Saturday 27 June 2009

Ridgeway Training Run


Today's training run took in the wonderful sights on the Ridgeway. The Ridgeway is a 89mile long trail that begins at Ivinghoe Beacon in The Chiltens, and stretches South West finishing in the South Downs at Marlborough in Sussex. The section I was running today was 12 miles (one way) from Ivinghoe to Wendover. This includes 408m of ascent and 315m of descent. As I had to come back to these figures are double!

A foggy start at 7.15am!

This sign left me more than a little confused! The Ridgeway is always marked by the white acorn and so on seeing this sign I naturally went left. When infact I should have gone straight on (apparently). I only knew this after a 1 mile detour, which took me in a circle all the way back to my car!
The path to somewhere (I hope)...

High over the A41 at Tring.
I'm here mum!


You go through some nice villages on route with some lovely traditional homes.

Which way!!??
St Mary's Church at Wendover.

Made it to Wendover centre! (half way)

Just follow the white rabbit.... errmm I mean.... acorns!

Across the Grand Union canal at Tring.

Ivinghoe village out on the horizon (almost there now :-)

The white lion on the Dunstable downs...

Made it!!! Ivinghoe Beacon.... 24 miles and 4 1/2 hours later after starting out from this same point. A great run which certainly pushed me on the varied terrain. I definitely want to come back and run more of the Ridgeway. I even plan to perhaps tackle the whole thing next summer in the Ridgeway run which takes place in the last weekend of August each year.







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