David Currie

We’re still reeling a bit today from the fact that, as a result of the collapse of Landsbanki, we can’t currently access a large chunk of our savings held with icesave. More worrying is that, despite having intended to do so on numerous occasions, we just simply hadn’t got round to spreading our savings around to ensure that we were under the FSCS limit. Absolutely stupid in hindsight particularly given all the warnings but there we go. Anyway, nothing we can do about it now so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. Looks like we might have to put our plan to upsize whilst the housing market is depressed on hold for a bit now…

As is traditional, for our first run from Fritham we took in the six ponds: Green Pond (on Fritham Plain), Cadman’s Pool, Ocknell Pond, Janesmoor Pond, Longcross Pond and Eyeworth Pond. There was a good turnout despite the darkness, wind and drizzle. I was certainly grateful for having donned a long sleeved top and waterproof when we were heading back across Longcross Plain straight in to the driving rain!
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670Christine having run it last year (whilst I was recovering from my appendectomy) it was my turn to run at the second Hursley 10K. The second half of the course is part of one of my standard lunchtime runs in Ampfield Woods but the first part was a chance to take a look at some of the paths through the private Hursley Estate.
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In a break with tradition, tonight’s run will be the last from Rufus Stone this year as the venue can’t really support five different runs. With a bumper attendance, Neil ably led us round a triangle(ish) containing Ocknell Inclosure. On this occasion we managed to stay out of the re-enterants on the North edge of the Inclosure and remarkably we were back at Rufus Stone with time (and daylight) to spare. In case Mike’s memory fails him (!) I should probably say that we ran round clockwise.

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We were missing all of usual navigators on last night’s run (after 10 years I’m still learning the ropes!) and the route suffered a bit as a result. Things started off okay as Neil found the golf course without too much trouble and from there it’s an easy route to Janesmoor Pond. We struggled a bit finding a good line to Cadnams Pond and popped out on the road far too early (although I was sufficiently confused by this point to think we might have overshot). There was then yet more confusion about the location of Ocknell Pond and the route we should take to the campsite (we ended up half way between the path route and the high and dry route i.e. undulating through numerous marshy re-entrants). We eventually found our way back to Rufus Stone though in around 75 minutes and semi-darkness.
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Having discovered the excellent XML Google Maps for displaying maps on a WordPress blog I’ve decided to add a few more GPX routes to this blog. So here’s the route from Tuesday night’s run from the Rufus Stone around two underpasses. It was a bit wet underfoot but not as bad as anticipated (perhaps because Neil’s absence meant we took less direct routes!).
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Fortunately my current desk location in Hursley is away from the windows otherwise the sight of the rain hammering down might have deterred me from turning out for tonight’s RR10 – my first for the year and also the last of the season. The race was, however, actually at Hursley and, with the disbanding of IBM Hursley Runners earlier this year, it was my first chance to actually compete in this race.

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Having driven through the pouring rain (and crawled through the roadworks on the M27) it was a pleasure to arrive at a sunlit Wilverley Plain for my first Tuesday night run of the year. It made a nice change for an hour long run not to involve half an hour running up hill followed by half an hour running downhill and also to have something other than solid rock (or bilberry) underfoot! Even better was the fact that I could buy six pints (admittedly three of which were shandies) and a corresponding number of packets of crisps and still get change from a twenty pound note!
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