Hello from sunny Blackpool! Matt and I are currently in
England visiting his parents for a long weekend. It was rather a spontaneous visit,
had the idea on Wednesday, booked the Chunnel on Thursday, drove Friday night
and arrived Saturday breakfast time.
This morning I was wide awake whilst everyone else was
still busy snoring so decided to take the opportunity to go for a walk. Weather
forecast is for rain, which it did in abundance yesterday, so the morning
sunshine was a lovely surprise. I headed off in the direction of Stanley Park
and walked round the lake. When we lived in Blackpool our house was only 1 mile
away from Stanley Park so walking round it again brought back many memories.
We were leaders of our local church youth group and our house was often a place to hang out and stay over. Sometimes, late at night we’d motivate some bored teenagers to go for a walk round the park. We grabbed torches and whatever bread we could find before climbing over the locked gates to play tag near the clock tower and Italian Gardens or go wake up the ducks for a midnight feast (hence the bread). The park was always locked overnight and thankfully we were never caught by a park warden, even though our breaking and entering consisted of nothing more criminal than annoying a few sleeping ducks!
We were leaders of our local church youth group and our house was often a place to hang out and stay over. Sometimes, late at night we’d motivate some bored teenagers to go for a walk round the park. We grabbed torches and whatever bread we could find before climbing over the locked gates to play tag near the clock tower and Italian Gardens or go wake up the ducks for a midnight feast (hence the bread). The park was always locked overnight and thankfully we were never caught by a park warden, even though our breaking and entering consisted of nothing more criminal than annoying a few sleeping ducks!
Another memory I have is after the car accident that
damaged my spine. For many months it was excruciatingly painful to walk so Matt
would drive me down to the park (yes a whole mile!) so I could walk on the
lake-side path as far as possible before turning back. At that time, the idea
of walking round the whole lake seemed more akin to the idea of walking round
Lake Windermere (the largest lake in England at 18.8km long). Today, in
comparison, it’s more like a big puddle!
It is now less than 2 weeks till the Aschaffenburg
Citylauf and, as I mentioned before, my training schedule has completely gone
to pot due to illness. However, even though I must admit to contemplating
cancelling, having just read about Claire Lomas, a paraplegic, who is walking
the London Marathon at a rate of 2 mile a day my excuses are definitely invalid.
Here’s the link. I hope it inspires you as much as it did
me.
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