Back in the House Game
It’s been a busy week. The house sale in Milton Keynes has now reached the “exchanged” stage, which basically means that if anyone backs out now, it’s going to cost them a shed load of money. I have taken this as sufficient justification for returning to the house-search game.
To be honest, I’ve been looking online for ever and a day anyway. After my weekend in Newcastle a couple of weeks ago, Minimus persuaded me to do a MoSCoW analysis. Not just for houses, either. More generally, for life.
This all stemmed from them asking me one evening to think of my favourite book, song, or something I found inspirational. And it highlighted something slightly odd. I’ve gone through most of my life winging it, without having particularly strong preferences about very many things. We were in a restaurant where they gave you a post-it pad at the end of your meal and asked you to stick something on the wall. It took me ages, because, frankly, thinking about one particular thing that I like more than anything else is not something I do often. Anyway, on that occasion, the answer was “The shifting shafts of shining weave the fabric of their dreams” – Someone else’s words, not mine. You can Google it to find out the who and the what.
Got an Appointment in Russia, so MoSCoW
But back at the plot, not having favourites is both a good thing (because it means you’re rarely disappointed) and a bad thing (because it makes it difficult to decide on anything). So a MoSCoW analysis was formulated. Key house requirements were identified. Then I went to view somewhere that met all my Musts and all my Shoulds. I made an offer. It was accepted. So that’s now in progress too. The key factors were:
- I want enough space for either or both of the kids to visit whenever they want, and for as long as they want
- I want to be near to the people I currently socialise with
- I need enough space to work from home
- And because I work from home I want enough space to move around, change rooms, and generally feel like I’m not in a prison
- There was a monetary figure in my mind too, obviously, but I’m not crass enough to publish that here
But, amazingly, I found several places that met those criteria, and one is currently occupied by a couple that want to leave quickly. Robert is a proverbial sibling of one of your parents then! Watch this space.
Meanwhile, Back at the Saturday Morning Plot
Against that background, Saturday morning arrived. I’d vaguely been thinking about staying “home” and going to Conkers. But not many others (that I know) seemed to be heading there, and the café has become so awful that Conkers is increasingly somewhere I only go if there’s a plan to go somewhere else for breakfast. Since breakfast is an important component of my parkrun philosophy, this matters.
So on Friday I posted a quick straw poll on the Book of Face to see who was going where. That admittedly limited-audience exercise resulted in me tagging along with Sneath, Sara and Karen on a trip to Beacon Hill.
I’ve thought about Beacon Hill for a while, but never actually been. Partly because I’ve been going loads of other places, but partly because it has a reputation for being a tough course with rather a lot of uphill. Still, it’s not far from home. It took me about 25 minutes to get there.
There’s a Clue in the Name
The defining feature of Beacon Hill Country Park is that it’s at Beacon Hill. Which is a hill, obviously. I’m assuming there used to be a beacon on top. There’s a trig point now. Anyway. Back at the plot. A parkrun.
The others were already in the car park when I arrived. We went through our usual pre-parkrun rituals before being whisked away to the start at the foot of a slope. I heard somebody describe the course as essentially 3 km up and 2 km down. That sounded encouraging. Not!
What Goes Up
The course is basically an out-and-back lollipop, starting from the lower car park near Woodhouse Eaves. You spend much of the first three kilometres gaining height before eventually enjoying the fruits of your labour on the way back. In truth, the upwards bit wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. Sure, it was uphill, but it never seemed ridiculously steep for any extended period. There were even a couple of downhill bits during the uphill, presumably to confuse matters.
For most of the run I was going at roughly the same pace as Sara and Karen. I passed them once, but for most of the time they were just ahead of me without ever getting particularly far away.
The first 3 km took me about 23½ minutes. And then gravity became my friend.
…Must Come Down
The final 2 km took about 11½ minutes, meaning I became roughly two minutes per kilometre quicker once the Earth started doing some of the work for me. I eventually crossed the line in a creditable 35 minutes. Given that there have been occasions this year when it’s taken me 35 minutes to get round a flat course, I was perfectly happy with that. I’ve had worse days.
And thus with the running shenanigans dealt with, we could move on to the important bit.
Breakfast – The True Measure of a parkrun
I place the quality of nearby breakfast options at least as high as the quality of the run itself when assessing any parkrun. Possibly higher.
Beacon Hill has a café in a log cabin near the car park. It was busy without being ridiculous, although that might have been helped by there being “only” about 120 runners. That counts as a fairly small parkrun by UK standards these days. The café offered a good selection of breakfasty things. There were pastries and cakes displayed at the counter, plus a selection of hot and cold made-to-order options from menus on the tables. There was table service too.
Having eaten nothing earlier, and having just run five kilometres up and down a hill, I decided I’d earned something substantial. A bacon baguette. A maple-pecan tart. Coffee.
A Lot of Bacon
Everything I ordered was excellent. Many pigs died to provide the bacon baguette. Quite a few husks of wheat died too, I guess.
The baguette was actually big enough to present me with a problem. I wasn’t going to finish everything I’d ordered, so decisions had to be made. I sacrificed half the bread, but the bacon wasn’t so lucky and nor was the maple-pecan tart. Or the coffee. The thrupenny tour is that it was a good breakfast. Not the cheapest on planet earth, but then I did order quite a lot.
Nuff-ski
There was a final bit of grief when we tried to leave because the car park machine refused to accept my credit card. Sneath paid for me instead and I bunged him a fiver in cash. Sometimes the old ways are still the best.
All in all, Beacon Hill was an excellent parkrun and definitely one I’d go back to. It wasn’t too crowded, the course was considerably less horrific than its reputation suggested, and there were some excellent views towards the top. It also strikes me as potentially quite a good bad-weather option. Despite all the climbing, most of the route is under tree cover, with only about 600 metres exposed. A good run. Good company. And a good breakfast. Perfick!
And as for the remainder of Saturday? Let’s just say that I spent a significant proportion of it in a horizontal position.
