SomersTownLisa

London Life
2023-02-07 15:38:26 (UTC)

The London Winter 10km and The Heath

Sun 08/02/2023
I helped at the Junior ParkRun, as Alison had posted that they were short, and this time I marshalled by the bird feeder and left straight afterwards. I ran to Kingsway where I wanted to cheer on Emma and others at the London Winter 10km. I was surprised they’d already started, because Emma told me last night she “thinks it starts about 10:20” which was a bit vague, a few hours before she had to be there. I assumed this was an earlier wave – they all had blue numbers and I think she might have had a purple one.

It was clear that the runners had left in roughly ten-minutes intervals, as is the post-pandemic way, as they gradually got slower and more infrequent, then there’d be a sudden influx of faster runners. I was one or two kilometres from the start. I saw Dave who waved to me, another three from our club, including a tall whire-haired bloke I recognised but didn’t hear me shout, a middle-aged woman who I didn’t notice until too late, and a younger girl who’s shirt was partly obscured by her water-holder, so I didn’t shout in time. I didn’t see Emma at all (or Sarah M, come to that). After the runners had all passed, I waited for another trance before realising it had finished and I ought to have got there much earlier.

During the race I saw three people fall over at the U-turn where I was standing. It was good to see the upper half of Kingsway closed to motor traffic. A man tried to talk to me, but I wasn’t interested in him and fobbed him off with basic answers to his questions. There was a jazz/blues band playing by the road. I think the guitarist was improvising, with the keyboard player and drummer keeping up with him. They played continuously, no gaps between songs.

I’d told Jack I might have to meet him at the Flask, where we’d booked a meal, but I had time to run back to St Pancras and get the Tube with him, While we were eating, he decided he wanted to get a train to Bristol for £40 each (return) this afternoon and go to see the band Thus Love again, though we’d have to leave to get home, before the main band Dry Cleaning came on. I’m not sure why he’s decided they are so great he wants to travel everywhere to see them (we’re already travelling to a later gig, having seen them in Birkenhead on Saturday). I felt bad saying I didn’t want to go, and that I might have, if we’d managed a full day in Bristol. As it turned out, he’d made a mistake and the tickets were all sold.

After the meal, we were going to walk back up to Highgate when we saw a small path to “Fitzroy Park”, which we didn’t know. The path led past some allotments to a small row of cottages which felt as if it was in the middle of the countryside. We were going to get a coffee by Kenwood House, but the queue was long so we just sat outside for a bit. We then made our way South along the Heathm trying to keep going South, though we don’t really know the paths. Eventually we got to the Hampstead Ponds, so we knew where we were. We dropped into the Karma bakehouse then got the 24 bus home.

In the evening we caught up with some of the Secrets of the London Underground television programmes, about Hampstead North End and Charing Cross.




Ad: