Canal Adventure #3 – Johnson’s Hillock

Or – From the Familiar to the Unknown.

This is my home stretch of the canal. When I was first starting to run, I did my run/walk sessions with my friend, each week my running creeping up by a minute at a time. Since then, it’s been a favourite of mine for being a mainly flat  3 or 4 miles with lovely scenery and a good chance of spotting some animals. I hadn’t expected to run this as part of the Canal Adventure for a few weeks, but the yesterday’s weather turned out fine and we fancied a route outside the village.

Bridge 80 - currently under repair

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Canal Adventure #2 – Adlington to Haigh

A bit tardy with the blogging, but on Friday I completed the second chunk of my Leeds and Liverpool canal adventure. This section is kind of known to me; I ran the very beginning and across the very end during Janathon, and I have sailed down some of the route on a barge a couple of times. I thought that I had been further along towards the end point, but it turned out that I was stealing the memories of former Sooty handler Matthew Corbett and I was actually remembering the lovely Locks and Quays programme that he made about the area. Ooops.

The start - Bridge 73

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Saying thanks at the Janathon lunch

Thank you to everyone who chipped in to say thanks to Cathy for organising the 31 days of hell wonder that was Janathon – you’re a very generous bunch (it shows how much we all appreciated Cathy’s hard work) and we were able to get £100 Pizza Express vouchers (carbs, very important), £225 Amazon vouchers and some bespoke Janathon goods. Continue reading

A man, a plan, a canal, panama

Or, more accurately, a woman, a daft idea, a canal, Leeds-Liverpool.

After a bit of pondering, I’ve set upon my post-Janathon challenge – I’m going to run the length of the Leeds-Liverpool canal this year. It’s an idea that I considered last year, but dismissed as being a bit too, well, difficult. Having completed Janathon successfully and in one piece, it’s now just another daft running challenge*. My daylight Janathon runs made me realise how much nice scenery is on my doorstep, how much I like a canal and that I only really run along the same 7 mile stretch (leaving another 120 miles unexplored). Continue reading