Category Archives: summer

123. Bridge on the River Wey

Posted on 12 September, 2006 by | Leave a comment

I’ve run along the Wey towpath a thousand times. The river passes through Guildford not far below my house, and close to where I used to work.

From Guildford, I can head north or south to link with other paths and tracks on routes from 3 miles to 22. Some of my earliest, shortest and most faltering runs played out along the river bank, and some of my longest and hardest pre-marathon tests as well.

new-bridge-on-the-river-wey-shalford-guildford-2006.jpgI’ve run there in lunchtimes, mornings and evenings, from the office and at weekends, in spring, summer and autumn, and in dry winters, too.

And although the riverbank lies almost on my doorstep, it’s still one of the most beautiful places I know to run, just about anywhere.
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Posted in 2006, Guildford, history, summer, Surrey and Sussex

122. Cephallonia dreaming

Posted on 1 September, 2006 by | 1 comment

cephallonia-sami-captain-corellis-mandolin.jpgThe Ionian Sea is shimmering brilliantly beside me as I look across the bay towards Ithaca. Late afternoon in a Greek summer is no time to be running, but it had seemed like a good idea as I lay beside the pool.

Now, half an hour later, the road is rising steeply out of Sámi, climbing up from the harbour through the pine and scattered olive trees. There are no houses here, no villas or hotels, and the landscape presents itself as it always has through history. Since time immemorial.
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Posted in 2006, A1 - the best of roads of stone, geology, Greece, history, summer

121. Hot in the city – Billy Idol at Guilfest

Posted on 7 August, 2006 by | 1 comment

billy-idol.jpgIt’s hot here at night, lonely, black and quiet
On a hot summer night
Billy Idol – July 1982

The changes to our weather patterns over the last few years have been gradual, but they really don’t seem that subtle any more. More than anything, there’s a certainty about our summers now which belies all those clichés about the weather in this country.

You only have to look at those once green lawns and fields, all uniformly browned and bleached for weeks now, to realise that southern England has become just another segment of the Mediterranean for a month or two every year.
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Posted in 2006, Guildford, heroes, music, summer

120. Norwegian blue – Stavanger

Posted on 14 July, 2006 by | Leave a comment

The rain is pouring now – not really cold rain, but wet rain all the same. Easy enough, once you’ve started running, but these are still, technically at least, the critical moments of indecision.

stavanger-norway.jpgThe black bar edges half way across the screen, flickers temperamentally back to zero, and then to half way once more.

There it sticks, motionlessly, for over a minute. And that rain is still falling, harder – running down my neck now. Testing my resolve.

I hold my hand over the infernal machine, blocking the signal. The bar doesn’t move. I press pathetically at the power button. Nothing at all. No choice now, I know, but to let it run out of juice, go comatose and lose its faint memory of Norway before I charge it up again at home. My GPS is dead, deceased, departed. No more.

Pining for the fjords.

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Posted in 2006, Scandinavia, summer

119. Schönbrunn, Vienna

Posted on 22 June, 2006 by | 1 comment

There’s always the sun
The Stranglers, October 1986

As I wake in my hotel in the eastern city suburbs at 7 am, I can still hear the strains of the Viennese Boy’s Choir departing from their programme to sing ‘Jerusalem’ at last night’s client reception. I can still picture the grandeur, imperial opulence and enormous chandeliers of Vienna’s Coburg Palace.

schonbrunn-palace-vienna.jpg
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Posted in 2006, music, summer, Vienna

98. Off the shoulder of Orion – Costa de la Luz

Posted on 9 September, 2005 by | Leave a comment

bladerunner-and-stork-migration.jpg

‘I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.’
Blade Runner (dir. Ridley Scott), 1982

A long, perfect beach in southwestern Spain, August 2005. Five miles through another blue morning under flawless skies in Zahara de los Atunes. It’s an elemental sort of place – the summer ocean is murmuring in the distance through the breeze to my left, the waves sparkling on the bay beyond the sand dunes front of me.
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Posted in 2005, A1 - the best of roads of stone, history, Spain, summer