Welcome to October! I can hardly believe it myself. Leaves are changing colour and beginning to fall. Some of us have already turned the heating on in our homes. With whatever lies ahead, I aim to continue walking.
01/09 – 9.5 miles – Wimbleball Lake and Haddon Hill, Exmoor
03/09 – 5.25 miles – Bleadon Hill (Weston-super-Walkers)
04/09 – 4.25 mile run – Wick St. Lawrence, North Somerset
05/09 – 3 mile run – Wick St. Lawrence
06/09 – 10.5 miles – Mendip Hills (Weston-super-Walkers)
09/09 – 4 mile run – Wick St. Lawrence
14/09 – 8.25 miles – Whernside, Yorkshire Dales
15/09 – 13.5 miles – Gragareth and Crag Hill, Yorkshire Dales
16/09 – 14.75 miles – Ingleborough, Yorkshire Dales
17/09 – 14.5 miles – Malham Tarn and Fountains Fell
18/09 – 9 miles – Pen y Ghent, Yorkshire Dales
24/09 – 3 mile run – Wick St. Lawrence
27/09 – 20 miles – Circuit of Bath (Julian House)
Total for September 2020 = 119.5 miles
Without a doubt, this will be my highest monthly tally of the year. Even if I do something more with the stacks of annual leave I still have to use, I can’t see me topping this total. It’s even more than what I did twelve months ago.
Another month in which I started fairly well in the world of running that is still quite new to me. I feel like this happens most months and that my routine peters away before the end. I can sit here, at the time of writing, and state that I haven’t done any running in October! That trip away to Yorkshire disrupted things a bit but was excellent in its own right.
It seems easy to forget now, that I did host two walks with Weston-super-Walkers. First, there was our final evening walk of 2020, which took in Bleadon Hill and ended up darkness. Well, the darkness fell sometime before the end… I’ve had thoughts about taking the group back there in the daytime. Then there was our first proper day walk since March. I was perhaps pushing my luck a bit in keeping it open for up to twelve people but now the law has changed on social distancing, I’ll be adhering to groups of six more strictly.
It is tempting to try and “bend the rules” to suit my own preferences – and I’ve seen at least one other Meetup group do this. But I do feel it’s not worth the risk and, this week, I heard of a young Ramblers group (they’re allowed up to thirty participants) being verbally abused by locals for holding a group size of greater than six.
Yorkshire, by far, was the greatest thing I have done this year and I doubt that anything will better it before 2021 arrives. This means that I have much writing to do on this blog, which I feel as though I’ve been neglecting this year – and often in favour of watching something on Netflix or YouTube. Is that really any less “anti-social” than typing on a computer?! Even as I write this, I’m aware that I was supposed to be using this time to edit my latest YouTube video – which is exactly what I had set out to do seven days ago…
One brief run before the end of the month and then I capped it off with a twenty-mile almost-marathon (walking) around Bath, in support of Julian House. This year, between 450 and 500 people took part in the event and there was a waiting list of those who weren’t able to make it. It did not rain once (in complete contrast to 2019) and it was generally a great event to have taken part in, with so much uncertainty in 2020.
Current total for 2020 = 582.5 miles
Thanks for reading.
PS. WordPress has forcibly changed the platform used for writing and publishing posts. It’s a bit of a headache to get around at the minute and I’m sure many will be able to relate.
Walks With Olly 