My trail shoes caught my eye this evening as I came home. Crusty. It's been sunny today, warm and they'd dried out, baked. Perhaps the first time in ages they'd not been totally sodden. But tonight they sat there looking like crumbling artefacts, delicate and fragile, belying their true purpose. Faint flashes of colour where tightened laces breakdown the dirt. They look odd as I stand there and stare, other worldly and unfamiliar. Yet these are the tools of my craft, kicked off at the doorstep, discarded and unloved.
Other worldly is also how the trail was last night. A huge flood in the Carrs by Twinnies Bridge closed the road to the airport and to the woods themselves. Runclub speed training took cover in the tunnel that runs under R2 at Manchester airport. A vast Cathedral, cut to let the Bollin waters flow freely. Except last night the river thundered and roared, a cacophonic noise echoing and resonating off the vaulted ceiling, masking our breathless gasps for life, yet immersing and energising us in its power...kind of!
