Garendon and the marathon

Apologies once again for not posting last Sunday: another overly busy week, both at home and at work, but I did manage to get out and about a little.

My most exciting day actually Sunday. I've been trying to avoid visits to the countryside, or anywhere where there are trees at the moment (bit of a tree pollen allergy going on), but so anxious was I to get out and see bits of Loughborough I've not seen before, that I went out anyway.

Sunday was the morning of the Loughborough Half Marathon. For the last couple of years the OH has run this, and I've dutifully stood at various places along the route, as well as at the start line and finish line, of course, and cheered him on. This year, however, he's having a rest, recovering from a bit of injury, so it was looking unlikely that I'd be down on the Garendon Park estate this year.

OH was keen to support fellow runners, and I was keen to visit the estate again, so we decided to go along anyway. It was a bit of a grey day, but not very cold, but my skills with a camera are not particularly good, and grey days don't help! I only discovered this part of Loughborough about 4 years ago, and as I don't walk it very often, I'm always on the lookout for something different. 

I love walking the footpath alongside the boundary wall, some of which had been replaced by fencing, and then coming to the view of the beautiful Bavarian Gates or Red Arch, designed by William Railton. We carried on along the path, eventually arriving at the point where the footpath goes up the hill on the right, which takes you out onto the A6 near the milepost, but instead of going that way, we carried on going straight up. This was the exciting bit, for this path is not normally accessible to the public, and I'd certainly not ventured this far when cheering on the OH at previous events. 

The path was quite narrow, but apparently wider than usual as lots of growth had recently been cut back. So I saw some different views and lots of runners! OH was enthusiastically cheering them on, especially at the bit where they were coming up the hill from the A6, while I admired the countryside, and wondered how the couple of people I spotted in an enclosed field were going to get out!!

Once we'd walked up the hill, we were then on the descent, and heading towards the main reason for my wanting to walk this path - another Lodge to the Garendon Estate, this one being on the A6 just in Hathern, at the point where the dual carriageway becomes a single carriageway - oh, hang on a minute, that road layout changed quite some time ago, but I think you know where I mean! 

So, the path up from the road is behind the large, solid, green gate you can see from the roadside, and the lodge sits sideways onto the road, so faces the normally private path. As such, my previous photos have always been from a particular angle, but now was the opportunity to take some unobtrusive photos from many different angles (see below) - while cheering on friends who were running past me!

Usually, I don't like to walk back the same way as I came, but on this occasion, because I was unfamiliar with the path, and didn't particularly want to walk back along the A6 to pick up the footpath parallel to this one, I retraced my steps, spotting things I hadn't seen before and seeing things from a different perspective.

It was a good walk, that took us about 2 hours by the time we'd lingered talking to friends, and then taken a slight detour to look at the obelisk. I'd heard there was work going on, so wanted to see for myself! Finally arrived home after an interesting morning, ready to face the challenges of proofreading!

Here are some photos of my morning:

To the red arch!

Approaching the lodge     

The Grade II listed lodge

The entrance to the path

The way back

The obelisk     

A closer-up view of the obelisk:

You are welcome to quote passages from any of my posts, with appropriate credit. The correct citation for this looks as follow:

Dyer, Lynne (2019). Garendon and the marathon. Available from: https://lynneaboutloughborough.blogspot.com/2019/04/garendon-and-marathon.html 

[Accessed 14 April 2019]

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Lynne