A fine evening, 18 finely tuned athletes turned up. The evening started with a lengthy speech from our very former Chairman on Health and Safety matters, following the near demise of Mr Last the previous week! It’s fair to say that during my lengthy absence, that standards have dropped in the absence of the Club Safety Officer and Mr Holmes, never one to miss an opportunity, gave a stirring speech on the subject (while we all froze our nadgers off). We used to have a signing in book, I wonder what happened to that? Anyway……suitably chastened, we set off up the horrible drag through what was once a forest and which is now a wasteland towards New Cross (remains of). I’m bound to say that navigation was spot on, even allowing for the fact that there were at least 4 different routes taken! At this point, I began to appreciate that this was a Harmer devised route and as such would involve a great deal of slow, waste high heather and disgustingly steep hills to go up and down and very little what could be termed, running. The wiser of the two groups went round the top of the waterfalls on level ground; the more stupid followed Mr Harmer (me included) and dropped down into Abbey Brook and ended up having to scale a near vertical face to get back up to the top. Such is the price of loyalty to our ageing leader! A fine bottle of Jura whisky was unearthed at Berristers Tor and duly quaffed. The Harmerian experience continued unabated as we dropped to the bottom of Abbey Brook and then back up again to Low Tor. I’m bound to say that I felt as though I had had enough fun for one night, by this stage and the call of the pub was strong. Sadly, not strong enough for Capt. Harmer who decreed that we should visit Howshaw Tor just to prolong the fun that little bit more! A 10 minute paddle and wade through bogs later, we achieved this wonderfully pointless aim and finally set off with much relief (on my part, at least), back to the pub and the welcoming fire. A good night with only a couple more before the Summer runs! And in this post-Brexit age, the run was exactly 6 miles (kilometres, pah.!)
[gpx2graphics map 929]