Week 6 Run 3 and being a Sunday I have little choice but to get this run done or slip into week 7 discombobulated … whatever my mentor in my ear Steve Cram has to say about it being OK, and doing a run over, knowing my body and all the rest of it.
I would have got out early, but an terribly old dog needed a walk and I needed caffeine, There is none in the house so I reckoned correctly that I could slip into town, pick up a coffee and totter about a local nature reserve with our dog. Back home I also have week 6 of my Zoe Health Study to comply with – this now means whether I eat twice or three times a day, it is likely to be savoury. So, my breakfast was a pearl barley chicken curry with yoghurt, a roast carrot and some roast leak. This gets me a 90 score on the Zoe App … My target is 50+ meals. I was mostly eating 70+ meals when I joined the programme, so I need a bit more of a challenge. I love it. But that’s another story …
The beauty of this run is that it passes maybe a dozen ‘notable’ trees – a couple of ancients, a veteran with a detour. I love the modicum of ducking and weaving as I run, forever keeping a very close eye on how I step, forever fearful of a trip and sprained or broken ankle.
The notable trees you pass along Balneath Lane, around Starvecrow Wood and Markstakes Common include once into Markstakes Common:
Hornbeam 29 (coppiced) by a winter/storm stream.
Hornbeam 8 (three stemmed) with three extraordinary tendril-like stems seeking light in the canopy, defying gravity to remain off the woodland floor.
Beech 7 (crashed to the woodland floor a decade ago, but not the less remarkable for the shelves of artist’s conk mushrooms in the hollowed out rotted base of the trunk)
Beech 12 and companion oak. Wherein lies a 75-100 year old love/hate relationship as the oak punches straight up to the canopy and has been able to get enough light into its canopy to survive.
Oak 13 – magnificent and ancient. Everything you want to see in an ancient oak – a broad, twist trunk with a number of broken and fallen boughs, and a vast broccoli canopy spanning out so far you can’t believe the branch could hold its own weight.
Then into the open, bracken abounds, and doubling back passing six further notable trees: another ancient oak, a long suffering silver birch survivor, several substantial beech trees and one of my favourites hornbeam 22, whose fallen, rotting stem is host, last year, not this, to a glorious split gill fungi with a multicoloured felt-textured upper surface.
Hornbeam 22 and drawing
Today it was overcast, a bit humid, and the rain hit as I came through Markstakes Common. Rather than spending a few too many minutes out in the open getting drenched I cut through the wood to stay under the canopy – it works. And running a dried out clay I wasn’t going to twist an ankle – i hoped, though having some secateurs in my backpack might help to clip back the odd rampant bramble or comatose branch dropping into the path.
Deeply satisfied by it, though I have to say how reluctant I was to get going at all, to start with, and how the first five minutes of running felt like being slapped around the face with a wet towel.
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