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| Bed Car at Wokefield Park Hotel |
Last weekend I was on an excellent business course at Wokefield Park in Berkshire. I often take my running gear with me when I travel so I get a chance to run in new places.
As I arrived on the Friday night there was a school prom happening on site and there was a massive queue of crazy vehicles waiting to deliver gleeful students. One was an american police car, one kid rocked up in black tie and a scramble bike, other in limos….but the winner by far were the girls who turned up in bed (bed car).
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| Wokefield Park Hotel and my wet footprints |
I got up EARLY on a wet Saturday morning (6am) and donned my running gear and ran out across the hotel grounds. Matt and Tim who were taking the course had PROMISED (not promised) they would meet me at 6am for a run over a beer (and or wine) or 4. In classic Greensand Way discipline I had stayed up late the night before drinking lots of sports drink (alcohol). It was VERY wet when I ran (ALONE) and the grass was waterlogged which didn’t bode well for my cross country run.
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| Wheat Fields near Wokefield Park |
My wife Dr G told me the hotel grounds were huge and I could just run round them. The grounds are big , containing a BMW training HQ , paintball, crazy rope climby thingy and a golf course…BUT………….I like running long distance and the opportunity to go ‘out of grounds’ was too tempting. The hotel has fantastic gym, pool and spa facilities………..but running machines in a gym never come close to the fun (danger/confusion/surprise) of the outdoors.
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| The Berkshire Circular Route near Wokefield Park |
I headed West out of the grounds towards a footpath route called the ‘Berkshire Circular Routes’. In my head I had planned out a rough 5 mile square shaped run using my Maverick app on my android phone. It had rained the night before (and for about 3 months solid in England generally) and as I ran through the chest high foliage and paths that skimmed round the open fields (for normal people about waist high) I got absolutely soaked. It was cold and made me shout out half angry/half laughing.
The route took me on into Wokefield Common and ran along and round Pullens Pond. So far I hadn’t seen anyone that morning.
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| Pullens Pond in Wokefield Common on the Berkshire Circular Route |
The combination of flat open fields and dense woodland reminded me of some of the Kent stretches of the Greensand Way.
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| Starvale Woods on the Berkshire Circular Route |
Once through the Common the route took me south through Starvale Woods and eventually I popped out into a little village/town called Mortimer. There was no one about. No dog walkers. …No one.
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| Mortimer on the Berkshire Circular Route |
From there the route took me East through Wheats Farm and back in the general direction of Wokefield Park. I could start to see Wokefield Park in the distance from the farm and checking my phone knew I was going to do a perfect 5 mile ish run in under an hour.
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| Wokefield Park in the distance from the Berkshire Circular Path |
I’m not known for my navigation skills. Underwater I have a built in homing beacon that works brilliantly on wrecks and reefs and can always get us back to the boat. Above ground and flying even with ‘Science’ (technology such as a smart phone or GPS) I can get horribly ‘uncertain of my exact location’.
Today was to be no exception.
‘Somewhere’ near Monkton copse the path wasn’t clear at all, nor was there any signposting and the GPS ordnance survey display with my location on the phone showed a path that simply ‘wasnt there’. What ‘was there’ was a whacking great big hedge. ….and no paths……and no one to help or ask.
I ran on in the ‘general direction’ I wanted to go and skirted round a field hoping to find the road I needed to cross. The crops and undergrowth were high and wet, I got another dose of ‘Stingingnettlegeddon’ as bad as the time we were on the Greensand Way (when I got back to the hotel room my entire legs were pimpled and red from the stings) and I had to ‘wade’ through the undergrowth in slow motion to work my way round the edge of the field.
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| Er…….where is the path on the Berkshire Circular Route near Wokefield Park. |
Eventually I fell out of a field and popped through a fence onto the lane I wanted that led to a side entrance marked on the map that ‘allowed’ me back into the Wokefield Park estate. I had picked up so much foliage and ‘sticky green thingys’ I looked like I was trying to blend in with the local terrain.
And so on my morning run came my last hurdle….literally. The access marked on the map back into the estate was blocked by a whacking great gate. In true Hash House Harriers style I saw this not as a problem but as a challenge and after trying to climb over it found out that with a little squishing I actually squeezed through the railings.
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| the ‘easy access’ back into the Wokefield Park estate. |
I got back within an hour , filled the bath with soil and foliage in my room and spent the rest of the day on the course with legs that felt like they were on fire.
The weekend course was great, the run was a change of scenery and another new place I’ve run in ( wow is this part of the country FLAT though).
It was only as I started writing the blog though that I realised I had run for a whole hour without seeing a single person.
It was ace.
