Sunflowers

One of the pleasures of running the same routes repeatedly is familiarity, whilst one of the disadvantages is …. familiarity.

Some mornings you can wake up and be a little tired of the thought of going to the same place but somehow when you get out you see new things, subtle changes, an evolving landscape or different activities, and the run is still interesting, still fresh. When you go on holiday to a place you know but see infrequently you can get the boost of the genuinely new so that each run is an exploration whilst still knowing where you are going.

I still like to look for changes and the best crop in all the whole world is sunflowers. Every day they look different and running between the fields of yellow is fun. They are tall, the right height to be looked squarely in the face.


In only a couple of weeks they change from having a greenish tight centre to a full old semi-globe before the petals drop, the head droops and the colour dulls. These two pictures were taken from the same field and shows how they move through stages.

I also like how , for agriculture, they are sown in straight lines and stand like soldiers but there are often one or two who are contrarians - standing to the side looking in the opposite direction. I am always amused when things break ranks.


Like anything they look different in different light. In the high sunlight they open up and you see the brightness of the yellow petals whilst when conditions are gloomier they close and look more tousled, slightly browner. As in the final photo.

Morning or Evening

Morning or evening are the only times to run as the meat of the day is too hot. My choice is morning as evenings are much more suited to gentle strolls around the village. One of the great pastimes is to walk around to look at all the properties to see if there have been any changes - places for sale of new renovations, that sort of thing. There are about 150 people in the village of whom about 25 are outsiders who have bought dilapidated properties to renovate. most they are English but apparently on the scale of things they are more acceptable than Parisians.

The evening walks took us in loops in the countryside around the village and these pictures were taken about 9:30, when the sun was setting.

Morning running has the advantage of discipline: I had to be out by 8 at the latest, or it would be too hot. This means there can be no procrastination or general messing about. It has to be wake-up get dressed and go! So every morning (bar two) I woke up at 7:15 and ran before breakfast.

There were two great advantages. The first was that I saw the countryside whilst it still felt fresh, whilst the second was that when I was out the bakers van visited, so I returned for a breakfast of fresh French bread and croissants. Brilliant. Unfortunately it is a routine I have no hope of replicating at home.

Ah well I have my memories.

Back Again

It has been over three weeks since I last posted. Although I have been away for most of that time, there is no excuse for the gap since Tuesday, except that I am finding it difficult to get back into my normal routines . So sinews need to be stiffened, resolve needs to be strengthened and blogs need to be written.

Our holiday was in a small village near Matha (which in turn is fairly near Cognac), where my sister and brother-in-law have a house. We go there quite often and love the peace of the countryside and the way our normal world first fades and then totally disappears. No internet, TV or radio - no need to know about anything happening anywhere else. A house, a group of people, daily tasks, outings, eating and drinking - and that is all there needs to be.

The countryside is perfect for running - open and rolling, with traffic-free roads. No run is flat but for every long drag up there is a lovely long slope down. As well as the roads linking the villages there are masses of small vine roads to give the farmers access to their crops, so you can run on good surfaces but feel as if you are running through the fields. There are no hedges, or other barriers to block you in so you can stand up straight, look out and see for miles.

The agriculture is interesting . Our tradition is for farm houses to be isolated - on their farm. Here the farmers all live in the village and travel out to their surrounding land. For an outsider there are no clear lines of demarcation between the land of different farmers, just as there is nothing between the different crops - they butt up against each other so there can be a vines next to wheat, next to sunflowers, next to maize, with trees as windbreaks. It is probably close to how things were before land enclosure - more like medieval strip farming but done in a modern way. Except that there are no animals. A generation ago every farmer would also have kept a few animals but the economics have now changed.


So here are a couple of photos of the landscape. I will amuse myself over the next few posts with some more photos and might even make some ludicrously convoluted attempt to link them to running.

A Short Break

So Juneathon has ended and it's time for a change. Time for a holiday

I will be in France and out of internet contact for the next 17 days so this blog will be going dark for a little while. But from the 20th I will be back remembering runs on the country roads of the Charente and posting a few pictures.

Good running everybody and I look forward to reading about all your exploits when I return