Pretty in grey

After a few days of inclement weather, the Sunday turned fair, cool, still and dry with a really popular day for runners and joggers, it seems. I counted 13 before I reached the end of my first half hour walking, all scuttling past me one way or the other, often through the leaves, twigs, branches and occasional mud that were the legacy of a stormy Saturday.

I was looking to make the most of perfect walking conditions, the temperature hovering around 10 Celsius. I hadn’t taken the Itchen Bridge route to Southampton for a little while, and it is a fact of life now that pretty much anywhere you return brings a fresh building site or fledgling buildings. That is, except on the Bridge itself, of course. Sadly, the Itchen Bridge again had small bunches of flowers commemorating past deaths unswayed by numerous Samaritans stickers at regular intervals.

I made good pace to my coffee stop in Southampton after almost exactly two hours and almost exactly seven miles. I take 3.5 miles per hour as a decent rate given the need to stop for traffic and road crossings. Of course, as ever, the observation that traffic lights don’t apply to some cyclists, speed limits don’t apply to some motorbikes, and some cars don’t have indicators meant some caution and patience was necessary.

The coffee shop was fairly well populated this late morning and the baristas rather over-worked. I found a newspaper and a seat fairly close to the two toilets. I was surprised and slightly amused that a number of people tried and failed to open the toilet doors before reading the notice that they needed to get a code from a receipt to open the door. Obviously the shop had been ‘suffering’ the heinous crime of people coming in to use the toilet without purchasing anything.

This seemed more trouble than it was worth. A middle-aged man was told by a member of staff that he would need to get a receipt but, a few minutes later, the same member helped a young attractive woman (pretty in pink, actually) by entering the appropriate code for her. I knew once I had finished my coffee that I would need the facilities and I hadn’t bothered to get a receipt (well, who does?). I stood up, hoping to meet someone just coming out of one of the toilets, holding the door for me, when a member of staff offered to tap in the code. I wasn’t wearing pink, so what does that say about me – pretty in grey?

A decent walk thereafter, past the train station and up the length of Shirley High Street, then right onto Winchester Road, Burgess Road past the university, through Portswood and Bitterne back to Sarisbury. A few hills in there and a very good 20.5 miles.

I will be booking my Ultra Challenge for 2020 within the next day since the ‘early bird’ discount period finishes tomorrow. I haven’t quite made my mind up whether to do the Peak District, Lake District, Cotswold Way or South West Coast2Coast Challenge. They are the four 100km events between 13 June and 25 July so they will be fairly short nights at that time of year but could be quite warm in the peak of the day. You can’t really foresee what the weather will be like on any particular day seven or eight months in advance but you just hope that it will be dry. I don’t think I’ll be doing those for charity – so I’ll be self-funding which is a bit of an outlay but I don’t feel I can keep asking friends to sponsor me over and over again. For three of those four, I have family or friends who live conveniently close to the start I may have to flutter my eyelashes and smile sweetly. But I am pretty in grey, so I won’t have to work it too hard.