Never trust a golfer
Hotter than hell
NB: I’m actually writing this 3 months after we ran this hill, mostly because life got a bit busy, we had a holiday in the Alpes, blah blah blah, the usual excuses. Anyway, here it is.
What better activity to do on the hottest May Bank Holiday on record, than go for a run? I think that this might count as a genuinely stupid thing to do, especially when you know it’s coming. All of the forecasts predicted scorching temperatures (for Britain), and Julie and I still planned to go running. Yeah, not the brightest idea. We thought we’d be really clever, and try to aim to get out early in the morning before it got too hot. I believe there is a phrase about best laid plans or something…?
We pulled into a packed car park at the Gateway to the Chilterns, with a plan to set off along the ridge of the Dunstable Downs. My route plan had us start along the Icknield Way Trail, which we would follow on and off for most of the route. However, there were at least 3 different trail posts indicating the trail, thankfully all in the same direction. We headed off obvliviously along the trail, scatter with tree roots, thankful for what little shade we could get.
Our navigational error, which led us in a small circle around a wood, was caused by the sudden appearance of a woodland assault course. Never one to turn down a challenge we vaulted over logs and jumped through tyres. However, clearly we weren’t the only ones to make this error as we approached a farm, two young farmhands waved us back down the road from whence we came, along with several confused hikers. Eventually we found ourselves back on roughly the right path and continued on our merry way.
We followed the Chiltern way through Whipsnade village, past all of the cars queueing to get into the safari park, and down past the zoo. Unfortunately, we could not see any of the animals, only some of the local wild deer. The path took us weaving through various fields, and wooded plantations scattered with bluebells, though not nearly enough to shade us from the oppressive sun beating down on us. Popping on the golf course, we followed the directions indicated to us by a group of apparently friendly golfers. Cue navigational error number 2, as we sped across the fairways, following the way markers past the club house, and steeply down hill to a road. This got my spider senses tingling, as I realised that we weren’t due to hit any roads for at least another couple of miles. Much to our chagrin, we had to run back up the steep hill we had just barelled down to correct our mistake. To cut a long story short, never trust a golfer giving you “helpful” directions. We managed to find our way back onto the correct (and also waymarked) path, over the golf course, dodging golf balls and bunkers as we went. Eventually we emerged back on to the path round the back of the zoo, where we got a great view across to the elephant enclosure, not what one would normally expect in the middle of rural Bedfordshire!
We traversed several muddy sections of the path, trying to keep an eye out for any other misplaced African behemoths, but we were sadly disappointed. Retracing our footsteps through Whipsnade we cut left past a curious landmark; a tree cathedral. We could only guess at the true purpose of this strange arboreal arrangement, as we climbed back up the Ickneild way onto the Dunstable Downs, and into the unrelenting bank holiday heat. The thought of an ice cream spurred us on along the final exposed ridgeline and back to the visitor centre from where we started out. Teeming with families flying kites and enjoying picnics, we gobbled down a couple of ice creams in double time, thankful for the small piece of shade we could find. At this point we still hadn’t strictly speaking hit the summit, as this was an indescript square of land marked only by a countour on the map, possibly somewhere in the carpark. However, I almost certainly sure that we had reached the “highest point” in Bedfordshire, as my GPS said we were at a dizzying 243 metres, which was in agreement with the map. Seeing as I was in danger of breaking multiple rules on this run (my phone didn’t track the run properly), we drove down to Studham, where we had run through earlier, and tucked into a couple of pints of shandy with a slap up fish supper.
I’ve signed off all these blog posts so far with how I would change things, or maybe a lesson that I’ve learnt. Firstly, it’s really fun running with Julie, and she keeps me well motivated, so as long as she want’s to keep running these hills then that’s great for me! Neither of us deals with the heat very well. It actually turns out that whilst this was the hottest day of the year until that point, things were going to get much, much hotter. This heat is a problem for running, so I think I need to try to pick and choose days with more appropriate weather if possible.
Anyway, toodle pips for now; there’s a bigger hill coming very, very soon…
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