Thank you Charlene, Dy and Jen for joining me this morning for a wonderful run. A bit windy, yes, and heavy legs from the high mileage these last few days, but a good run nonetheless.
I'd plotted a new route yesterday - something just slightly different to our regular runs through Rondebosch neighbourhoods. Without travelling to other parts of Cape Town for a change of scenery, or running a half marathon each morning, we've only got so much 'back yard' to run in, and it can get boring quickly if its just the same roads over and over again, so these past few months I've been using Google Maps and any other tools I can get my hands on to plot interesting new variations on the old routes, while still keeping the distance reasonable. I hope the others will agree with my opion that we've discovered some lovely new route lately, even if its just one road down from our usual route.
But I digress. This mornings route is the point of this email - yet another slight tweak on an otherwise common Hillbilly route.
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| Route Profile |
We started up Main Road heading towards Town - we didn't notice much wind but it turns out we had lovely tail-wind pushing us along. Over Belmont and down Campground, we really noticed the strong head-wind trying to push up back up towards the Rondebosch Common. But we were soon out of the wind again, heading along Sandown Road, all the way down to Milner on the far side. Mostly a flat road with slight down-gradient, and just a little bit of a climb towards the end. It was just 3 Hillbillies at this point - Jen had bid us farewell just before Sandown, opting for a shorter run back via Newlands Cricket Grounds.
From there we headed down Milner towards Avenue de Mist, then to WPCC for water. The tap was only just giving out water, but luckily more than enough for the 3 of us. Refreshed, we hit the brick path through WPCC, heading towards Ave de Mist once again. I often wonder how the names for the roads in certain areas came about, and this is one of those areas: our next road was 'Lochiel' - was it named after a person, or does 'lochiel' have a meaning???
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| Route Map |
But no matter, because we soon found ourselves back on Sandown. For all of 5 meters, before turning down the next oddly-named street: Oakvale. Oakvale led us to Riverton, passing Syfret Road, and soon we turned onto Silwood. Very soon we were headed around yet another corner, but this time the Rondebosch Common was visible just up ahead. Last twist for the day: we're heading around the Common to add just a little extra mileage (by this point we were barely at 6.5km, so off we went.
Then it was finally time to head back to Westerford - directly into that head-wind!! The whole last side of the Common was into the head-wind, and it was really pumping by this time. The route back was a no-brainer - the sheltered Liesbeek River Trail! We just had to survive another crossing of Belmont without being blown back 2 days...
Somehow we made it, and were soon cruising down the Liesbeek River Trail. No cyclists this morning, but there were a couple of people out for a morning stroll. An uneventful end to a peaceful morning run, Hillbilly-style!
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Dean Street Hillbillies
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