Number 4 of 50: Wandlebury Country Park

Wandlebury Country Park is a very lovely country estate in Cambridgeshire. It's set in the Gog Magog Hills and is a mixture of woodland and meadow. Now, for those of you who live in non-Fen places, our hills may not seem very impressive, but for us flat-landers, they take us an ear-bleeding 75m above sea level and we consider them to be quite something.

Wait..did we..improve?

Car park selfie

Two rather amazing things happened on this run. Firstly, the sun came out. It was an early February morning after what felt to me like the longest, darkest, most miserable January on record, so having some sunshine accompany us on the run lifted my spirits enormously.

Secondly, as we started to run and headed past the iron age hill fort, I experienced something quite new to me. I was cheerful! I was running and I was cheerful. Hello birds! Hello trees! Hello fascinating archaeology! I didn't actually know what to do with myself, so I thanked my lucky stars and decided to go with the flow. Each time I felt good, I ran a little bit faster and that happened three or four times. It was really quite exciting. 

Iron age hillfort and sunshine

The iron age remains at Wandlebury are a rare example of a bivallate hillfort - one protected by two ditches. It was first inhabited more than 2,300 years ago by the Iceni - an ancient British tribe. I always find something uplifiting about seeing that kind of archaeology up close - all the lives of people that have gone before gives me a connection to the past somehow, and on this morning, with the sun over the fort, it was particularly beautiful.

We turned into the woodland and it felt like we had run into the very beginning of Spring. The dappling of the sun through the trees and the explosion of snowdrops and crocuses kept our spirits lifted and as we turned a corner and ran through an avenue of trees it really did feel like the perfect run.

Mother nature doing her thing

Proof that I was there

But with running, as with all things, but especially running, pride comes before a fall. Remember that enormous hill I told you about at the start? Well, Wandlebury has its fair share of undulations and as quickly as my feeling of joy had arrived, it disappeared and I realised I was half way up a massive hill and absolutely knackered. I was paying for the cheerful speed of the first half of the run (during which, it turned out, I ran faster than I have for a very long time, possibly ever) and the second half felt almost impossible.

The top of the hill

Well, except it wasn't. Because once you're at the top of a hill, you have the grim satisfaction of being there and then running back down it and, as Steve pointed out, I had eaten up a fair chunk of it before I realised everything was shit again. So, back down the hill and through more beautiful woodland and the run was over.

We carried on walking through the woods and meadows and past the buildings at Wandlebury after our 5km was done. It was a beautiful morning and one of the really lovely things about this challenge is that it gets us up on a Saturday morning visiting places we don't know very well. I'm looking forward to some of the local places we plan to run in through the seasons this year, and I'm hoping that maybe...just maybe...I'll have another joyful run.