Zebra Finch

This is an inconsequential little post but I wanted to show one of the strangest sights I have come across on a trail. It was on a walk in a small nature reserve in Saintes and I was so busy looking up and around that I almost missed this tiny bird burrowing into the grass of the path. A tiny zebra finch, completely unfazed by the presence of people. We got close but it was not at all agitated. It carried on so calmly i began to wonder if it was incapable of flight but after a time it hopped up and flew to a nearby branch. So it was just used to people. It must have been a household pet escaped from its cage. I wonder how long it will last i the wild? 

Back from Holiday

Back from holiday and it is  time to get back to some blogging.

We went, as we do most years, to a small village in south west France not far from Cognac. and it is the best running country I know. A rolling, open landscape with few hedges but an occasional lines of trees and small areas of woodland. You can see for miles, the sky is big and the light wonderfully clear. Criss-crossing are plenty of small, empty roads that make planning a route of any distance a doddle. As the land is undulating there is always some challenge so you know you have done some work but without the grinding intimidation of really steep slopes. 

In the height of summer you have to get out early before it gets too hot but nearer to autumn there is more latitude. Getting out at 8 - 8:230 was just fine. Once out the feeling is one of peace. Obviously the landscape is highly cultivated and everywhere there is evidence of people and  their work but with hardly anybody about you can feel you are on your own. You can stretch out without any sense of being crowded, and it encourages you to look around. Overhead there are birds and I am particularly taken with a buzzard who patrols the area - it is his. But you don't have to look at anything in particular: the sense of openness is enough.

The picture shows another feature - the allotments scattered around all the villages. This is a reminder (even if this particular allotment has mostly been harvested) of what I like about France - the food. Not the most unusual of insights perhaps but nevertheless true. Whether it is the restaurants or the riot of colourful vegetables in the markets, there is much that tastes good. 

So there you have it, my holiday defined in one short sentence: run a bit and eat a lot. Perhaps not a recipe for tip top fitness but as a holiday plan there is a lot to recommend it.

2011 Streak Day 297: (Thursday October 27th): Travel

2011 Streak Day 297: (Thursday October 27^th)

Walk 3 miles, Time 1hr, Weather - dark and wet when I set out bright when I arrived.

The picture is of people milling around Paris Montparnasse station. It is like any station: so many people, so many reasons for travel. My reason is pleasure. I am on my way, once more, to the Charente and am catching the train to Angoulème. A couple of months from the summer holiday and I am going back again but this time I am going there to offer a little help to my brother-in-law with the eternally ongoing building project that is his french house.

I take a childish delight in long training journeys and almost like the prospect of arrival as much as actually getting there, especially if you have to get up early and the day stretches out before you - it seems more of an adventure. For this journey I had to get up at 4:30 (plenty early enough) and set out in the dark and damp to walk to the station (pleasure doesn’t come from things being easy). As I walked I thought myself lucky because serious rain and soaking trousers would not a happy rail passenger make.

On the Eurostar I sat alongside a grandfather, father and child. All three were train enthusiasts, something I gathered from the adults reading railway magazines and having the odd conversation about high speed points and the boy getting excited about seeing a TGV painted the wrong colour. It was reassuring to see a family sharing an interest, a reminder that the world was still a decent place. 

The bit of overheard conversation I liked the best was not about trains at all. The father was showing the grandfather a GPS app on his iPhone. “Look”, he said “it shows you exactly where we are on our journey.” “Well where are we then?” “In the middle of nowhere.”

I sometimes feel like that when collecting stats about my runs. The technology is all very clever but all it shows me is that in running terms I am in the middle of nowhere.

Watermarks

Apart from cows, crops and moors one of the themes of this blog is paper making. (For some reason these topics seem to be completely ignored by the mainstream running press).

By some coincidence we were visiting an area of France with historical connections to paper making. Near Angouleme there are two mills one dating from the eighteenth century the other from the even earlier that still produce paper in the traditional way. There was a chance to make comparisons between the Grand Union Canal and early industrialisation, and the beautiful Charante and craft production.

The mill at Fleurac is a working museum, demonstrating how paper used to be made whilst still producing high quality, craft paper. It is in a beautiful location by the river and recently money has been spent developing the landscape to enhance the sense of peace and timelessness.

In someway Fleurac is a bit to perfectly preserved, as if it is part of the heritage industry. The Verger mill, a little further along the Charente,  gives a greater sense of continuity, showing more signs of the lumps and bumps of age.  Paper has been made here since 1539 and it is still a business making facsimile 17th and 18th Century paper for the restoration of books prints and drawings. 

 

When thinking of this type of paper I think of watermarks and remember how I was fascinated by them as a kid. Firstly they were only in thick, good quality paper, something I rarely used and therefore thought a bit special. Secondly, and most importantly, you could only see them properly when you held them up to the light. They held a secret message, they were slightly mysterious, they were a hidden code.

Only later did I discover how they were made. In manufacture,the paper is pressed with a mark when still wet, When it dries that mark remains in its structure. I like the word because it precisely describes the process. It is a mark made in water – and how poetic is that idea?

By analogy you can extend it to any mark that is embedded when something is being formed. I think of dough-like infants being pressed by their experiences and then carrying that semi-invisible branding as they grow older and firmer. These things form you character. When you start any new venture, and are learning, you are still watery enough to be marked. With running I think of the early stages and a couple of things that hit me almost as revelations, which are still part of the fabric of me as a runner.

The first was the understanding that slowing down meant I could run further. This may sound stupidly self evident, but I had previously thought that proper running meant puffing hard and being uncomfortable. Only after I finding an easy pace did I discover the enjoyment in running and know that if I could run for 20 minutes I could also run for 30, then if 30 I could also run for 40, etc, etc. It is a matter of finding your own internal rhythm – your own watermark.

The second was the enjoyment of being outside as part of the landscape, feeling its changes and finding the places you like to be. This is often the canal and if anything runs consistently through my running it is the Grand Union – another watermark.

Photothon 23: If you build it

It is at this point that I start to question my thought processes. I actually ran here for the express purpose of taking a photo of a haystack (or hay wall if you prefer).

The photothon has had an interesting effect on my route-making. I now give it more thought and try to go to places that might have something to photograph or some attached story. In this case it is a very tiny story.

The previous evening we had been out and were driving back at about eleven, just after dark, when we saw a cluster of very bight lights ahead. They were not moving so they were not vehicles coming towards and anyway pattern was wrong. It was puzzling, we knew we were in the middle of nowhere and had no idea what it could be.

When we passed could see that they had been harvesting the fields and only just stopped. They had been working by the lights of their tractors and the large harvester. Now it was finished the whole group were relaxing and having a few beers after a long hard day.

For some reason I thought of two things almost simultaneously. The first Thomas Hardy and images of harvests in the nineteenth century. The second was a film of several years ago, 'Field of Dreams', where Kevin Costner built a baseball field on his farm. I just remembered the switching-on of floodlights in the middle of the countryside. This field glowed in the same way.

Anyway the inner voice that Kevin Costner followed said that 'If you build it he will come' – so I thought I'd better go back there.

But this was France and not Iowa or Wessex, discarded amid the clover I saw this packet of Gitanes

Photothon 22: In the shade

Run date 5 July

I wanted to give an idea of how quiet the running was. Clear skies, empty roads, peaceful villages. It is perfect country for putting in serious mileage, building up your strength and preparing for a long race.

With one proviso – you must either get up early or run late. On holiday running late is awkward because there are so many responsibilities related to eating, drinking and conversing. You therefore have to start early - and I was useless. Consistently I got up an hour later than I planned. Luckily the weather was a bit variable but on two days there was hot, hot heat and I am not good in the heat.

So on the run you look out for shady spots, and this is a very shady spot - but they do not last long. As my mind wandered I started making calculations, wondering if I wrung out all my clothes it would fill my water bottle or overflow it.

When you start thinking like that you know you are in trouble.

Jousting Boats and Sport

These are jousting boats.

I never knew such a sport existed, yet here it is in Cognac with a tournament of 8 boats and it is a very nice, relaxed affair. All the crews are having a great time, splashing about, winning some, losing others. There is a beer tent and a public address – so everything is as it should be.


