Saturday 28 December 2013

Boxing day 2013 on the beach

Lynn (@lynnlog on Instagram) took 450 pics at the beach ! Heres a wee snippet :-)




















Sunday 22 December 2013

Down the coast and around Holy Island

Some basic info first : saw one person on the whole of this run which is a massive plus. The wind was….lets just say…it was a massive minus :-)
As usual my pics may not be in order but as youweren't there you won't notice (I hope) !
My plan was to arrive at Cheswick about daybreak, run south along the coast to the crossing to Holy Island, run around the island and run north again. Which is what I did. It was a clear sunny day with no rain but it was windy (as in WINDY).
I met this charming lady quite early on and she was pretty cool about me running on her patch. In fact she looked pretty chilled about life generally.

                                         Starting to cross the causeway onto Holy Island


                   The sun coming up. You can't see it, but Bamburgh Castle is over there.

Sunrise
Low clouds kept masking the sun
Looking back towards the causeway
The cross in the foreground almost aligns with Bamburgh Castle in the distance
Looking back at Lindisfarne
No idea what this is, but it took my eye. Stones.
I took a moment here halfway through my run to look out towards Norway
Now thats a beach

I had to drop down onto it to see the wonderful driftwood



I was so pleased to see this guy still there. I thought the big sea 2 weeks go would have done him
Just an amazing piece of wood
He's looking east
Wonderful 
He's hiding!
 After that there was 8 miles of running into the wind. This is me at the end, happy but…you fill in the blanks!

Saturday 7 December 2013

A run with bridges

Today I had a 17 miler along the banks of the river Tweed. Technical trail running, frosty to start with, slippy in places but very much fun. And it included bridges, 5 of them to be exact.
I started here at the Union Bridge, built in 1820 that links Scotland with England. Its a magnificent old suspension bridge. If you lie on it, you can feel it gently swing !
I headed downstream on the Scottish side towards Berwick. 3 miles later is the bridge that was constructed as part of the Berwick by pass. Its ugly, but functional.
After this bridge we are about 2 miles from the mouth of the Tweed and hence the North Sea. My first view this morning of the Royal Border bridge, which carries the East Coast rail line was this just as the sun was coming up.

I enjoyed the view but as I was there to run I didn't pay too much heed to it until I started to see this.
Not bad for a phone camera with no filtering I hope you'll agree. As I passed under this bridge, I looked back and had to take another photo.

I was nearing my turnaround point but there are another 2 bridges in Berwick. I'm not sure if they have "proper" names, but I know them as the "old" bridge and the "new" bridge.
There's the "old" bridge through the span of the "new" bridge. I crossed the old bridge and headed back upstream. At the end of my 17 mile run I took this gratuitous selfie back at my starting point: the Union Bridge. There are worse places to be, believe me.