Week 2 – railways present and past

Just a measly 4.6k run in midweek. Saturday comes and we get up late after a late night carousing in London. Lots of glasses of water and a bowl of porridge soon restore bodily equilibrium. There is a car to be rescued from the station as we were too over-the-limit to drive it home last night, and a house to be readied for the sister-in-law’s visit. So it is about 12.40 by the time Jan drops me in Back Lane at the start of Map 2 with instructions to collect me in Coventry Road, Kenilworth about 70 minutes later.
The first third of Map 2 is now familiar to me so there is less head scratching while gawping at maps and waymarkers. But during the week there has been even more rain, so the mud is worse, at times causing my feet to slide in strange directions. Some fields also hide a couple of inches of water, just below the long grass. To be fair one point on the map is marked ‘Marsh Area’ so I have been warned. At least the Staring Sheep of Hill House is having a morning off.
Map 3 brings interaction with the railway, present and past, as at Reeves Green I cross and briefly run alongside and above the mainline and then join the former Berkswell to Kenilworth Line. This has been annoyingly rebranded the Berkswell – Kenilworth Greenway. Why cannot it just be called the Old Berkswell –Kenilworth Railway and therefore recognise rather than hide its history? I ascend the few steps to the former trackbed full of hope that there will be no more mud, but I am disappointed. There is even more mud. However there are some fine old brick bridges to admire and after a while the mud disappears and there is a new impacted surface which shrugs off the water. I can get into my stride at last.
The new surface comes courtesy of Sustrans as the former railway forms part of its Connect2 network which won heaps of lottery money after a popular vote last year. They are also responsible for what look like wooden Olympic medalists’ plinths at various points along the way. I later find that these structures are to help cyclists mount their vehicles. There are also a number of signs indicating this is a ‘permissive bridleway’. It sounds like something Lord Longford was against in the 60s.

I am not sure why they have not given the Berkswell end of the line the new surfacing treatment; perhaps they have still to get round to it. I have emailed the Connect2 people to ask.
At Kenilworth I descend to Coventry Road and the end of Map 3. There used to be a railway bridge across the road and soon there will be a new foot and cycle bridge courtesy of Sustrans. Unfortunately the people of Kenilworth and Crackley seem to have chosen the most boring of the three designs they were offered. That is often the trouble with that sort of simplistic community consultation (“would you like option A, B or C”) it leads to lowest-common-denominator design.
Thanks to the Sustrans resurfacing my overall speed is much better than last week, even if the backs of my legs are splattered with mud.
This week: Maps 2 & 3 completed, 10k at pace of 6:49
So far: 3 maps completed = 12.7k