Spooky morning fret

 Angmering Park Estate at it spooky best

When I woke this morning the knee that tweeked itself on Wednesday morning was aching and still a little bit podgy under the knee but not actually painful, so much as I hate (as we all hate) to be sensible, I decided to walk this morning instead of running and risking tweeking it back into the painful stage again. I had woken in the night and put a squidge of Movelat on it before I got back into bed, and then again when I got up.

 

 

After a brief discussion with my coach, I was re-gelled and had a compression stocking thing placed on, and over that a knee brace. I picked up my camera and we got in the car to drive to the start of the Sunday run. Steve ran off and I set off to walk the run route backwards. It was very cold and frosty along with a thick fret that was just starting to lift by 8.20 am. The reverse routing meant that my walk was uphill to start as I turned off they way where we normally finish our run. There was not a soul about apart from a big red dog that bounded up to say hello, we had a short chat and then he ran off again, I didn’t see anybody anywhere near and did not hear anybody call him.

 

The fret was thicker in some places than others and gradually burnt off as the sun rose over the hill behind me and I climbed gradually to my highest point of the day. I had walked forty minutes uphill loving every moment in the spooky mist. I saw one Red Kite and I took half a dozen photos of the sky trying to catch him with the camera and failing miserably. I was lucky that there was a hole in the fog where I stood and smiled broadly with pleasure as the big bird soared high up into the sunshine showing the fabulous colouring of his feathers.

 

 

Later, on the way to the tea shop in Arundel, Belinda’s in Tarrant Street today, Steve said that he saw a family of deer who crossed his path closely in front of him and stopped to stare at him for a while but he did not have a camera so that moment was lost. He had got a much better wild life score than me because he also almost tripped over a hare too, on the ridge path above Barpham. Apart from the one Kite watching treat, all I saw was a whole bunch of sheep, pheasants, crows and a selection of the more common little birds, robins, sparrows and such. It was a lovely, very different morning though with the floating, swirling fret all around.

 

After early morning tea first thing this morning, we both sat to drink our tea a catch the men’s final of the Figure Skating Grand Prix from Marseilles that we had recorded. It was stunning final event with six most marvellous skaters competing. I will say no more than that we both thought we had seen the best men’s performance ever by young Nathan Chen from the USA who was only born in 1999! He did four quads in a totally faultless programme beautifully skated and climbed only to the second step of the podium. Yuzuru Hanyu was so far ahead from the short programme, that even though he did not skate anything like his best and had a fall, Hanyu still won. There were three World Champions in amongst these final six skaters. Watch out world, the skating scene is changing. If they don’t have a quad I can’t see anybody making it to the final of anything.