A blog about running, its history and culture
We finally made it to Bude Sea Pool this week, 88m lengths of beautiful swimming on Summerleaze beach in Cornwall. The pool opened in 1930, dug out next to the beach's rocky cliffs. It is a tidal pool, which means the water is refreshed daily by the sea - though this also means of course that the pool can't be used at high tide when the walls disappear under the sea. There is a shallower area on…
Seven Islands swimming pool in Rotherhithe is due to close later in 2025 to make way for a new swimming pool/leisure centre at Canada Water. The new centre will no doubt have more up to date facilities than its predecessor but lets spare a moment for the fading grandeur of this 1960s classic. Opened in 1965, it takes its name from a previous series of ponds on/near to its current site. The pool…
After a hot July evening Assembly League race around Sutcliffe Park this week, hosted by Cambridge Harriers, a drink was definitely in order and we were lucky enough to be able to enjoy the hospitality of the Old Roan Club just across the road from the park on Kidbrooke Park Road SE3. The playing fields here are owned by the John Roan foundation linked to the John Roan secondary school in…
Hilly Fields parkrun celebrated its 600th run today. Since the event started in 2012 nearly 16,000 different people have taken part at least once, and more than 1,000 people have volunteered to make it happen. The runners and walkers have notched up a combined distance of 607,020 km - all the way to the moon (384k) and most of the way back! I started running there in 2013 and was there for their…
Detail from 'The Four Seasons: winter, spring, summer, autumn', wood engraving by Tirzah Garwood (1927)
Good to see Tooting Bec Lido open to the public again after the winter break. I have swum in various outdoor places throughout the winter, but this was the first time swimming this year with my face in the water. Had that 'swallowed an ice cream' headache, but soon recovered and was warmed up by the delicious falafels from the cafe.
The beach at Camber Sands stretches for around three miles in East Sussex and at low tide is also very wide. It is edged by quite high sand dunes so if you want to add a challenge to your run you could try clambering up one, for instance from the path opposite the fine Owl pub in Camber. Alternatively there is level access on to the beach by the Camber Central car park. Clamber up a sand dune to…
Had a quick dip in the cold sea last week at the Walpole Bay Tidal Pool in Margate. Like mermaids, I prefer the sea without pollution. The mermaid mural in Margate Old Town put me in mind of the similarly themed Sirens of Sewage sculpture by Jason deCaires Taylor on Whitstable beach (next to the Old Neptune pub) depicting SOS Whitstable campaigners for cleaner seas with banners saying 'Save our…
Ongoing injuries have forced me to really cut down on my running but on a recent trip to Cork city for a family wedding I could not resist checking out a local parkrun. Cork has a very well established running scene with lots of clubs as evidenced at the 'Running in Cork' blog . It is the home of many great athletes, perhaps most notably Sonia O'Sullivan who in the 1990s won a string of medals at…
Very pleased to have my piece 'Getting our breath back' published in Like the Wind magazine #24, accompanied by a fine illustration by Atul Vinayak and Jakob Owens. It is a short prose meditation on the experience of breathing in running which started out as a spoken word piece at a 'Footnotes' runners open mic arranged by Vybarr Cregan-Reid a few years ago. In the time of Covid it has assumed a…
This weekend I ran on a track for the first time in months. Dulwich College has a 300m track which is currently open to the public so I cycled down to take a look. I wasn't feeling particularly fit, but I enjoyed the feeling of just going round and round... Dulwich College running track The track at Ladywell Arena used by my club Kent AC remains closed for now, but as with many tracks across the…
Continuing my research on SE London sporting history, I came across this report of 'A Monstre Cycling Social' held at the Green Man Hotel in December 1886. The Green Man stood at the top of Blackheath Hill (left hand side if you are going up it) for three hundred years before being demolished in 1970. It played an important social and cultural role, being at various times the HQ of England's…
Interesting to see that a 'Louise Michel Sports Club' has been established in South East London, a radical group based around 'solidarity through fitness' with an initial focus on running, self-defence and hiking. They are named after the famous Paris Commune revolutionary who lived in SE London later in her life (a while ago I promised to organise a walk around her old haunts, maybe it could be a…
