Love, Reinvention and Loss

Christmas morning saw me leaving the home of my upbringing and running down to the lake grounds in Portishead.
I had decided that daily running may just build up my pathetic ankle, hence setting out when everyone else is at the breakfast table sharing smoked salmon with blinis.  I was keen to act out childhood journeys as I don't really engage much with the environment that shaped me.
A keen air raked me as I ran through Eastwood down to the royal hotel and on to the beach I spent a long time playing on as a child.  The beach part was pebbles; in the past ships from the West Indies would jettison their ballast prior to entering the port of Bristol and as a result it is possible to find an extraordinary mixture of geology.
Bedrock rises from the shingle like the ridge of a dragons back and pushes out into the mud of the estuary. I jogged over to where there once was a heavy concrete structure that we would crawl into, and once sheltered in when caught by a sudden rain storm. To my surprise the entire platform had tilted so much that the tunnels were raised to the sky and were full of stones.  Thinking about when I played there (forty years ago); no matter how massive and unmovable a structure is, the sea will gently upend and bury it if it has enough time. Nothing is permanent.

Feeling looser than I have recently, I ran along Woodland road, one of the main first roads in Portishead, built to transport tourists who had travelled on the steamer from Bristol.  Crumbling houses are evidence of previous opulence but now divided into flats and family apartments; manicured gardens are hidden under tarmac for the BMW, or the kids' trampoline.
On the other side of the road are the Eastwoods; apparently the site of an ancient hill fort, but also the site of our explorations as kids.  We would climb around in there for hours, only returning home when called for lunch.  Amazingly, the lack of traffic meant everything was so quiet that Mum could bellow for us and her voice would echo round the hill to our den or swing, and we would respond by scuffling home for sandwiches or beans on toast.
I used to run down here when a teenager, floating along with a feeling that the running was so natural it was permanent.  This time I was made very aware that this sense of immortal fleetness is not only ephemeral, but largely absent now. I seem to have replaced the glide with gritty determination.

To my pleasure there was a runner ahead who unwittingly provided competition for me and I ran him down as we approached the sailing club.
Along the cliff path, up onto Nore Road, and back around to the Lake Grounds. I glanced up at the window of one of the houses that had been built on Nore Road when I was a boy - a family were sat at the table with the children swinging their legs in their pyjamas.
The ducks were making the only noise on the Lake Grounds; gabbing away at each other.  The wind streamed off the channel and made me grateful for my windproof top.  The recent rain had overfilled the lake which then flowed over the path causing me to splashily tip-toe along the edge.  I stopped at the cricket pavilion, remembering the hours we spent there watching Dad playing hockey and wallowing in the responsibility of taking the orange segments onto the pitch at half time.  I could almost hear the clacking of the hockey sticks.












I ran past the swimming pool- again a place I spent countless hours in as a child. It belongs to a voluntary group now; they rescued the pool when the council decided to close it.  It seemed smaller than when I was a boy: it always felt so adventurous with high diving boards, the torturing curves of older girls and women in bikinis, and a balcony that was home to breezes from the sea. They have painted it now in Mediterranean colours that jar with my memory; of bleached white steps, a little booth for the guards that contained a tannoy ('NO DIVE-BOMBING'),  and a shelter to store your towel when swimming in the rain.

The path in Eastwood was coated in damp leaves with a silence that sucked up all my footsteps. Brittle twigs reached to the sky like angular fingers.  I love running in these conditions as I feel like the only animated thing: a splash of life in a dormant world.  A solid grind up the hill I used to plod up with my towel and trunks rolled up under my arm, and then a quick bounce down into South Road.

I walked up to the drive, only to see a bunch of irises that had decided to flower out of season.

Bookends

Two runs back to back, on the Roseland Peninsula this weekend.

Sandpiper

Bright sun, clean, sea stretching out like a plateau; I ease out my sore ankle, rolling down the road.  Past white houses, Agapanthus celebrating the climate, sharp gradient sharp bend, level.  
Down onto the beach over the sinuous stream filing its way across the sand; everything finds its own level, flat, smooth.

Footsteps pocked across the beach I spread out over the open space; waves like teeth in the mouth of the sea.  Things seem easier now when in my cadence and the warmth seems to seep through and around; elbows sharp bent, flicking the heels back.  
I step up out of the beach and into the folds of the fields running along tight brown paths scarcely room for one foot let alone two.

Rolling back down into the littoral domain my feet sink; the sand sucking the action from my foot and removing the spring.  
Sting taken from my stride I move with effort toward the rocks and then up, calf push, and over the dark hard; mussels crunching.  There is a man ahead, just by the tight gap in the rocks and I curve round him so he hears me coming, steps back, and lets me jump up and into the next bay, all change.

Boat moored, dragged like a carcass onto the track; past another person's domain. 

I stop, climbing onto the rocks and squat, sun warmed.  
Two sandpipers mechanical prodders crank along the beach, excising worms.  Unaware of my presence they stab closer to the rocks until I stand and send them panicking along the shore.

The warmth connects me to the land.  Space defined by sound and wind I hear the waves.  Shirt off I feel muscular, sinuous; organic movement contrasts with the immutability of the rocks as I retrace my steps, follow the path, leave it all behind.





Lighthouse
Jenny and I ran the other way the next day.  The path follows the curve and curl of the fields, and we found ourselves alternately climbing and dropping, and then sweeping round and over each hill.  Moby ran behind, ahead, and mostly in the way of us as he picked up smells and looped through bushes and routes that we couldn't fit through. Stiles and gates appeared to be placed in the most awkward places - at the top of a slippery path or pushed in the end of a bramble bush.  
Cows stood still in the calm of a windless day; lumbering out of our way as we approached. They have trampled parts of the path and must be cautious of the cliff with little protection from the drop.

The sea sat limpid until we broached the estuary where it gave us a sharper view of sky, rocks and trees on the opposite side.  

Back to Portscatho, and back into the people sorting out breakfast or planning the day.  Some just sat, sucked out to sea by the vertiginous flatness.  We made an effort to catch two bikers yards from the house, and triumphantly burst in on the peace.