High Tide!

Photos taken and "camera-bagged" by PB.

I think I got a bit over-excited with the hill running in the last week and now have a niggle at the back of my right knee. Today's run needed to be flat, and ideally longish. So we drove to North Berwick and ran into the wind to Aberlady on the road and then ran the coastal route with the wind behind us.

The first part of this run is pretty awful really but it has the appeal of arriving at Aberlady shop and getting pain au chocolat and a coffee for the tougher 2nd part of the journey. It rained a couple of times in our faces on the way there. I was hungry having been up for a while. PB not so much.

Turning around was as good as anticipated. Pausing only briefly to take in the  knitted nativity scene (with Christmas mice?) in a shop window in Aberlady.

I think there was a full moon yesterday and today there was a very high tide. We kind of hoped it might be turning and going out again as we went down the coast - but it wasn't, it was coming further in. There is a bit of stony beach with high cliffs that is a bit problematic if the tide is in high and problematic it was today. Also good fun. We just had to accept that our feet. (Our feet up to above our knees) would be getting wet as big rollers came rolling in and there was nowhere for us to escape to. We weren't really in any danger but I was relieved to get round the corner and up onto the top of the cliffs. The next bit after that used to be difficult but someone has cut a wide path through what used to just be thick thorny brush. Along here we met the Marshall family (famous for taking great photos of races) and a little further on Jim Hardie of Carnethy and his wife Jill. They told us they were on corpse-watch, - the beach being littered with bodies after the storms. We had avoided most of the beaches so our death count wasn't as high as usual.

Paddling round the headland through the sea added an 18 minute mile to today's tally so we weren't breaking any speed records. We spent a fair amount of time bush-whacking and getting lost inland - going round the beach is ever so much more straight-forward.

The light was fading fast just as we were getting into North Berwick. We popped into our friend Ben's and made a hole in some fruity bread he'd been making. Him and Peter are heading to the Pentlands tomorrow pre-dawn. Sadly I think it would be unwise for me to go and run more hills until behind my knee (I think it's where my hamstrings attach to the back of the knee, I've had it before on the left leg) gets better so I'll have to stay in bed until after dawn instead.