Made a flying visit to Teesside on mother in law duty this week. I normally hate coming down here but this week I managed to get in a couple of good runs. One of them took me along an old stone flagged pack horse route that traverses the moor between Commondale and Guisborough.
It’s a fascinating historical path, the flagstones having been laid hundreds of years ago by ancient monks as a means of getting there provisions delivered. Many, many feet have travelled that way such that the stones are badly worn and a groove runs all the way along them. Back in the 1980’s the local authority decided it might be a good idea to turn all the stones up the other way onto the unworn side, only to find some thrifty council from hundreds of years ago had already done that and the stones are worn on both sides.
My other run took me past the scene of the last in England execution by flailing. A particularly nasty form of torture involving the victim being tied arms and legs apart and their skin being stripped from the neck down their bodies. Most were dead by the time the waist was reached. My daughter’s old history teacher now lives in the house where the condemned man ate his last meal. Can you imagine facing that and wanting to eat!!!!
My runs last week were mainly night runs but I’m really getting to enjoy them. The views from the summit of Dumyat are awesome with all the lights of Stirling and swirling illuminated mist round the Wallace Monument.
Mind you on a run that took me by White Muir lochs by Gleneagles I got the fright of my life putting up several hundred pink-footed geese. Some racket their wings mad as they all took off in the pitch dark. I wonder how they find the water again without landing lights.
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