Archive for the ‘canals’ Category
I continued the run from the Three Tuns with plans to grab lunch at the The Golden Swan twelve miles away. I had a bus to catch at 1:40 in Pewsey and considered lingering in Wootton Rivers to hit the Royal Oak when it opened 15 minutes later than when I was passing by along the Kennet and Avon Canal, but I was really looking forward to a decent plate of pub fish and chips, an item friends that have been to this house highly recommend.
So, I jog up to the bar and order a pint of Horizon (can’t go wrong with Wadworth) and ask for my fish and chips. “We only do a roast on Sunday.” Nowhere on their website nor their on-line menu does it say this…I should have done the stop in Wootton Rivers, after all. Oh, well, I eventually found what I was looking for at the Crown.
The family out front was friendly and two at the table had been in the mass bike ride I filtered through on the way into Bedwyn. The young daughter of one wanted another glass of water but was intimidated by some rude fuckers drinking in front of the bar. “If the man says anything to you, tell Daddy and I’ll go have a chat with him.” There’s this Kevin Bridges bit where “Daddy just has to have a word with the man,” can be interpreted as “Mommy will pick you up down at the Police shop.” But, the rest of their (and my) stay went off without incident.
Jackie had a short day at work (11-3) but I had a long run overdue for the weekend. Scouring the empty space on the pub map for a candidate trail, I found a nice bit through the Savernake Forest toward Great Bedwyn from Marlborough. The path through the middle of the forest is dead straight and quiet and only a little undulating and, on this pleasant morning, filled with birdsong.
At the forest’s exit (reached beneath a dense canopy), you are confronted by a huge gate with no fence on either side of it and some signage stating the property is protected by Gurkhas…impressive and weird. A few hundred metres to the northeast you can get off the B-highway onto the drive toward St. Katherine’s Church, a 19th-century parish house that looks a lot older. Their Sunday Service is in the evening so I could have taken a peek inside but I was in a hurry so only stopped for a drink of water.
Once back out on the paved roads, I was confronted by a regatta of cyclists who seemed equally amused and bemused that there was a runner in this remote section of Wiltshire. The verge was nearly non-existent and there was more automotive traffic than I had expected, but eventually I found my target, The Three Tuns (which opens at 10 am on Sunday–twenty minutes before my arrival). I was served a pint of Good Old Boy and retired to the garden to consider the day.
Leaving the pub, I changed the planned route slightly from a direct shot to the tow path to include a pass by the Church of St Mary, started in 1092 on top of a Saxon church, and which houses a memorial to Sir John Seymour (one of Henry VIII’s fathers-in-law). As it was in the middle of Sunday morning service, I satisfied myself with some exterior views and a short wander around the cemetery before heading on. Besides, Ii had already been to my temple:
The frequency and intensity of my running has increased with the rise in temperature this summer so I find myself ducking into pubs for respite more than in recent months. Beer and cider are featuring more so than dinner wine in the Daily Tipple log as a result:
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Having logged all the chippies near work, I also find that pub fish and chips — at least in Oxford — are the way forward in the Chippy Challenge. I’m also having to travel farther afield from Swindon although there are still a good number of fish and chip shops near enough home to add to the list. The Chick-O-Land in Salisbury is the new southernmost member of the list:
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Red markers are July additions, go to full map by clicking on one of these graphics.
The G-Had also continues to develop with July trails overlapping a Didcot HHH trail (the inaugural Didcot clash, in fact) and a Bicester HHH trail that was more personal than it probably should have been. Those make G-Had HHH trails #36 and #37.
The new pub count (as in the Count of Pubs New to this blog) stalled the first week of June and I almost went the entire month of July without an addition to the list. This was corrected last Sunday with an 11 mile / 6 pub jog from Amesbury to Salisbury largely along the River Bourne. With the woman working Sundays and every other Saturday the numbers should pick back up in the coming weeks.
It has been a while since my last pub run but with Jackie working Sunday afternoon the opportunity arose and I decided to clear the backlog of Devizes pubs still on my to do list. There were only two left on my list but a quick internet search turned up the Hourglass near the Devizes Marina and not far from a bus stop so I started with a warm-up jog there to get a Ramsbury XXXX Porter.
