Cheyne Hill - Cosmic's training run

16 Human legs and 12 dogs legs. It’s the new way of measuring attendance at Tuesday night Cosmic's hill runs. Work it out for yourself. 

We all successfully located the car park tucked away on the slug road minus Lynda which was a worry as I was the one who had posted the 6 figure grid reference for the car park on the Cosmic’s Facebook page. I wonder who else never found that start point…

Not having quite so much daylight to play with now we didn’t wait around for too long (plus we were being eaten alive by the midges) before setting off into the woods and up the hill along the Cheyne hill race route. After regrouping at the top of the hill and admiring the view s of the hillside and its covering of purple heather and watching the dogs bounce around like lunatics we set off along a path through the head height bracken. I hung back to allow the faster ones to go ahead, well that’s my story, in reality I was knackered after the climb and quite content to let some bodies go ahead to flatten out the bracken in front of me. I also made a mental note to check my legs for ticks after the run.

Eventually the path popped out on to a small tarmac road which we followed for a few hundred metres and then turned off into a small car park on the edge of Fetteresso forest. The car park was very busy with cars and given the lack of bike racks on any of the vehicles we decided that they probably belonged to another local running club but there was no one about and surprisingly we didn’t see anyone else the whole time we were there. I wonder where they all went? The tracks leading through the forest are wide gently undulating vehicle tracks for the forestry vehicles and everything seemed bone dry and dusty under foot so it was pretty easy going and all very runnable. 

Next was the inevitable route finding discussion. It happens on every cosmic run. In fact come to think of it navigation related discussions take up much of your average Cosmic’s run. Talk amongst yourselves until somebody points out an obscure path that only they seem to know about and hopefully at this point Martin hasn’t disappeared off into the distance with Harry and some unfortunate enthusiastic newbie runner in tow, who turns out for the training run and is never seen again.

Navigation debate...

Apparently theres a path there somewhere...

Kerloch in the distance

More route finding discussion...

We followed the path through the long grass and up into the forest, the path eventually depositing us on to the road. From here the previous weeks run venue Carn Mon Earn was visible as was Durris and the very top of Kerloch just poking its summit up above the nearer hills.  Plan A had been to run along another forest path but tree felling and rapidly diminishing light levels put paid to this so we settled for Plan B, the road, for a few hundred metres until turning back into the woods around Cheyne hill and descending steeply to the river bank deep in the wooded valley. My eyes were straining in the half light to pick out rocks and tree routes on this lovely undulating riverside trail and all too soon we were back at the car park. 

No adventure is truly complete without tea and cakes* at the end (or a beer but driving kind of rules that one out) Pauline had bought the tea and I had bought the cakes so we sat there enjoying the stillness of the early autumn evening as darkness fell in that nice post run glow.

*That makes it sound like a “Famous Five” adventure – cake and lashings of ginger beer…!