This post is dedicated to anyone who has ever woken up with the larks on a Sunday morning, thrown on some shorts and gone running just pleased to be alive….and then got horribly lost.
Just before seven I was up and running nicely along the banks of the River Rhine. It was a wondrous day and I felt truly blessed to be alive. My legs felt good, my lungs were working well and the sun was burning mist off the river in a most portentous manner. I felt like I had wandered into a Joseph Conrad story.
I had planned to run for about 45 minutes, then head back to my friend’s house, before showering and heading out for the day. However, after 45 minutes I was feeling so content and so into the run that I wanted to go further. Up ahead was the magnificent bridge of Arnhem which is currently closed to traffic. This bridge has always fascinated me, not least because of the huge number of brave, young English men who lost their life here in Operation Market Garden, and the opportunity to run across it on a beautiful summer morning was simply too much.
To be fair I did stop half way over the river and offer a silent prayer to those brave young men and to take in the view of the beautiful river slowly snaking its way down to Germany. It was a peaceful moment, a moment stolen from a busy life, and for once there was no one there to push me, demand I run faster or control my breathing and so I could really reflect on the day and how I felt.
I should have turned around at this point and run back but the day was too beautiful so I decided to push on to see my children – I guess that this would be a pleasant 12km run and would make the perfect start to their day.
The run into their little town was one of the best – it was flat, fast and pretty. Occasionally I came across people hanging their duvets out of the window, or cheery locals out walking their dogs, and I greeted them with one of my many stock Dutch expressions, such as, ‘my dog is a dachshund’, ‘there is a windmill in Utrecht’ and my personal favourite, ‘where is the bust stop…’ I didn’t tarry long enough to hear their replies but I am sure that they were equally cordial. Dutch folk normally are…
I reached the outskirts of the village in record time. It has been a stoater of a run and I was really happy to have had such calming time as well as adding a few miles to my weekly tally. From the edge of the village to my children’s house is exactly two kilometres and so I thought: in twelve minutes I will be there and our day can begin…
Almost an hour later, when I was still running in circles, and lamenting the fact that the only people up and about at such an ungodly hour on a Sunday neither spoke English or had any sense of direction at all, I was getting pretty despondent. I had run past the same church three times and each time it was on a different corner. My feet were getting sore and I was running out of songs to sing. It was pretty desperate. However, after taking a few deep breaths and using the tried and trusted triangulation method I have developed in various other countries where I have been lost (ask three people and follow the directions from the least mad) I finally limped into my children’s street.
When they finally came down to breakfast, an hour later, they were quite surprised to see me lying on the back lawn doing my stretches. My elder son even went as far as cocking an eyebrow in my direction when I told him I had run all the way but secretly I think that he was rather proud of me…and what more does any parent ask for?
-Philip
No comments:
Post a Comment