Matt Gets Running

Tonight’s run was a very inter­rup­ted, stop-start affair. But for good reason.

Tomor­row sees the start of the Bris­tol Inter­na­tional Bal­loon Fiesta, held at the Ashton Court Estate, not a mil­lion miles from my usual towpath route. Not only that, but today someone men­tioned the new Fest­ival Way cycle route, the first phase of which recently opened, and links my bit of town with Ashton Court. All the details, and a sped-up video of someone rid­ing the route — a really good way of show­ing how to get places, espe­cially as the signs are a bit rub­bish at the moment — are here on Bet­ter By Bike.

So, I checked it out. It does make Ashton Court seem even closer to me than the pre­vi­ous ped­es­trian route I’d used, over a foot­bridge by the allot­ments and down a tiny foot­path. And avoids both stairs and sting­ing nettles, def­in­ite minuses of that way of get­ting there.

On the other hand, it’s very clearly a route that wouldn’t really exist purely for the pleas­ure of an amble, hav­ing a rel­at­ively claus­tro­phobic and indus­trial feel, much of both sides being sealed off by fen­cing of the cheap-and-fierce vari­ety, includ­ing sec­tions with that nasty rotat­ing blade stuff. Still, makes for an inter­est­ing silhouette.

Once that bit’s over, you emerge slightly sur­prised at a nice-looking cricket pitch, two sides of which you walk around before the cycle path finally ends. It spits you out dir­ectly oppos­ite the Ken­nel Lodge Road entrance to Ashton Court, on the blind bend on Clan­age Road. Nasty.

Still, I took my ear­buds out, took my life in my hands, and jogged suc­cess­fully across the danger zone. After that it was, really, a walk in the park, jog­ging up the hill to the man­sion house and then trot­ting around the fair­ground attrac­tions, many still being bolted together and stocked with stuffed anim­als. Really must get up there with a proper cam­era on the same day next year — the pre­par­a­tions make for good photography.

Any­way. So, turn­ing around at the top of the bal­loon arena, and punc­tu­at­ing my run­ning with stop­ping to look at stuff, and the odd bit of iPhone pho­to­graphy, I slowly made my way back home. I think I prob­ably did tech­nic­ally jog 5K, but not all at once… Still, it was a good way of scop­ing out this new route, which should open up Ashton Court for me for some longer runs, which should be a pleas­ant altern­at­ive to the Downs.

I’m tak­ing Fri­day off work to go hang out at the Bal­loon Fiesta some. I may even head up for one of the 6am launches — they’re really magical times, when not so many people are about and the bal­loons some­times lift off the field at about the same time as the morn­ing mist. If I do, I’ll prob­ably throw some pho­tos on Flickr, and pop a link in here, running-related or not