The great thing about it is that it is fun and in the best sense it is amateur. You can see from the photo below that some of the rowing is, to say the least ragged. But somehow this is the whole point. And if it became too slick and professional it would probably become dull. As it is it is pure sport.


There are two types of sport. The first and the type that dominates far too much of the nations attention is professional sport, where the aim is absolute excellence. Everything that can be done to gain a victory is done and the sportsmen are identified from an early age, selected as being the best, then coached, trained, protected, and, mostly, paid extravagantly. These people are separate from us in so many ways, the only role we have is as spectator and supporter. We can look-on and applaud but don't know in our bones what it feels like to run so fast or hit a ball so well.

The second type of sport is truly amateur and is for everybody else. All of us who have other lives, other jobs, other responsibilities but who need to be physically active and participate in something despite not having any great talent. It is this sort of sport that is closest to my heart, and it allows me to call myself a runner. It is also helps you understand yourself better and gives you the perspective to recognise the distance between desires and achievements. It is good for your body and your mind.

Also, and this is most important, I reckon that most true sports are rooted somehow in the pub. I can imagine a bar session that had reached the stage of stupid ideas when someone said “ I bet we could joust with boats. They would then all join in and draw up the spec for the type of row boat, platform lance etc. until they had a silly but practicable plan. Well that's how I like to imagine it. (I would be really disappointed if the idea came out of a business meeting in the tourist office or from the PR department of one of the Cognac houses). It's also how I like to imagine the genesis of some of our odder running events. Surely you have to be a tiny bit tipsy to think that running between Birmingham and London, along the canal, is a good idea.

That's another characteristic of the second type of sport – it has elements of fantasy, imagination and fellowship. I don't see too much of those things in professional sport, it is all far too serious.

Photothon 21: village decoration

Run date: ! July

This comes from the small village of Massac and I don't really understand the picture. It is some sort of ancient press but what it pressed I know not. It will have had something to do with the work of the village in the past but is now used as decoration. That is all I can guess

In all the local villages there are such touches. They spend some of their local taxes to keep things looking bright. Round the corner from this press there is for example a big tub of flowers. Over the past decade the number of outsiders coming in and renovating properties which would otherwise have been abandoned has increased this tax take and the villages do look smarter.

In our village the equivalent picture is of the old, disused, pump, which has been given a new coat of paint and stands proud in all its maroonness.

Photothon 20: Open countryside

Run date 30 June

The rules of Photothon are that at the furthest point from the start I take a picture. There is a bit of latitude in this because I never know the exactly where this is (even my out and backs tend to have little loops and the odd diversion). Usually I find something and then declare it the furthest point. In this I am a bit like the Texas sharpshooter who shoots at the barn door and paints the target afterwards, but only a little bit.

I thought the first run might be a challenge because there was no way of fudging the fact that I would have to take a photograph in open, very open countryside. However, and please do not laugh at me when I say this, I found the agriculture and field pattern interesting.

There are areas of wheat, vines, corn, sunflowers, potatoes next to each other. It is the reverse of the monoculture which would have trampled similar land in the UK or America. Looking at this you can see something important in the way France has retained its food culture and the link between growing and eating. The Charante grows an incredible variety of fruit and vegetables, all available in the local markets. Iowa in comparison has some of the best agricultural land in the United States but effectively only grows corn and soya and so cannot provide a decent diet for its own population.

This photo is not however about crops it is about attention to the look of the landscape. Where there are no crops there are wild flowers. The verges are full of them and even fields,when they are being left fallow, are decorative. Here is a field of wild flowers abutting a field of wheat.

The run itself was quite quite tough and I should have acclimatised myself with a shorter route first. But hey ho I was enjoying myself and only realised the problem when it was too late.

The roads are quite exposed and straight, which makes them a little bit relentless. When I run at home there are always twists and changes to make the distance feel shorter; "oh I am here already" sort of thing. On a long straight road you tend to wonder when there is going to be a change. However the really hard part was the rolling nature of the land. Going out it was gently downhill but coming home was an incline that went on and on and on and on.

I consoled myself with the thought that it would do wonders for my endurance