Bob Hayward & Nick Baldock have now run 16 consecutive marathons out of the 34 it will take to get to John O’Groats from Land’s End. This is all in aid of Podge the 13 year old boy who was so badly burnt in an attack last May.
Bob and Nick wake up each morning now thinking they are nearly half way, close to 400 miles, they are in fact passing places they can fly to from Heathrow or Bristol — scary when they remember they ran past Bristol airport only a week or so ago!
Today as they ran out of Preston on the A6 they noticed something new in terms of scenery — open country. Funny to think that since Tewkesbury they had slowly and inextricably been sucked into a different world. Sure they noticed the tangible shift back then from farmland to parkland, but what had truly escaped them is that the parkland had turned residential, first in a typical “arterial road” style and then more town like. Quaint high streets decorated with unique family run shops became commercial retail parks full of brand names. Third generation auto repair shops, on the outskirts of each village, with original hand pumps for dispensing petrol and signs of an anvil and fire became out of town industrial complexes full of warehouse and distribution centres. Villages rolled into towns and towns into cities. Even they went shopping the other day — one pair of Nick’s running shoes finally had to be laid to rest!
So on the A6 on the far side of Preston running toward Garstang it hit them — open country, the Beacon Falls off to the right over the Ripple Valley, the traffic thinner, the birds more numerous, the sight of steam rising from a distant barn as the farmer milked his herd of cows. How easy they had slipped back into the hustle and bustle ... and they didn’t know they’d lost the open road until it came back to remind them. How often does that happen in life, we get so busy doing, doing, doing and without realising we drift further and further away from our purpose, our plans or our dreams — and then one day they pop back into our consciousness — hopefully not too late?