The beer was slate-y with a bit of ashtray to it, but the kind of ashtray that involves the scrapings of a bong or hash pipe so it was a happy find on this chilly day with a storm looming. I worried about flooding on the path along the canal but needn’t and the choice to start here seemed an auspicious one despite the dining bent of the canalside, estate centred venue.
A fine mist had descended during my trot from the Cooper’s and the running effort today and other workouts during the week finally caught up to me. The damp, advancing age, and poor nutrition and hydration resulted in muscle cramps and spasms in my shoulders and legs. Medicine, in the form of a Weston’s cider, was available just inside the warm confines of the French Horn.
It was actually a bit TOO warm inside, humid and heady with the tempting scents of the Sunday dinner. “Will you be staying for lunch,” the barmaid asked. “I want to, but I need to catch the bus soon.” She seemed genuinely disappointed but not so much as I did. Famished and starting to sweat, I took up residence in the garden and hoped for the best with the weather.
After an unusually strenuous hike along the Kennet and Avon Canal, a heavy lunch at the Barge (one of the best burgers I’ve had in England that I didn’t make myself), and a diversion through some manor-farm land that piled on the miles in this first of hopefully many hot days this year we opted for a brief wait for the bus to Swindon in the safe confines of the Royal Oak.
Jackie had an unusually disgusting blister on her foot and no appetite for booze (had I misplaced the woman on the tow path?) so I was left to drink alone but with dry company in this fantastic old inn in this fantastic old town.
There were some bikers having a few before heading back out to the wonderful weather but that is really all I could take in since, like the woman, I was absolutely exhausted. the pics above are from the walk, but I would really need to revisit the pub to do a just review.
[Originally, this project was described here, and you can see the most recent prior Update (3) here.]
25 March 2013: Stir crazy from enforced rest (IT band injury), I took the admonition to limit exercise to gentle walks as including short, hilly hikes and went out into the unseasonable cold (winter set in around this time last year and just won’t fuck off). Picking up a bit of the un-mapped sections of the EPiOT project was the aim, but I also lucked into a fantastic (if oddly situated) kebab stand to add to my annual challenge total:
26 March 2013: Not a twinge after yesterday’s hike so with a half hour till sunset I headed out to the hills and exploring some of the ‘new build’ neighbourhood off Okus (I just know they must have a pub down in there, but haven’t yet found it). Coming back via Grosvenor then William Street, there were some compelling stairs near an old school house that now hosts Swindon Silicon (the Boy’s Entrance is just behind that fence in the photo). Unusually bad luck with dead ends on the steep Fairview (next to the Radnor Street Cemetery) and again on an alley, but that’s part of the fun, eh?
29 March 2013: There was sun. No, really (I say this for the Brits out there), sun and relatively clear skies, I shit you not. With Jackie laid up with the lurgy, I did some errands then headed out to knock out some pesky trails:
These runs have enhanced my appreciation of Art and I passed a basketball court where a kid was wielding a spray can, too deep in thought to notice I had stopped to tie a shoe. I’m a little concerned he was working on top of extant paint when there is such a wealth of virgin canvas just around the corner:
As the alleyways spooled out before me, many more works presented themselves, like this conceptual Minnie Mouse:
And, this mural on a garden fence above the quarries adjacent to the Town Garden:
Philistine that I am, I can only take in so much visual information and have learned to pace myself. I’m glad that I did, too, since the detail above the recently reopened Prince of Wales shows that it was built to be exactly that (the Prince of Wales). The last time I visited this pub was a week before my attempt at a second visit (when I found it shuttered, a year-and-a-half or so back). They reopened a couple of weeks ago and I felt compelled to have something (albeit just a half pint of Carling). I’m sure I’ll be back soon, though.
The plan was to catch the bus to Hungerford and jog the canal path to Kintbury, grab a pint and head back. As is typical, the run started off wrong and got worse but, all tolled, was not an especially bad day out.
I thought we approached Hungerford from the south and so turned right onto the path which was a soupy and slick nightmare. With no traction, it took two to three times the number of steps to cover the distance and there was always a reasonable chance of falling into the canal.
