Memory Lane

We were orienteering on Eston Moor today,  close to Middlesbrough.  This unprepossessing blip has been enlivened by Jill and Julie, both of whom beat me soundly today, striking a pose.  The building now belongs to the NHS, but when I was a teacher training student back in the 70s, I travelled here once a week from Middleton St George College of Education, for my lectures in Middle English as the building was then an annex of Teeside Polytechnic.  Whole Friday afternoons for a year were passed dissecting Chaucer's 'Parliament of Fowls' and learning about the Divine Right of Kings, much yawning and daydreaming about the Friday night Disco also took place!

Eston Moor was physically challenging today and I had gone about 100m from the start in to thick dead bracken, when I thought it was perhaps not the best terrain on which to try out my gammy knee.  In addition to the bracken, the first section of the course threw killer brambles and knee high heather at me, on a slope with lots of pits and gullies, aaagghh!  When we turned to contour back along the hillside, we had to climb up to the Moor, the top of which came as a relief for a while.  However, when you go up, you have to come down and that's when I wished I had gone for the shorter course I had earlier considered!

Long story short, I wasn't quite at the end of the results, which is what I expected, ten other folks found it more taxing and a couple retired.  I begged an ice pack from the St John's people and applied it on the way home.  We'll see the damage by the morning I think.