On the road again ...

I left the beach behind some time ago, and have just passed Rouen!

I shall be following the D6014 for a while - not strictly 'as the crow flies' but more scenic and less hard on the feet than cross-country!  And, I hope, with a few more places to stop for a virtual glass of wine on the way!

I only have 72km to go before I can ring on my old front door and see if the ghost of my former self is still home.  I know I would recognize myself if I opened the door - I found a photograph of myself, sitting in my flat in Paris, when I was doing a bit of tidying up at the weekend.  Tidying up is not something I often do, and it was slow progress as I stopped to look at all the things I uncovered.  

So on towards Paris I go, singing the French equivalent of '10 green bottles': 

Cinq kilomètres à pied, ça use, ça use .... Cinq kilomètres à pied, ça use les souliers!

Si proche, pourtant si loin

So close, and yet so far away

I managed 23k this week - maddeningly, still 6k from shore!  Even if I had completed the Park Run on Saturday morning I would still have been short.  But this isn't a race, I'm not in competition with anyone, so I shall curb my enthusiasm and enjoy the journey.

Saturday's Park Run was the inaugural event to open a new course.  The organizers wanted to keep it low-key but almost 300 runners slipped and slithered around the extremely muddy and frankly downright dangerous course: having nearly lost my footing three times, I decided to retire gracefully rather than push my luck and risk a fall/broken bones/sprains or other injury.  I completed 3.4k of the 5k course, and my time was slower than normal, but experienced runners were also quite a bit slower.  It didn't help that I had regular road trainers, rather than trail shoes, although to be fair, they might have helped me stay upright, but not much is likely to make me go any faster!

So this time next week I shall be on the beach at St Valéry, drying off, and possibly enjoying an ice-cream, before heading overland to Paris!  I'd love to get there by Easter ... we'll see.