Posts

April - night run in the demon valley

Image
At the head of the Goyt Valley, towering above Buxton, lies Shining Tor. The Goyt Valley drops down to the east of the Tor. The Goyt Valley has always been a busy place, once it was a place of mining and industry; now it is a place for tourism and sailing. Families come to walk the paths around the two reservoirs which fill the valley, explore the ruins of Errwood Hall and buy ice creams from the vans which park in the many car parks.    If you drop down the western side of Shining Tor, the Cheshire side, you enter a very different valley. The hidden valley of Thursbitch, a quieter place; the demon valley; A place steeped in myth and legend. Made famous by the Alan Garner novel of the same name this is a place where, according to  Garner , farmers lock their doors at dusk and the local vicar refuses to enter. It is a place of standing stones, ancient magic and pagan ritual.  Thurs  is the Old English word for demon so Thursbitch is quite literally the Demon Valley, according to the 14
Post a Comment
Read more

March - The way out of the madness and another not quite race report

Image
I saw a lot of Shining Tor this month. Always cloudy! A much wiser person than me once said 'I can cope with despair, it's hope that's the killer.' He may have been talking about decades of supporting Manchester City but it also summed up the mood of many people at the start of this month. We made it through the darkest days of the pandemic and lockdown but the release of the roadmap out of the restrictions brought a sense of terror. Things were returning to normal, but not normal. The kids returned to school but have to do a corona test twice a week. We are told that pubs and shops will reopen but social distancing and masks will be in place for the foreseeable future. We are worried about how we will cope when we are allowed to socialise again. What will it be like to stand in a crowd at the start of parkrun? Queue at a bar? Hear that one person cough in a quiet moment at the theatre? March also opened with some awful weather which sapped my enthusiasm for running som
Post a Comment
Read more

February - The Long and the Short of it. A not quite race report

Image
February is too short. Our running club has set a championship challenge (in lieu of races) to run a fast 5k during February. The route choice is your own. Hence lots of Goyt Valley Striders have been throwing themselves off the top of big hills and hurtling down in an attempt to break the land speed record.  My first attempt was misjudged. I found a big hill, ran down it I won't bore you with the details but I still had a lot of 5km left when I got to the bottom. I ended up running back through the village at 6pm on a Friday night, dodging the socially distanced chippy queue which must have cost valuable seconds. It was still my fastest ever 5k but I thought I could do better. The shortness of February meant that I didn't have time to recover properly before having to do another attempt.  Attempting a route tried and tested by my better (at least at running) half, I took myself up another hill on a fine early spring day. I stood for a moment at the top of the hill and looked a
Post a Comment
Read more