Creature of canal

I've been doing pretty well keeping up with my exercise despite all the travelling recently: swim twice a week, run twice a week. The problem is that the weight that I joyously put on at Christmas is limiting the distances I can run without causing myself the kinds of aches and pains that I'm keen to avoid.

At the moment, then, while I lose the weight, I'm back to running around nine miles on a Sunday, whereas really I want to be doing more than ten and, ideally, a half-marathon, time permitting. Anyway, today's route took me from the Minx's house, up to the canal, then all the way down to Adlington and then back along the road to Chorley. 

It's a nice run along the canal. There are no locks, so it's completely flat, which is very different from what I'm used to when I'm running at home. Not better, but different. And I like how many people I see, walking with or without dogs, cycling and sometimes fishing. And there are plenty of canal boats moored up, too, some of which have names that sound as though they came out of an Iain M Banks novel, like the 'It's Five O'Clock Somewhere'. At this time of year, the occupied ones have woodsmoke coming out of their chimneys and I think how cosy it must be inside.

This yard in the photo was just at the end of one of the moorings, full of old machinery and odds and ends, including this fellow who, for a moment, made me think of Alan Moore's 'Swamp Thing', bursting out of the ground having forsaken Louisiana for Chorley.