Icy Death Wind
Nearly bested by the Beast from the East
It’s been a fun couple of months since my last hill challenge run back at Christmas. In that time I’ve trained for the Cambridge half marathon, it’s snowed, Julie and I moved in together (in the snow), and then we both ran the Cambridge half the day after (thankfully not in the snow; but it has snowed again since). This blog is called ‘Stupid Things’; I think running a half marathon the day after moving house, with just the two of us doing all of the lifting, counts as something stupid. There was a lot of discussion about whether we would even (be able to) run, but we both got round, my slowest, but not Julie’s. Win! I just managed to squeak in under 2hours (literally by ~20 seconds), so all in all I feel like we pulled it off with style and panache (we didn’t look it after, that’s for sure).
Fast forward a couple of weeks, and we found ourselves in Norfolk at Julies’ brother’s wedding (thanks Rich & Nikki!). It was just north of Norwich, and given the that the Norfolk ‘hill’ was up on the coast near Cromer, it seemed like an awful waste just to go straight back to Cambridge…
As much as I wouldn’t recommend running a half marathon immediately after moving house, it was considerably worse than running up a ‘hill’ after a family wedding. I’ve convinced myself that rum and dancing are a really good way to prepare for hill running. Honestly.
Our monolithic target was Beacon Hill at a spectacular 103m. Whoa! How could anyone ever run up anything that high?! Killian Jornet eat your heart out. Everest in a day? Pfft, get yourself to Norfolk lad… #sarcasm
Anyway, if ever there was a time to run the second lowest county hill (the lowest is reserved for the City of London - Julie has a great idea for that one), straight after a rum fueled family wedding is arguably the best. I broke a couple of rules with this run, well, nearly all of them as it turns out. Firstly, I didn’t plan a 10k run, it was only about 5 miles in total, partly that was due to the lay of the land, and partly because I thought I might still be steaming from the night before. I also didn’t have a beer at the end, I definitely had my fair share in the previous 24hours, so I thought that one could slide too. But don’t worry folks, there was still plenty of suffering to be had!
We started off next to the summit. Yes, they actually have a car park at the top, even this hill is too much for your average Norfolk-ian (it’s actually because there’s an old roman fort there, nothing to do with the dizzying altitude). It was a bit tricky creating a circular route that wasn’t either 2 miles or 10 miles. I knackered my knee a little doing the Cambridge half as well, so I wasn’t particularly willing to push the distance too much.
The route began down hill, and over the main Holt Road, the sun was shining, and the hedges by the road kept the worst of the wind at bay. We turned West at Aylmerton, largely uneventful except for the fact that there was an arctic wind blowing. Through us. Knives. Icy knives of pain and death. Neither Julie nor I were prepared for this level of suffering. I’ve stood on top of a Munro in Scotland in a full Scottish winter conditions and felt warmer. We quickly arrived full circle at Holt Road (about 1.5 km further West) and plunged into the much welcome shelter of a woodland. The variety in the route was quite surprsing, as much as the weather. We definitely felt that, despite the small stature of the hill, we were getting our money’s worth so to speak. Through the Beeston Regis Heath and nature reserve, we followed the base of the hill, and past the Sheringham shire horse sanctuary (say that after a couple of pints). I have developed a little bit of a reputation for navigational problems on all previous runs to date. This one was no exception, though paled in comparison to my other efforts. My plan was to take one of the tracks up the hill which would deposity us right in the middle of the roman camp, and next to a warm car. Ha! Not a chance. In my impatience, I made us take a path a hundred meters too early and we just ended up next to some benches. But it was a pretty good view through a break in the trees out over the North Sea.
After a little bit of dithering, we found the main track to the carpark, and after no more than 200 metres we found the car, and the summit. Hooray!
From the top there was a lovely view out to sea, and a little bit of historical interest with the old roman camp. I had assumed that this hill would just be an indistinguishable bit of a path, much like Cambridgeshire and Essex, but I was pleasantly surprised. The information board even confirmed that this was (one of) the highest point(s) in Norfolk (though I missed that bit, thanks for pointing it out Julie).
In total I think we managed ~5 miles. Unfortunately the pinnacle of Norfolk knocked out my GPS (it might have been the trees actually), so I didn’t get the full route recorded. That’s 3 rules I broke, oops.
It was a far more adventurous and eventful run than I had bargained for, and it was great fun to share it with Julie. Hopefully she’ll agree to keep sharing my suffering as the hills get bigger and bigger. No beer, less than 10km, and not fully recorded. Who cares though? If it wasn’t for the icy death wind, it would have been quite a pleasant experience.
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