Morven. Lockdown lifting Part 2.

 

It seems I was a little premature in writing this blog with the link below

 https://louise-runningaway.blogspot.com/2020/07/lockdown-thistooshallpass.html

No sooner were we free to run on the hills then we were in lockdown again. The first lockdown, when the rest of the country was in lockdown, was ok. Bearable. Novel, even. It wasn’t nearly as bad as I had feared but this second lockdown, well its fair to say I really did lose my shit over it. Fire bombing Pittodrie seemed to have the makings of a good evening entertainment and as for the Soul Bar, well who drinks in that over priced wine bar dive anyway? Hopefully, the behaviour of establishments such as Soul Bar will be remembered when people chose their post lockdown drinking establishments. And I now hate football.

I suppose matters are not helped by the weird and seemingly contradictory advice – Face masks didn’t work between March and July and now all of a sudden they do work, stay 2m apart and wear a facemask in ASDA, stay 1m apart and don’t wear a facemask in pubs. I can only assume that this virus is a lot smarter than me if it can work it all out. Of course, there was always the question of whether the shut down in Aberdeen was “politically motivated” given other areas of the country with outbreaks of the virus seem to have been treated more leniently. At times I was angry enough to believe that but when I was asked who I believe between the Scottish government and Aberdeen council I kind of thought the question was phrased in the wrong way. When you are talking about councillors and politicians the question is not which one you trust the most, its which one you distrust the least. Who knows what the truth is. It usually lies somewhere in between.

Anyway the second lifting of lockdown meant hill running was finally back on the menu and groups of up to 15 were allowed to meet to run so Gillian organised a Cosmic’s Saturday run up and down Morven, a hill big enough to feel like a proper mountain – or at least it did to my mountain climbing training deprived legs. 

We did the hill race route in reverse which saved my legs from the worst excesses of the steep climb all of the way up and meant a new perspective on the hill and new views to take in, after all I have run up Morven more times in the dark than in daylight courtesy of Steve Helmore’s annual solstice run. I was slightly alarmed by the number of people in the car park in full body cover as the weather seemed quite mild. Obviously they all did the sensible thing and checked the weather forecast before coming out but as I was already a bit late in arriving I was fairly sure the group would not have been impressed if I’d started faffing around looking for leggings - so shorts it was, but I did throw a second thicker waterproof in my bag as an afterthought. I was very glad that I did as we climbed up on to the ridge there was a very strong chilly wind and it felt pretty autumnal leading me to wonder what happened to summer – oh yeah, we were in lockdown and missed it.

We all reached the summit appearing out of the mist one by one with Andy appearing from a random bizarre direction and I took a run over to the trig point to get a photo - yes I’m still Trig point hunting and posting truly terrible Trig point selfies. 

As we sheltered from the biting wind I pulled on the second waterproof jacket that I had brought with me and Steve dug out the summit book from its hidey hole under the rocks for us all to sign. Claire had thought that he had been talking about a “sonnet book” at the top of the mountain and happily within the plastic tub containing the summit book there was a little piece of paper with Byron’s poem on it which mentions Morven, Bryon having spent time in the area as a youngster so Claire got her sonnet without Steve having to break into Shakespeare or similar. Byron’s other mountain poem “Lochnagar” is perhaps better known set to music as one of the songs performed by the Corries.

After a few minutes sheltering from the wind and making the most of being on the summit we then had the big “which way down” discussion (by which time my teeth were chattering a bit) and ended with us all taking the direct route straight down the hill with only one voice of dissent which was Ian who fancied a longer outing, I am not sure I would have managed it in my post lockdown state of  lack of fitness and besides, my legs were frozen and not working that well. As we descended out of the grey clag the views stretched out in front of us for miles – we could even see Graeme’s house.

It was such a good feeling being out running with the club again, just for those brief couple of hours it felt as though nothing else mattered, Covid was not forefront of your mind. Its not just the physical freedom but the mental freedom too. I think my comment of FREEDOM in the summit book pretty much summed it up.