Author: Buck

Holy crap, that was tough!

Think of a tough thing, then times it by several orders of sadism and you are in the ball park.

First off it was goddamn freezing. Apparently the wind chill had it at –3C. I thought it was colder. The wind was howling a gale on the hill tops, the telephone wires were bowed horizontally instead of vertically. Literally.

That’s it. My blog for this week. Worked, did big run.

Note to self; must try harder!

…destroyer of owls. 

I forgot to mention, a week or so ago I was tootling along, minding my own business, when one of those flat faced owls swooped across the road, noticed me trundling towards him (grammatical ‘him’, couldn’t guess the sex) and instead of carrying on out of my way braked in mid air and started dithering about. I whacked straight into the poor bastard. I was gutted. Not as much as said owl I’ll wager, but pissed right off none the less. Poor little sausage.

That’s a pigeon (don’t care, stupid birds) a suspected bat (bit miffed, I like bats – if it was one) and a lovely fluffy white owl.  According to Chris Packham that’s one of the reasons why they are planting all those trees alongside motorways; so the owl’s hunting glide will be above the level of the traffic.  Eyes like a hawk, ears like a bat, brains like a penis.

It’s been another eventful week at work to which I will refer in a minute, but as a consequence I didn’t get to bed until 0330 today and didn’t get up until 1305 hours.

By the time I’d had a shower, eaten some toast, let it settle, faffed about, then driven to Bolton it was 1620. I was going to do three laps of the 8 mile sampler run we did a few weeks ago.

Obviously I immediately got lost when I started running. Luckily the summit of the ascent is that huge great mast on top of Winter Hill, so you know for miles around in which direction you should be heading. And the carpark is next to a 265ft chimney, so I was pretty confident I could find my way back as well, which is a bonus.

On Monday I turned up at Crewe to the joyous news that I am now on the Gateshead run. This means I have to drive for 50 minutes from Irlam to Crewe, swap trailers then drive to Gateshead (next door to Newcastle upon Tyne.) Right up in the (possibly cannibalistic) North East. Which means I have to drive back (past Irlam,) then around the M60 (Manchester circular motorway) and over the highest motorway in England. In rush hour.

Another brilliant bit of planning.

They then want me to return to Crewe, trailer swap, then back to Irlam.