Update 1: Every Path in Old Town project

The formal jogging exploration of Old Town began with a quick trip to Tesco (outside the stated bounds but I don’t really colour within the lines).  Returning with some mulligatawny and a bottle of wine I avoided the rude pedestrian walkway of Regent Street and did a little of Eastcott Hill turning across from the Sea of Green hydroponics shop:

The next evening was warmer than it has been in weeks and the twilight lingered in the nearly cloudless skies and I took the opportunity to enjoy the hilly terrain, going first down Dover Street to the footpath that comes out across from Savernake then up to the alley behind the houses parallel to the roadway.  A couple beat me to the little stair case to the upper ground and westward so I continued on to Bath Road and down Okus to the long staircase down to lower Kingshill.  I looped Bowood once to tick it off the list then followed an alley I thought would end after a block but went on all the way (with some road crossings) to the Running Horse.  Moreover, it linked to many more alleys, an archipelago to rival Tucson’s.

        

Back up the Kingshill and via some more pedestrian cut-throughs and I found myself face-to-face with the Clifton and then on the way back by the house crossed paths with the Globe and the Castle…I’ve never run past so many good pubs without stopping, or at least not in a long time.  Then, it was back down Prospect Hill to Crombey Street and across the ‘bumming park’  to walk Jackie home from work over some now-ticked-off-the-list territory. {Oh, Jackie’s co-workers refer to it as the Bumming Park because sometime in the annals *snicker* of history it was a cruising zone.}

   

Next, I entered the map zone at the end of a run from the edge of South Marston on my way to pic up some stuff for supper at the Cooperative.  Pushing the last bit of the hill to Christ Church I was going to finish in the Lawns Park but found the cemetery gate locked and decided I was already done.  The poignancy of the grave of a ten-year, above, in a little copse with ornaments hung from the trees around it caught my attention and I figured it would have been something I remembered recently from the newspaper; no, this fresh patch was covered in July 2010.

The cemetery is a good one, if you are into these (I love ‘em).  One odd feature is the large flower bedding area stuck full of metal funeral markers I saw as I exited to cool off in the park before the grocery trek.

   

A brief jog into Gorse Hill and back left me hungry for a good kebab, but I guess I should have stopped at the kebab van stood in the Wickes car park because everyone in Old Town opens after 3 pm.  The mappable bits picked up near the Coop, again, but the Old Town Kebab was my first locked door followed soon after by King’s Best BBQ down Victoria Road, but I had some other errands to do and figured I could wait it out…

  

However, the wait was fruitless as I arrived back at King’s at 3:15 to find it still locked and dark and uninhabited.  Shit, they are the oldest kebabery in town and have a fantastic reputation for quality and cleanliness (and I was feeling lazy and didn’t fancy a walk back into Old Town proper).  Testing some alleyways along the way I loaded up at the Old Town Kebab House and did a little strolling dining through bits of the park before heading home:

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