It is time to start cranking up the distances as my training schedule says I should do 16k this weekend. So I copy no less than six maps from the little green book and squeeze them into my running belt.
It is 0°C as we leave the house but the sun is shining so it might be quite a lot warmer when I am under its glare. The question is: how many layers do I wear? In the end I opt for two below and two above the waist.
Jan drops me off on the A423 so I can pick up where I left off. So it’s through the high barbed-wire-topped fences that once protected Peugeot’s Ryton plant but now just encircle an empty wasteland. I inveigle myself into the back of Ryton; the first of five villages to be traversed today. Each seems to have a compact and often picturesque medieval core and then a splurge of suburbia surrounding it. Ryton’s old bit is tiny.
Unfortunately the route has to take us through a pedestrian subway under the A45. I hate these things, they symbolise the subservience of walking in our transport system. I always think it is a shame that the Godiva Half Marathon includes a subway (again under the A45) at Green Lane: a nice impression of the city for visiting runners. I understand why Rytonians must think the subway is the only safe option for a village dissected by the A45.
A short run down the A45 towards the new(ish) big round about (which is not in the old book) and its off over the fields again. I am soon approaching the River Avon and as I enter the next field I see there is not trace of the footpath. The field has been ploughed and planted and no walker has gone before me to tread out the path, perhaps because there is an alternative ‘fisherman’s path’ along the river, which is more attractive. So I chart a course across the field where the path should be. The next field is the same but more difficult to work out where the path should be, so in that one I too use the riverside path. Many of the fields have mud with a thin layer of ice on it. I am grateful for the ice because, if you move quickly enough you can skim across it with out sinking into the mud.
Approaching Wolston the path takes you beside two football fields both in use for girls’ matches. In the village the route does a quick detour to the village hall which on April 18th will be one of our ‘checkpoints’. I do not bother with this today.
Past Wolston its right at the Priory, under the railway line and off over the fields again. The path takes you right through a farm yard. It’s a scruffy Grundy’s type farm with bits of machinery lying about everywhere, mud, manure and straw intermingling underfoot and groups of indolent cows staring at me like feral teenagers.
There is another close encounter with the River Avon and then I am on the busy A428. Many motorists are inclined to use this minor ‘back-route’ to Rugby as driving down to the A45 and then back up again is such a pain. Consequently it is very busy. I had been tempted to run along the road, ignoring the Coventry Way route which takes you into a field and back out again 100m later, but the traffic persuades me otherwise.
Over the Avon again and through Bretford where I enter what looks like an ancient Warwickshire track. There is an old hedge with mature trees on either side of this bridleway indicating it has been here a long time. I muse that some ancient routes, perhaps by accident of history became incorporated into the road system; tarmaced, adopted, maintained; while others are left behind much have they have been for centuries. There is a long stretch of this, nearly 2k, and it is very muddy. Many horses have been down here and judging by the shoe-prints they were not lithe racing horses or diminutive ponies. In fact I believe that the young women of Bretford are in the habit of saddling up and trotting out on dinosaurs.
On the outskirts of Brinklow the route takes me into a field-side path where the mud has a different quality: a thin layer of slime on otherwise hard ground. This brings a new difficulty, the tendency of my feet to slide outwards as I run. At the top of this field a single waymarker has been attached to a sapling. I later discover that either this marker has been turned through 180° or the route has been changed. Either way I end up not quite following the map, but I am grateful, as it means I can run along Brinklow streets for a while, rather than muddy fields. Good, I am running out of different ways to describe mud.
After Brinklow I turn off the road into a field so rutted with vehicle tracks that it is impossible to run. The book says the ground may be uneven. It is not wrong. I note that I am climbing up towards a small body of water, which does not seem to make sense. Water should lie at the bottom of valleys. At the top a farm track takes you into the next field but it is a rutted quagmire. To the right of this, through a kissing gate, a small strip of land sloping towards the pond helps you avoid the worst of the mud. I later read on the website that this kissing gate has been newly installed by the latest volunteer working party and that the stile at the end of this 5m strip is also to be replaced and the slope to the pond shored up. It also tells me that this body of water is a relic of the Brinklow arm of the Oxford Canal. That is why it is not in a valley.
The Coventry Way takes a contrived route around Brinklow the purpose of which seems to be to make you run through the motte & bailey of the former Norman castle. This spot, which is both high up and sheltered has retained its frostiness and the ups and downs present new challenges to a runner who wants to keep upright.
Past Brinklow I am in open fields again and I develop the delusion that I have only one map left to do. Unfortunately when I go to take the last map out of my pocket I find there are two more to go. I phone Jan, who is meeting me in Ansty to tell her I will be a bit later than predicted. It has been tough today what with mud, ice and uneven ground and my expectations as to pace where overambitious.
A short stretch on roads and then I am on to the towpath of the Oxford Canal, although I have to double check that this is the towpath side. In places it has become so eroded that it is more canal than towpath: a victim perhaps of the cuts in British Waterways’ budget. I hope some maintenance can happen here before April 18th, but I will not hold my breath. Jan texts back to tell me she is in the Rose & Castle pub. Good for her.
There is a couple of kilometres of Oxford Canal including one of those history-of-transport points where canal, railway, and motorway coincide, and of course there is me, taking the oldest and most sustainable form of transport. I want a plane to fly directly overhead to complete the picture. The path leaves the canal and takes a more direct route towards Ansty. Once again I am crossing fields and in places there are two or three inches of water lurking beneath the grass. But I am now past caring and charge on through the fields thinking of my goal of warm car, warm shower, warm soup, warm wife. Unfortunately the water sends my Garmin foot pod doolally and it later tells me that this last half kilometre has taken over 30 minutes.
Jan emerges from her lone wait in the pub to drive me home, convinced that the other customers and staff think she was stood up.
This week the remainder of map 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and most of 12 completed
14.5k at a pace of 7:54 min/k
So far (almost) 12 maps completed: 43k
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