This morning was much fresher after a very dramatic night in which thunder and lighting were in abundance (guess that hot weather had to break sometime!) and in which I felt very lucky to randomly get a glimpse of some ball lightening! It was totally chance that I saw it; an amazing sight and I couldn't help wondering how dramatic it would have been up at Hadleigh Castle looking out over the estuary! I remember being woken one night and going with my parents for a terribly exciting midnight-storm-walk along the cliff top during a break in a similar heatwave when I was small (some time in the eighties!) and seeing proper forked lightening out over the sea, so I can imagine!
 The Approach to Hadleigh Castle from Old Leigh | It was still rumbling about when I decided to set off for a last Leigh-on-Sea run before my train back into London but I managed to avoid the downpours! I decided with a train to catch it would be unwise to do too much exploration but for some variety I struck out in the opposite direction and went down in to Old Leigh before saying good bye to the ruins and back through the woods, which were distinctly more soggy than in previous days! I was also aware that this meant I was doing a big chunk of down hill before a long slow climb so it was a bit of a challenge although I took a shorter route. |
| It was interesting to compare road running paced miles with trailly miles; particularly as the rain had turned the dusty paths into a strange sticky clay based mud that sucked at my trainers and occasionally flung huge globs of earth up to stick on my calves! This, combined with the hill up to the castle added a whole minute on to mile 3, at 9:35 compared to an identical 8:31 for mile 2 and 4 either side of it! Again, the wood slowed mile 5 down to 9:12 but I really wasn't thinking about speed as I was having far too much fun pretending to be the escaping heroine fleeing whatever horror had kept me captive in the ruined castle. Thankfully I didn't have a flurry of billowing skirts to impede my progress however, just a pair of increasingly muddy leggings! Well that's that for Leigh-on-Sea this time round; It's the first time I've visited since my running renaissance and wonderful to explore a relatively familiar area in a new way. I always look forward to going back but now I have yet another reason to; so much more runsploration to be done! |  Hadleigh Great Wood |
Klitch Action!
