Well, not this exactly. This is the view from the window when I arrived at the Burbage Bridge car park this morning. Hmm.
Normally I run on roads and well-worn paths near the house, but now I’m getting a bit fitter, it felt like a good time to try a slightly wilder run.
I wasn’t anticipating it being quite this wild.
I turned the engine off and sat in the car until all residual heat drained out of it. I’d left my gloves at home, and seriously contemplated curling under the car duvet for a nap instead. After all, nobody would ever know…
… but really, what kind of attitude is that? And just look what I would have missed.
It was around this point that I went the wrong way, although I didn’t realise it at the time. I was too busy trying to get to lower ground where I had some hope of regaining the feeling in my hands and ears.
By the time the sun came out I’d realised my mistake, but couldn’t quite figure out what to do about it. This is access land, so while there are discernible paths, in reality you can go whichever way you like. I was high up, and could see roads, but couldn’t work out which roads they were…
After 50 minutes, when I should have been back at the car, and when I still couldn’t even see the car, I admitted defeat. I was cold and stiff, and had no way of knowing which was the right path. I didn’t have a map (after all, it was such a straightforward route I didn’t need one).
I had no choice but to turn round and go back the way I came.
The wind was howling again, the sun had gone in, and it had started raining again. I was going uphill, both grumpy and relieved to be going back the same ways as I came.
I was enjoying myself in a perverse kind of way, but also very much looking forward to a hot bath and a nice cup of tea.
Flying on the last downhill stretch back to the car, I was cold, wet, hungry and worn out, but as I met an elderly man clad in head-to-toe waterproofs, I beamed. The car park was full of children on a school trip – clearly my expedition to the ‘wilds’ wasn’t quite as adventurous as I’d led myself to believe.
It took me an hour and a half to run less than four miles. I stopped to take lots of photos, and to gaze in puzzlement at the bleak landscape, wondering which direction the car was in. I swore quite a lot, and I sang to myself quite a lot too.
This is why I run. I like running around my local streets, and I love racing, but really I run so I’m fit enough to head out to the hills and get lost for a while.
Just remind me to take my gloves next time.
a cheerful living adventure 
Ever watched 127 hours?!
Haha, I was just going to reply saying ‘don’t tell mum you got lost, she’ll be imagining you dead in a ditch!’ Obviously I’m too late!
Clearly!!
Thanks for your concern mum but don’t worry, it’s really not quite the same! First of all, he was ‘canyoneering’ in an isolated desert, having travelled miles to get to where he was. I was in the most populated national park in the country, and never more than a mile from a tea shop. Nobody knew where he was, whereas I’d left a map of my route at home, and in fact rang Peter while I was out to remind him to go to the post office. He was in an obscure canyon where nobody else ever went – I was on a well-trodden touristy trail, never more than about 200 metres from a road, and I never got further than 2 miles away from the car park, where there were 2 coachloads of kids on a school trip. Despite not being able to find the path I was looking for, I never left a path, and always had the option of going back the way I came, so I was never actually ‘lost’.
Also, I was deliberately taking pictures of the empty bits to make it look dramatic – next time I’ll turn round and take pictures of the cars and families and dogs too! 🙂
So don’t fret – I have a very healthy sense of self-preservation and quite like being alive so am not likely to do anything daft. And if I do end up in a desert with my arm trapped under a boulder, you can say ‘I told you so’… 🙂