The First of May is a National Holiday in Italy, and so yesterday we found ourselves in the civilised wilds of Umbria, with a bunch of friends (16 of us in total). The plan was to go for a mountain/hilly walk and then lunch. The crappy cool, wet weather really put paid to that, and Plan B was enacted – a gentle passeggiata around a hilly walled City, a stop for aperitivi – the Italians certainly know how to organise a country walk. Then we go onto lunch at a friend of a friend’s trattoria. There we ate well, with particular highlights being the fresh ricotta served with walnuts and honey and the cantucci (we’d call them biscotti) dunked in Vin Santo. An English lesson ensued, how to pronounce and spell dunk. After lunch another passeggiata, admiring wild primulas, and other flowers that I just didn’t recognise. In the mountains, Spring is even later in arriving and there we also found cherry and apple blossom.
It was a glorious day even allowing for the rubbish weather, but it is quite tiring keeping up in your second language, especially when your friends dip in and out of dialect too. Eventually, after a return stop to the trattoria to have some more vino and a fill up of the gorgeous ricotta, we returned home.
Oh we are so lightweight compared to these friends, they stayed on, then went to a music festival thing in Piobbico, on the way home to Fano, found a pub, then found another, we got a text saying they were nearby and did we fancy a beer? We declined, one of us was running this morning, and a late beery night, even though I don’t drink beer, wasn’t going to be that conducive to a good run.
This morning the alarm went off, and up I got. It’s much cooler today, and so I was layered up. Out onto Mill Lane, growling at the water pumping station – we’ve missed the bloody engineer again – he has an uncanny knack of calling us on the one occasion when we aren’t around. So that means yet another flaming visit to the local office, to queue again for 30 minutes, to arrange an appointment, that they won’t tell us when it is. We just have to hang around in the vague hope that we might be near when the engineer calls.
I made my way up to Lovers’ Lane, no sign of Anouska or Albino today, even though I am up there suitably early. I enter Villa Bali’s grounds and see the little bunny sitting calmly on the grass, I didn’t dare get too close in case he snuck off. As it was I ran right past him and he didn’t stir. He may be ill, as usually the wild rabbits around here are very jumpy when humans are close – and rightly so, as rabbit is a much loved dish here.
Although the mercury had dropped, I was getting warm so did a quick pitstop and dropped my jacket off into our postbox. Continuing on my run, I was on the Bendy, Scary Road, all was quiet and cool, making it easy for me to keep going, I even managed a couple of kms at under 5 minutes 30 seconds. I continued on, prior to Royston Vasey’s cafe, I saw a lorry stopped in front of me – on a blind bend. The driver was out of his cab on the opposite side of the road, I asked him if he was okay and needed any help and he said he was fine. But he hadn’t coned off the road or left his warning triangle out behind him, so I was perplexed if it was just a stop it was certainly a very dangerous place to leave his lorry. Then about 15 minutes later into my run, he happily drove past me…
It was post-lorry time, I realised the mechanical voice lady from Map My Run had been suspiciously quiet, ah yes JCR you’ve done it again, you paused the app at the bunny stop and didn’t re-start it. Ho hum, a good job I knew which route I was using and the kms. This time a proper breakdown, except it was mine again! As Mr JCR says, I ought to take more care with the tech.
A quick pitstop into the fish shop to order my fish and I was on my way. It’s market day and so a lady sprinting through the market stalls wasn’t exactly the most welcome of visitors. But I bombed through and up to Bin Lane, on the home straight and I arrived at the cafe 10 minutes before the agreed pick up time, so I did a few mini circuits near the cafe, just to keep the kms up. Job done – just over 11kms in all.
On the way home, we saw Puffa Woman again, this time wearing a dark grey full length coat, with a matching coloured woollen hat. It was about 16 degrees – maybe she is a middle aged woman, suffering from a faulty thermostat? I too am a middle aged woman with a faulty thermostat but I was wearing just a base layer and running tights and boy was I hot. This lady has, to our knowledge, 3 separate puffa coats. I wait with interest, to see what she wears next week when the temperatures are due to rise again.
Playlist
Rumour Has It – Adele
Back To Black – Amy Winehouse
Rehab – ditto
Walk Like An Egyptian – The Bangles
Help Me Rhonda – The Beach Boys
Barbara Ann – ditto
Crazy In Love – Beyonce
Hot In The City – Billy Idol
Mony Mony – ditto
Girls and Boys – Blur
Tracy Jacks – ditto
Parklife – ditto
Born To Run – The Boss
Hungry Heart – The Boss
Dancing In The Dark – The Boss
Born In The USA – The Boss
Glory Days – The Boss
Let’s Stick Together – Bryan Ferry
Tokyo Joe – ditto
Mulder and Scully – Catatonia
Fuck You – CeeLo Green
London Calling – The Clash
Rock The Casbah – ditto
Let’s Spend The Night Together – David Bowie
Stats
Distance 11:59 kms
Time 1:19:47
Average Pace 6:53
Elevation Gain 8 metres
Alzheimer’s Challenge
Kms Run 768.11
Kms to Do 1249.89
Thanks to Razouski of Health Unlocked C25k for her sponsorship for my challenge. Much appreciated and a PCT is booked for June.