At the road to Froxfield, I checked my map and realised I was near the Pelican and decided it would have to do as a turnaround point. Not relishing the return mud bath I went over some hilly trails to get to a single track road that, this time, actually did approach Hungerford from the south.
Hungerford is pretty. Here’s the town hall and some detail:
Already sore from runs yesterday and cold in my minimal running kit on this run, I struggled along from the Barge Inn toward All Cannings doing the 2.5 miles between the door and the King’s Arms in a slow 22 minutes (including a stop to pee). The ice on the canal persisted in the face of the warm stream and the trail was muddier than the previous section but the landscape and tailing breeze were distractions and helpful, respectively.
The King’s Arms has signs around town but always two or three turns away from the location on Pub Lane. It was packed with lunchers and people awaiting seating, but I was served my pint of Wadworth Horizon quickly and joined some folks back in the cramped snooker snug adjacent to the bar.
There was great pub and inn memorabilia all over the place and if I ever read that it is closing down (unlikely with the trade they were doing) I am coming out with a crowbar and breaking in for this piece:
The next leg of the run took me away from the canals and I got a look at a farm or refuge behind the pub on my way out to the bridleway–ostriches, how bizarre out here.
Next stop was to be Coate and the New Inn but there would be trouble with my route….
I did a Sunday mid-day run down the Kennet and Avon Canal Path and then overland to Devizes from Pewsey with a number of pubs in my sights. The first leg, from the bus stop north of Pewsey out to Honeystreet and the Barge Inn are shown here with an early section showing the iced over waters that kept me company most of the way:
The music for the run was Sixto Rodriguez, the subject of the Oscar-winning documentary ‘Searching for Sugar Man‘ which we saw the opening night of the Swindon Film Fest. This is some fantastic stuff but I have to wonder if I would feel as strongly about it without the detail in the film. The albums, Cold Fact (1970) and Coming from Reality (1971), have aged especially well despite a bit of overproduction; you hear bits of Leonard Cohen, Dylan, and Simon and Garfunkel in some cuts but the lyrics are definitely specific to the composer and his location. The movie was as much a revelation about him as it was about the liberal-leaning white population of Apartheid era South Africa and the police state in which the bootlegged copies of these (unknown in the States) albums became some of the most important musical benchmarks of the time.
But, musical benchmarks are everywhere I remembered as the Barge Inn loomed. Rodriguez faded as soon as I removed the earphones and was replaced in my head with my own very poor rendition of Wild Thing on the ukulele (which I have been working out, unsuccessfully since Reg Presley, lead singer of the Troggs passed away last month…Reg is quoted as saying this was his favourite pub).
Mine as well (and the barkeeper and most of the patrons at the New Inn in Coate, which I visited later in the day agree). I sat beneath what is essentially the Sistine Chapel Roof of crop circles and there is a hippie vibe but one that emanates from the sort of hippies that use soap and frequent booksellers–perhaps more like beatniks than flower power proponents. Next to my seat was a large African tom-tom and nearby was a tempting acoustic guitar (but neither I nor any of the dozen or so drinkers here at 8 minutes past noon had taken in enough alcohol for that).
I had a Croppie from Honeystreet Brewery which I highly recommend for a long run (abv just over 4%). While finishing the brew I peaked out my window to see another of the Wiltshire White Horses to tick off my checklist; a moment later, I was back out on the canal path heading toward the King’s Arms in All Cannings (with Sixto back in full howl).
So, four years now (or, rather, next week it will be…here’s the annual reports for years Three, Two, and One for historical perspective).
We just received our new visas valid until 2016 but plan to take the next step toward citizenship in a year, Indefinite Leave to Remain…sort of the British Green Card. There is an exam, first, but in general it is all downhill from here.
The view from Western Street near the new house…also all downhill
Additionally, we are in the process of moving house (which is why I rushed the annual report a week forward) from just north of the Oasis over to Old Town to a house situated close walks to either the Beehive or the Castle or the Globe (recently reopened!)—three locals instead of one and all three of high quality—and dozens of others a short walk. The new house has three bedrooms each larger than its counterpart in the old house, the two receptions are larger and made into more of an open-plan configuration, the bath is larger and has a tub (not just a shower), and there is a finished basement; on the down side, the kitchen is a little narrower and more primitive as is the small garden but everything we do and everywhere we normally go in Swindon (save for the butcher) is so close.
