I was dreading this

I can't describe how much I wasn't wanting to write this blog entry. I was dreading it, I've been pottering about on youtube or rearranging my MP3 drawer to get out of it.

Reason being, today was my longest run. Longest run ever. 2 1/2 hours. About 15-16 miles. Over a half marathon, and I saw a hell of a lot. I thought this blog post would go on forever. So, I'll try and do a zip file job on this and compress it a bit, for your sake and mine.

It was a beautiful day, and I headed initially up the 4 and a 1/2 miles or so out to Cotham on the sustrans 64. Lots of wildflowers, lots of butterflies! Lots and lots! Including the first Ringlets I've seen this year, lots of Meadow Browns and Whatever Whites, and a few Peacocks too. Lots of flowers, honeysuckle, some sweet pea violet looking things, and near the not as nice as Liz Bonnin's rubbish tip, something new growing in the fields.

Solar Panels. We now have a Solar Energy farm out here! Pity it won't take the smell out of the tip though.

Heading from Cotham to Hawton, still a few butterflies in the verges, but I saw a lot of Yellowhammers and Goldfinches sitting proudly on their various vantage points as usual. One male yellowhammer sat on the road with a duller female / juvie by way of contrast was so yellow I thought it was a discarded crisp packet!

Across now the bleak bleak road to Farndon, never very much to see along here, although the views from the top of the new road construct were great!

In Farndon Willow Holt, the meadows are lovely and so were the Meadow Browns, out here in great abundance. Further along around the river where I got hacked off by midges and my knees began to creak, small tortoiseshells about, and also (yay!) a few banded demoiselles. A heron flapped slowly across my path, like some sort of steampunk aircraft, but it's a pity the buttercup meadows have been taken out.

By the time I got back to town, I was hitting the wall a bit, and was so stiff I was running like one of the Shaun of the Dead, Dead. And there wasn't a lot to see, well it's town, and it's THIS town so what do you expect. Man, I just wanted to survive by this point as Lincs FM pumped "Don't Dream Its Over" tauntingly in my ear.

PS some upsetting and frankly bizarre fly tipping about. A graffitied fridge at the exit of the 64 at Cotham, a disused vivarium near Farndon. And a couple of dodgy looking tyoes seemed to be asking me to help them nick some chainlink fence they were struggling with. I think.

I had my headphones on, so I could have been wrong.