Rutland - Small but perfectly formed
Small but perfectly formed
Where the heck is Rutland? I hear you ask. Well, according to some, it is the smallest county in England, it holds the largest manmade lake (so basically half of it is a lake) and it is home to the Nurdling World Championships (Nurdling = throwing pennies in a hole), the winners are crowned the ‘best tosser’, no joke.
Based on these facts alone, this was shaping up to be a very exciting run. In addition, it was February (i.e. my birthday) AND spring had started early. I think this may have been the only sunny birthday I have ever had. Rather than trying to fit in all that Rutland had to offer during one hill run we decided to go to this lovely county two weekends in a row (its only an hour from Cambridge!).
Weekend 1: A very windy (teehee) 23 mile birthday cycle around Rutland Water. Mike will deny it but he was clearly slipstreaming behind me most of the way.
Weekend 2: A sunny run to the top of the highest point: Cold Overton.
It turns out that Rutland has lots of very pretty villages with quaint pubs and old churches, one of which, Braunston, was the start point of the run. Braunston is also the site of some historical stone carvings which are located outside the Church. If you are running through said churchyard (as we stared off doing), don’t be too disheartened if you miss them. If you like I can knock a few chunks out of a rock, pretty much the same.
Anyway, to the run. It was sooooo lovely, the daffodils were out and the sun was shining. The route took us past the church, and out into some open fields (luckily there was some cover for a nature wee). The track wound through Bushy Wood and Haycock Spinney often in directions we were a bit surprised about based on the map, and out onto a wide farm track (excellent public footpath sign posting Rutland - not even Mike could get lost). We popped out onto a small road for a few hundred meters which then lead onto a footpath where the ascent started up to a lovely viewpoint of the rolling hills adjacent to a farm.
In classic Mike style we then ran down to the bottom of the hill, and back up a farm track, only to find that we could just have continued straight on from the viewpoint to arrive in the exact same place . . . .nice one.
A few more lovely fields later and we had a great view of the highest point we were aiming for.
We crossed a road and found the track which lead straight up to our destination (yes, straight up). The trees had recently been cleared and so we found ourselves dancing around trying to dodge roots, sharp sticks of death and tripping stumps. Finally the track joined a path across some farmland and in a few hundred meters we saw the trig point in the middle of a field to the west. VICTORY.
After retracing our steps to the track we descended a short way before finding the footpath to the east which took us directly back to the village, the car, a pint and a charcuterie.
We never thought that the February run would end sitting in a beer garden in the sun but hey, that’s Rutland for you.
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