The only races I did this past year were the London Marathon (5 pubs plus a can of Carling on the last mile) and the Beerathon (5 miles with a pint and a hefty food item between each) and the mileage run for the year suffered from this lack of focus—1950 give or take about 25 (most estimates pretty good using gmap-pedometer), while the last several years (except for the year of the wreck) were in the 2200-2500 range.
On the runs, I visited 255 new pubs with a stunning 67 new ones (steep part of the graph) in September when I took two weeks off work and ran at least 10 miles per day in new territory each day. The 1000th wasn’t as big a thrill as I thought it would be, but I saw some really nice places and met some really fine folk. The September holiday found me visiting Gloucester, South Wales, Slough (exotic, I know) and Exeter along with some nearer-to-Swindon trips. The 100 Yellow Beer Challenge was responsible for a lot of second visits to pubs I might not otherwise have gone to after an initial stop and many of these seemed better the second time around. Oh, and my Workingman’s Club appears to have failed or at least hasn’t been open the last several times I’ve popped by (I have a grand one scoped out for the new neighbourhood, though).
Best pubs in Year Four (reverse order by First Visit write-up):
The Southgate Inn, Devizes
Byron’s, Swindon
The Hop Inn, Swindon
Dicey Reilly’s, Teignmouth
The Brass Monkey, Teignmouth
One Eyed Jack’s, Gloucester
Ye Olde Red Lion, Tredegar
The Rose of Denmark, Woolwich
The Volunteer Rifleman’s Arms
The Green Dragon, Marlborough
The British Lion, Devizes
The Blue Boar, Alsbourne (for the Dr. Who connections)
Favourite write-ups:
Postboxes
British Citizenship Exam Prep
Risk Assessment-Bins
Oxford Tourists
Assize Court, Bristol
Cock Flavour
Paul Simon in Hyde Park
Edie’s Lawn
The hunt
The Bremen Musicians (German children’s story)
Sex Tourism in Wiltshire
Modern Algebra for Omid
Burns’ Day Lunch
There are others search for ‘made me laugh.’ The blog may or may not have made some of the over 100,000 visitors laugh, but the damn fools keep checking in (that’s you, that is).
The day’s run had its most interesting sites behind it by the time I reached the Tunnel House, my turnaround point and the first of my pub stops. It is a grand, old house that once served the Thames and Severn Canal travellers as they either entered or emerged from the two mile (plus) tunnel to/from Sapperton. The tunnel is just wide and tall enough for a narrowboat, so it probably helped to have a drink before entering or immediately upon emergence.
The pub is fairly remote but it was hopping. Folks drive the back roads to get here unless, like me, they have used one of the several footpaths. The landlord is very friendly and the ales kept perfectly. I had a Uley’s Bitter that hit the spot and gave me a moment or two to sit, scratch the ears of the little dog that trotted through, and marvel at the structure and the odd collection of characters attending. Very nice.
A quarter mile from the station the Thames appeared.
It was a beautiful autumn day and by 2:30 I was dashing out of Kemble Station on the soggy pastures heading north. The rain has been relentless these past several weeks yielding thick, slick patches of mud. The fields were still saturated from the unusually wet summer when this most recent deluge started and are unlikely to dry without two to three weeks respite, so it seemed important to seize the sunny and mild conditions today. Besides, Jackie was working all afternoon and this would give me a chance to hit a few new pubs.
The other goal was to tick off another Carling in the 100 Yellow Beers in 100 Places, so I grabbed a can at the newsagents near my house on the way to the station, cracking it at the monument and pouring the first sip for Father Thames. I seem to be on a pace to have 150 for the year in addition to the 280 or so pubs (some overlap):
The disused Thames and Severn Canal is about a half mile behind this sign…
With the Thames Path complete (well, I’ve done all the bits from Abingdon to here, with some other bits in London and Berkshire thrown in) it was time to do some more of the Thames and Severn Canal (which I have hit bits of in Lechlade, Cirencester, and Stroud).