There is a scene in Céline Sciamma's 2019 film 'Portrait of a Lady on Fire' where Héloïse, one of the two central characters runs towards the edge of a cliff from which her sister is believed to have jumped and killed herself. As Marianne, her companion and soon to be lover, catches up with her she tells her that she has been dreaming of doing this for years. 'Dying?' asks Marianne. 'Running'…
Update 16/3/2020: Unfortunately this event has been postponed. The Telegraph Hill Festival has been cancelled as a result of Covid-19. We hope to rearrange once things have calmed down. Very excited to announce this event taking place in the 2020 Telegraph Hill Festival: The Sporting Landscape of New Cross Tuesday 31 March 2020, 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm Council Chamber, Deptford Town Hall, New Cross…
Really enjoyed 'Spinning Out', Netflix's new for 2020 figure skating drama. It has a great cast, including January Jones of Mad Men fame and Kaya Scodelario (who started out as Effie in Skins) -not to mention a cameo from Queer Eye's Jonathan Van Ness. Of course it also has lots of figure skating with one of the characters being played by actual ice skating Olympian Johnny Weir. Kat (Kaya…
I went for a swim a couple of weeks ago for the first time at London Fields Lido. I was surprised how busy it was on a cold and wet November day, even with a heated outdoor pool. Lunch afterwards from the famous Jewish Deli stall on nearby Broadway market was also excellent. On the way out I bumped into an old friend who swims there regularly and he reminded me that the Lido had only reopened in…
Secret Rivers, a recent exhibition at the Museum of Docklands, highlighted London’s lost and neglected waterways. As the city spread in the 19th century rivers and streams were increasingly covered up and diverted underground through pipes and sewers. Still for the most part they continue some kind of subterranean existence and we may even find some ghostly traces remaining above ground. One such…
Dungeness on the Kent coast has a famously bleak beauty, a shingle headland between Romney marsh and the Channel. Taking advantage of the September sunshine, we went down at the weekend. A couple of intrepid members of our party swam in the sea but I contented myself with a run around the area - flat for miles around with the only real hazard apart from the occasional car being stretches of…
I recently had a family holiday in the semi-desert landscape of Almeria in Spain - an area where many classic 'western' films were made, such as Sergio Leone's 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' and 'Once upon a time in the West'. We stayed in Los Matreros, a tiny village on the edge of the Sierra Cabrera mountains, with lots of great running trails if you don't mind hills... and more hills…
I recently came a couple of issues of 'Off our Blocks' a 'women's team sports zine' published in London in the mid 1990s, a time when women's sport had very little media recognition. This seems to have been a modest attempt to redress this in the DIY photocopied zine format more commonly used for music and politics at this time. The name of course refers to the starting blocks in running and…
During the nineteenth century, and indeed earlier, a competitive run was often referred to as a 'foot race', presumably to distinguish the human event from a horse race. Foot races, even before the birth of modern athletics, were sometimes a big deal attracting thousands of spectators (see examples here ). Still extensive research (OK I just looked at the considerable archive of folk songs at…
Dunstable Downs rise in Bedfordshire on the edge of the Chiltern Hills. The chalk grassland landscape is partially managed by the National Trust , and is famous for gliders and kite flyers making the most of the air currents at this highest spot in the county. I grew up nearby and have spent many happy hours there walking, running, and taking in the great views of the surrounding countryside, so I…
I enjoyed 'The Ponds' (2018), Patrick McLennan and Samuel Smith's documentary following a year in the life of the famous outdoor men's, women's and mixed swimming ponds on London's Hampstead Heath. Much of what was said about the joys of this kind of swimming can be translated to running - the therapeutic effects of exercise, the appreciation of being outdoors in all weathers, the companionship of…
One of the outdoor highlights of my year was a walk I did on Islay back in May with my son/long distance walking companion Billy. We have previously walked up to the island's highest point ( Beinn Bheigier ), as well as walking to the highest point on England’s south coast (Golden Cap in in West Dorset) among other places. But our most difficult walk so far was in search of Solam, an abandoned…