least that kept the weight down! At 2764, (nearly 9000ft.) Col de L'Iseran is the highest tarmac pass in the French Alps and by the top we were passing snow drifts higher than our heads though the summer sun had got the snow well and truly on the run and it was pouring itself into the mountain streams as fast as possible. Until that morning we had kept Mont Blanc to our left, hardly glimpsing it despite it being one of the bigger items in the general area. Now we had our backs to it though with the twists and turns of a mountain climb it is behind you, in front of you, now to the left, now to the right. A a sign of my general lack of condition and encroaching age I found myself walking stretches of the pass, a habit which I never got out of in the whole holiday but which kept my back and knees from getting too sore. I'm not proud. The pass top came at last and as with all passes, if there is a view to be seen, which is rare, you are too cold to linger and look at it and I was away almost immediately in a quest for warmth.
I can't resist mountain pass descents and I was well into my stride down this one when I saw something in the road ahead of me. An animal. My initial reaction was "badger" but it wasn't a badger; it was a marmot. Marmots are actually members of the squirrel family, as you realise when you see them in their characteristic sitting up pose, but a squirrel that you can confuse with a badger? That is one big squirrel!
The southern side of the Col is steeper and bumpier and dropped us quickly down to a quiet valley where, after a couple of beers as a reward for all that hard pedalling, we found accommodation in a village called Bessans in a comfortable and quiet gîte.
The ride in the morning took us on downhill for many a mile but the first village provided amusement as we could see a huge clamour of people milling around in the middle of the N6. Initially I thought that we had stumbled into some violent scene like a political demonstration gone out of control. But as we entered the main street of the town we realised that the village was having it's communal photo taken with all sorts of people gathered on the church steps and such a huge throng of onlookers that they were being man-handled off of the road by desperate marshals.
100 metres each side of this odd event there was the usual alpine peace and quiet.
From there the road got busier as we neared a town called Modane, the entrance to the Frejus Tunnel. At Modane the road meets a motorway and the railway twists and turns to find it's own tunnel . The trains were busy, scurrying under the mountains into Italy but the motorway was almost empty; a fire a few days earlier had closed the road tunnel. We headed out of town expecting a quiet time of it on deserted roads but came to a place were the main road was blocked by 'Route Barré' signs which ordinarily we ignore. On this occasion the presence of a two gendarmes made us follow the diversion. In fact they were quite insistent. This turned out to be hilly and by the time we reached the end of the diversion, a significant pass in its own right, we had lost Fred. After much seeking he turned up, unaware that we had been concerned, having punctured. It was to be the only puncture of the tour. A picnic was had on the side of the deserted dual carriageway with trains behind us and, in front, a very few cars. Not the most idyllic of sites but we had got hungry in the morning's confusions.
Following this valley we rode on an empty road beside and under the deserted motorway, beside the River Arc and the very steep railway until we reached St Michel du Maurienne. Here we were able to abandon this modern concrete ribbon and start the climb of the day, the Col du Telegraphe.
The Col du Telegraphe is a steep pass and, frustratingly for the photographers amongst us, almost entirely wooded so that opportunities to take pictures were few. I always enjoy the wildlife and the flowers on these passes so it was no hardship to be pedalling along through orchids and butterflies on a hot summer's afternoon. The top came at 1566 metres. We treated ourselves to a beer (more than one actually,) and then dropped quickly down to the town of Valloire. By one of those foibles of my memory and the onset of fatigue, I can't remember a darned thing about Valloire! I must have slept well.
The next morning we climbed the Col du Galibier. It is a magnificent road, climbing to 2646 metres. Actually we didn't climb very far as Valloire had been so high anyway that we had done most of the work during the climb of the Col du Telegraphe. But the bit we did climb was so spectacular, with the road glimpsed as bridges and buttments above us, hairpins hanging out into space above more hairpins and the view below of the road stretching away below us like a narrow grey ribbon, snaking all over the hill side. The road cuts through a tunnel near the top which probably keeps the pass open for quite a few extra weeks each year. Bikes are banned from the tunnel and quite right too. Who wants to miss the roof of the world? At the top is a rather surreal gift shop selling the usual knick-knacks including road racing vests, T. de F. tee-shirts and very welcome coffee. Nearby is the monument to Henri Desgranges, 'inventor' of the Tour de France. Had 'mon courage' complimented by various Belgian lady motorists for having ridden up one hill (didn't feel very courageous; I save that for the crazy descent) Maybe it was a Belgian chat up line, a bit late to find out now.
The descent was, of course, delicious but surprisingly not very long. At the BOTTOM of the pass is a sign telling us we are at the TOP of a pass, the Col du Lautaret. This seems a joke to have descended to the summit. We started to descend again, aware of a great convoy of trucks, with trailers, all carrying caravans and motorhomes. I let them get ahead; I didn't want to mix it with tons and tons of HGVs. What I hadn't realised was that the Col du Lautaret was the best alternative for many of the trucks and cars that couldn't get get through that fire damaged tunnel.
As we sat and ate our picnic in a purpose made area and a large number of trucks hurtled as hard as they could to, or from, Lautaret, we realised we were all sitting directly opposite a glacier, the first I had ever seen. To be honest it was nothing to write home about, just a streak of very mucky ice 5 miles away. Still, I can cross that off the list...glacier, yeah, seen one of those!
That evening we stayed in Briançon, a bustling town made more bustling by the road being so abnormally busy. The Tour de France would finish a stage here in July. One has to hope they sorted the tunnel out by then!
Next morning we woke to the only rain of the holiday and this caused a flurry of sight seeing around the old town of Briançon, with narrow streets and a gloomy and austere cathedral. Around 11 am it dried up a bit but we had already decided to cancel our assualt on the Col d'Izoard. None of us had any appetite for climbing for two hours in the cloud with no views to enjoy so we rode down the Durance valley instead. The main road is fairly busy but we found a pleasant way out of town and it was 10 km before we were forced to join the main road. The rain had stopped and all was fresh and cool; how soon you miss that when you are in sunshine every day.
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