The first pub on this route was the Tunnel House Inn, at the southern end of the Sapperton Tunnel (a little more than two miles long and built for narrow boats). The return trip was hillier and along fairly quiet roadways along which the Thames Head made a useful stop, followed by a clothing change and one more for the road at the Tavern Inn near the Kemble Station.
Leaving the pub I spotted a shellshocked and confused looking urbanite wandering around. He seemed a bit dapper for the rural setting (I wasn’t the filthiest person whose path I crossed this day but he was positively resplendent . In the station, a woman asked me, “are you Lee? I’m meeting him here from London but we haven’t met before.” I pointed her toward the lost soul who somehow gave her the slip and appeared beside me asking if I had seen a woman waiting here. Sending him back toward the pub I spotted her across the tracks re-entering the station. “He’s crossing the bridge, now,” I yelled, pointing. One good deed per day.
The pubs in Pewsey were all closed at 11:30 Sunday morning, so when I confirmed this fact I started my run from the Cooper’s Arms which was otherwise a hive of activity (the Pewsey Carnival was setting up in the adjacent field). The lanes heading north were quiet and shrouded with a canopy of trees for a large proportion of the trip to the K&A Canal. A sign near the Waterfront Bar indicated that mooring was for strictly 48 hours or less:
A couple of women were in the garden of the Waterfront and said the bar was open and I think I squealed, “yippee.” Inside, Graham was cleaning up a mess on the bar and a couple of women awaited his attention so I had a bit of a look around.
The bar takes up most of the upstairs but there is a café and a seafood restaurant incorporated into the house as well. The ale today was Tribute and Doom Bar, both on gravity feed (ideal) and the Doom Bar had just settled so I got the first pint off the keg and it was sublime.
A brief conversation about my run ensued and the kind comments were rife, such as, “you’re never going to make it to Marlborough, just look at the state of you just running from the Cooper’s.” Thanks, sir.
One of the two canal bars I hit while on this trip up the Kennet and Avon towpath was the marvellous Barge Inn in Seend. The big garden was packed except under the willows, but I envisioned the leaves dipping into my Wadworth Red, White and Brew so I took up a spot on the landing next to the water.
There was a woman in her thirties fawning over a teenager nearby and, while this doesn’t bother me on those merits, her endless giggle and the high-pitched voice she seemed to be affecting was really close to loosening my fillings. The kid seemed tolerant of all this, but just barely…the things you’ll put up with to get laid, huh?
For this route I wanted to start in Devizes for the initial downhill segment (because I’m a lazy fat fuck) but opted to start in Trowbridge at the early opening Sir Isaac Pitman followed by a long-enough segment to ensure the other pubs on the way would be open (because more so than lazy, I am a drunken fat fuck). The trip involved running a canal towpath, so it is fairly flat until you reach a lock and then the climb is usually brief and small. The Kennet and Avon path is one of the first given the Google maps street-view treatment by mounting the 360 degree cameras on a large tricycle; it is worth a look if you plan to make a trip on your own.
The weather has been holding for a change, sunny and dry if a bit cool; but, sitting outside a pub with a beer at various breaks gives the sweat just enough time to dry and for me to start shivering before hitting the trail again. The path, itself, is well maintained but narrow and overrun with cyclists at times.
Click on route map to go to GMAP pedometer for this trip
Seend on the hill seen from the path
The pub crawl for this run went this way: from the Sir Isaac, north through the town centre and out to the trading estate on Canal Road (about a mile to the path). The public path is clearly marked soon after leaving the centre, and once on the path an Ordnance Survey map helps you judge good places to cross although the swing bridge (at about 3.75 miles) I took to follow a path to the Somerset Arms in Semington dropped me on a poorly maintained and swampy trail that petered out by the first fence and I had to veer off into a neighbourhood. From the Somerset, I rejoined the tow path until the Barge Inn appeared across an old stone bridge; this was followed by short segment to the Three Magpies (taking a roadway at the pub’s campground). Once on the path again, the locks become more frequent (from about the 9.5 mile point) and the path steeper until suddenly you are confronted by The Elevator at around 10.3 miles.
