Hazel wood drift

After overnight rain it was still damp for our run as we stayed in the trees for the most part. It was only light rain and so it was not too bad although it was quite muggy and I soon cast off my lightweight running coat and tied if around my middle. Steve and I equally love running through the woods and counting the amount of deer we see. We thought it was going to be a good amount today since as we got out of the car there was a handsome red deer with antlers that we could see were coming on nicely, as he stood in full view, looking at us admiring him. He was the only one we saw today though.

We started this run in Clay Pit Lane, for the interest of locals, fairly near, The Piano House, what a nice name that is and there is an attractive the sweep of steps that lead up to the house, just where we turn in off the road to start our run.

Steve told me that we were going to do another 10 km run today. We did the first 10km of this week on Sunday within Stephen’s birthday triathlon, and he said that we are aiming to do four times the same run, so last Sunday, today is Tuesday of course, Thursday and this coming Saturday is the intended set.

It is such a pretty run and there is nothing tedious about it since it twists and turns most of the way with hardly any made up road at all. It’s nearly all as narrow as an animal track and I run behind Steve who shouts little warnings to me, just trailing a few steps behind him, “Roots” or “Umpy-bumpy” where it is very uneven or rutted. For the most part, we can hardly see more than a hundred metres ahead of ourselves because it is through quite dense growth. The route winds its way as far as Patching, where we have a turn point just as the steeple of Patching Church comes into view and the path opens up a fraction. We pass a few longhorn show cattle at one point passing on a bit of gravel road where both of us call out ‘Good morning’ to the cattle, who this morning were sheltering under the trees as we ran by; we more admiring of them than they were of us.

 

Our short bursts of conversation have little or no intellectual value and as an example, we heard but did not see, a Woodpecker fly through the woods calling, ‘Wet, Wet, Wet’, I said that it was stating the obvious because it certainly was not ‘Dry Dry Dry’.

If we ever again get back to a time where we can meet up with friends to run we want to show this wiggly way to our friend Birgit, who we have for years met for our old Sunday run, she will love it I’m sure.