Bottom of the Caen Hill Locks
Locks and pond between them
Most of the people I have spoken to call the Caen Hill Locks “the Elevator.” It is the most daunting thing I can imagine in the normally placid and relaxing world of travel by long-boat, 15 locks in such rapid succession that they require their own, individual ponds to buffer the flow and prevent the canal running dry as the boats are lowered or raised a net 200 feet. You can’t really get a good photo of these from ground level but running alongside is a fascinating way to appreciate this engineering marvel. The locks go on, and on, and on….
Aerial representations from Google
Brewery at the end of the run
Surreal decor on the Gaasperplas Metro Lijn 53
From January to April 2002, I worked on my dissertation continuously in 20-30 hour shifts breaking for 5-6 hours sleep before starting another 20-30 hour shift…writing, revising/rewriting, and smoking up the last couple pounds of pot I had grown in the basement of our little ghetto house outside Athens–breaking this routine only for a hernia operation, a few therapeutic runs, discussions with my research adviser, and occasional meals. I defended the dissertation two days after turning in the all-but-corrections final version and two days after that we boarded the plane to Amsterdam with our cat and a couple of suitcases arriving finally in the Bijlmer (pronounced BILE-murr). My new boss had met us at Schiphol, dropped us off in a driving hailstorm commenting, “hey, weird weather, eh,” and we were left in a typical new Dutch rental: no lighting fixtures (the tenant buys and installs their own) and though called a house because it has an entrance on the street and two floors it was only as much a house as the one we shared walls with or the one upstairs (which you had to climb two flights of steep dutch stairs to reach from the front door). We had no euros, no litter box or cat food, and no idea really where we were.
Our house had no garden but the 5 meter wide balcony extended about 15 meters over a small storage facility
Heading out into the street, I encountered the market full of Africans (mine was an almost exclusively Ghanaian and Surinamese buurt) one of whom was very drunk and urinating on the sidewalk near a couple of coppers. I asked them (the police) where to find a cash machine and the one with the elaborate neck tattoo and the copious facial piercings told me I needed to go to Kraaienest which I found out in the ensuing interrogation is a shopping facility in the K-buurt (but I was in the G-buurt, so it would be a hike). She said the easiest way would be to take the Metro one stop down and when I said I didn’t yet have any cash to buy my ticket the other one, an enormous and unusually tall fellow, looked annoyed and said dismissively, “no one ever pays around here anyway…you will be fine.” Not wishing to take the chance my first few hours in the country, I walked to Station Ganzenhoef and followed the elevated rail line through some threatening looking high-rise tenements (including a section that was hit by an El Al 747 freight transport a few years earlier killing a bunch of illegal immigrants and resulting in the urban renewal efforts that culminated in housing such as that we were then moving into), passed several especially friendly (in my — erm — limited experience) heroin and crack dealers, and noted some of the funniest graffiti I had ever seen.
Without realising it, we had moved into what was then still thought of as the most dangerous neighbourhood in the Netherlands (although it turned out to be, easily, the safest place we had lived since about ten years before we met one another) and I was instantly and absolutely in love with the place. I still am, for that matter, so on this short visit we stayed in a B&B not ten minutes stroll away just beyond the Gouden Leeuw.
Pic from the web…nice shot of the buurt
We cleared Baggage Claim, Dutch Customs and Passport Control in a matter of minutes and picked up our OV-Chipkaart, the Oyster Card for the whole of Dutch public transport (replaced the Strippenkaart and is replacing the paper tickets on intercity trains) and were standing at our B&B front door an hour after landing. It was an incredibly sunny afternoon, 30 degrees Celsius, and I just had one other duty besides walking around our old neighbourhood and going to the city centre for a coffeeshop break and some Chinese food: the pipe hunt.
The day before we left for America in 2004, I took an old clay pipe and stashed it in a memorable place and then, because I have no memory (left it all in pipes over the last 50 years) sketched out the location in a running journal. The place that seemed most obvious was in an area protected from new construction by the need to have floodable areas to control the water. In southernmost part of this old wooded area called the Bijlmerweide I chose a tree with three trunks, each just small enough that I could touch thumb-to-thumb and forefinger-to-forefinger whilst throttling the trunk. The roots were rigid but separate from one another and the soil was soft enough to lodge the pipe under one of the roots pointing magnetic south by my compass. I had hidden a pipe and a gram of hash near the Berlage monument at Victorieplein in October 2001 and picked it back up on my return in May 2002, so this should probably have worked as well.
The triple trunked tree that ate my pipe
Things have changed a lot but the only real disappointment on this trip turned out to be the effects of eight years growth on the hiding tree. Each of the trunks was larger than the entire tree was before and the roots were absolutely massive. The pipe is almost certainly now an integral part of the plants vascular system and I only hope that years from now the roots are burnt away in some area renewal effort and this item is once more revealed to the world.
Eight years ago I could have tilted the tree with this stance…the pipe is somewhere approximately under the yellow circle, and I can post directions if you really want to try to recover it.
We rented some bikes and headed out toward the Hoge Dijk and further afield to an area flooded this time of year as much for the agricultural benefits as the fact that it provides a brief Spring sanctuary for migratory birds. It is very rural out that way but a head turn of no more than 60 degrees will always show the near proximity of Amsterdam, Amstelveen, or Duivendrecht. Stopping for a beer in Abcoude was another good trip down memory lane and we returned to the B&B by following the Amsterdam-Rhine Canal then passing through the Telegraafbos (an another managed forest adjacent) then around the Bijlmer to see what has become of some of the old high-rise apartments (now mostly low houses like our old one).
A couple of hours after a set of 400m repeats at the Oxford University track on Tuesday I started to feel ill with a fever and congestion accompanied by a sore throat. These became progressively worse as the work week continued and I left early Friday, staying in bed until noon Saturday, feeling awful. But, as quickly as it came on the funk left me so that Sunday I felt up to a bit of a run again and headed out across some trails in Cheney Manor. The sky was overcast and I left my compass again so my intended 45 minute tour stretched out to 80 minutes (plus a ten minute break, below) by the time I returned. Along the way I found a good trail along a disused canal and a stretch of railroad construction I think belongs to the Swindon and Cricklade (Steam) Railway.
My second wrong turn, but the wooded towpath along the cattail filled canal reminded me of home
Well, I say “found,” but actually I was completely lost a couple of miles from where I thought I was. I came out in some new builds, an American style suburban neighbourhood that immediately gave me the creeps with its excessive sized houses of dubious quality (they look good today but give the distinct impression of an impending slum in ten years time). Ten minutes of trying to find a way out of this nightmare was fruitless and I dashed over to a middle-aged couple out for a stroll to ask them for directions; when I got close they turned out to be no older than 30-years-old but seemed haggard for some reason. They were, however, quite helpful or, rather, they tried to be. When I asked if there was any escape from this estate they chuckled and asked where I was trying to go; when I said the Town Centre, the fella gasped and said it was very far (in a delightful Get-Moose-and-Squirrel accent, or for you non-Americans, a Compare-the-Meerkat accent). A full three minutes later they still had not figured out how to get out of their own neighbourhood but had given me directions that included “you will pass a pub.”
At this point I knew I was headed north, but wanted to explore the railbed
Pass a pub, indeed. I got more concise directions when I focused them on the Tawny Owl and then, thanking them, ran off in that direction. As I did so, I began to notice that this was a breeder neighbourhood with many, many children governed ever so tenuously by more haggard looking young parents. At nearly 50-years-old, I could be a great-grandfather in this buurt and I welcomed the sign at the pub that said that the bar area was for 25-year-olds and older (although this could be a Logan’s Run sort of trap). I took my 3B out to the garden area.
Families. Yuck. The average age of the 50 or so folks (excluding me) out in the garden was about 7-years-old and they were running around screaming and without a tether or anything. Of the ten or so adults, the oldest was about 25 and looked longingly at the doors back to the bar (and gave me a confused look as if to say, “hey, you don’t have to be out here…go, save yourself!”).
As much of a sign as I could find for the Clifton
There will be a point in 6 or 8 weeks where the training schedule will start to become a drag, but for now there is the exhilaration that this sort of structure lends to the running regimen. My [admittedly modest] goal is to be ready to do one-and-a-half hours (or 1:40 with a pub stop and quick pint) on the brand new Oxford 1/2 Marathon course 14 weeks from now, and a similar performance on the Swindon M/2 two weeks hence.
Today’s run was an easy hour that took me down the old tramway to the town centre, up Victoria hill to Old Town then west into the Town Gardens, through some neighbourhoods we can’t afford to live in and down a bridleway to a rails-to-trails bike path. This followed an arc-like path westward to the old Swindon Canal and the canal dropped me back near the Eagle with 25 minutes left on my run, so I headed up the King’s Hill and thought about which Old Town pub I’d way-lay in at the top when down Clifton I spotted the Clifton Inn…downhill, Arkell’s and open: result!
The rail trail above, tow path below...or up a hill on the bridleway to Old Town a bit east from here
I stopped to do the obligatory photos, seen here, then was mocked soundly when I entered but I believe this was only because the program about the Border Agency was at a commercial break. One guy said something about they were all saying, “cheese” for me but like a smart rat I didn’t take the bait. “Yeah, something smells a bit cheesy, here…3B, please sir.”
The UK Borders show was back on and we watched a lorry driver get busted for smuggling over 100,000 packs of smokes hidden in a cut out section of a stack of particle board. I had a look around and thought this was a nice sized little back street boozer, with a civilised little clientele in a neighbourhood that’s on our shortlist when we move away from the white trash currently next door. Regardless, I shall keep this in mind for running breaks in what is becoming one of my favourite hilly parts of town.
The Endless British Pub Crawl 
So, four years now (or, rather, next week it will be…here’s the annual reports for years Three, Two, and One for historical perspective).
We just received our new visas valid until 2016 but plan to take the next step toward citizenship in a year, Indefinite Leave to Remain…sort of the British Green Card. There is an exam, first, but in general it is all downhill from here.
The view from Western Street near the new house…also all downhill
Additionally, we are in the process of moving house (which is why I rushed the annual report a week forward) from just north of the Oasis over to Old Town to a house situated close walks to either the Beehive or the Castle or the Globe (recently reopened!)—three locals instead of one and all three of high quality—and dozens of others a short walk. The new house has three bedrooms each larger than its counterpart in the old house, the two receptions are larger and made into more of an open-plan configuration, the bath is larger and has a tub (not just a shower), and there is a finished basement; on the down side, the kitchen is a little narrower and more primitive as is the small garden but everything we do and everywhere we normally go in Swindon (save for the butcher) is so close.
The only races I did this past year were the London Marathon (5 pubs plus a can of Carling on the last mile) and the Beerathon (5 miles with a pint and a hefty food item between each) and the mileage run for the year suffered from this lack of focus—1950 give or take about 25 (most estimates pretty good using gmap-pedometer), while the last several years (except for the year of the wreck) were in the 2200-2500 range.
On the runs, I visited 255 new pubs with a stunning 67 new ones (steep part of the graph) in September when I took two weeks off work and ran at least 10 miles per day in new territory each day. The 1000th wasn’t as big a thrill as I thought it would be, but I saw some really nice places and met some really fine folk. The September holiday found me visiting Gloucester, South Wales, Slough (exotic, I know) and Exeter along with some nearer-to-Swindon trips. The 100 Yellow Beer Challenge was responsible for a lot of second visits to pubs I might not otherwise have gone to after an initial stop and many of these seemed better the second time around. Oh, and my Workingman’s Club appears to have failed or at least hasn’t been open the last several times I’ve popped by (I have a grand one scoped out for the new neighbourhood, though).
Best pubs in Year Four (reverse order by First Visit write-up):
The Southgate Inn, Devizes
Byron’s, Swindon
The Hop Inn, Swindon
Dicey Reilly’s, Teignmouth
The Brass Monkey, Teignmouth
One Eyed Jack’s, Gloucester
Ye Olde Red Lion, Tredegar
The Rose of Denmark, Woolwich
The Volunteer Rifleman’s Arms
The Green Dragon, Marlborough
The British Lion, Devizes
The Blue Boar, Alsbourne (for the Dr. Who connections)
Favourite write-ups:
Postboxes
British Citizenship Exam Prep
Risk Assessment-Bins
Oxford Tourists
Assize Court, Bristol
Cock Flavour
Paul Simon in Hyde Park
Edie’s Lawn
The hunt
The Bremen Musicians (German children’s story)
Sex Tourism in Wiltshire
Modern Algebra for Omid
Burns’ Day Lunch
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