Photograph quiz:
Photo no. 131. This photo was taken from the top of the Durham Cathedral tower … place an ‘X’ where my room was.
300 miles plus (500 plus kilometres to you Blog) and back home from the very snowy, very, very muddy National Cross Country Championships in Sunderland last Saturday, again returning via God’s Own County. Sunday was dry enough to trudge along the banks of the river Wharfe at Bolton Abbey. It is rather sad that, like the moorland’s paths, to prevent further erosion, the river bank tracks are increasingly being covered with stone and grit. For trudging, the advantages of nature’s cushioning are therefore being negated, making pathway running almost as bad as running on the hard road surface. Sad! Earlier, it was nice to see that the track at Durham University’s Sports Centre is now an all-weather surface … not that you were able to run on it on Sunday morning as the all-weather surface was under a covering of snow. All weather?????? What’s that all about? All weather use as long as the weather is all right!!!! Whether to use the track? That’s fine then? When I was in my final year at the Pink Panther University, a 400m track (440 yards to you Colin) was built in the flood plain of and alongside to, the River Wear. So that was a bit clever don’t you think Blog? But also lots of university quids was spent on notices informing the competing athletes which event took where, just in case they were confused … after all, taking a degree at one of the country’s top universities didn’t guarantee that the long jumper would recognise a long jump pit, nor a sprinter would realise where the 100m (110yds to you Colin) might be. Large notices were erected at each and every event start and finish!!! Even notices which proclaimed “water jump”, “pole vault” and “discus circle” were placed in the in-field. Best of all was the notice on one side of the run up strip proclaiming “long jump”, while on the other side of the same run way a different notice proclaimed “triple jump” just in case anyone thought the sand was there for building sand castles. Each of these signs was about five feet (1500mm to you Blog) high and nearly as wide. And the signs got increasingly bigger the more the number of events to be recorded. And at the end of the finishing straight, a bill board was needed to inform the spectators what races ended there … not that they could see the track anyway!!!!!
The athletics track which was built while I was in attendance at that seat of learning was far from all weather. Rumours circulated at the opening invitational meeting that the track material was coal waste from one of the nearby coal pits (it was an ash colour, Blog I kid you not!); in winter it was like a soggy pudding, so students were banned from using it because a runner left deep foot holes with every step when they tried to run around the track. In summer the students couldn’t use it because the coal dust set like concrete, making the use of training spikes an impossibility.
Thank you for that information about the traffic cones Blog. Much appreciated. So the yellow ones are placed under or over electricity cables on motorways, the blue ones ditto for water, but you don’t know about the green cones???? Get a grip Blog, it can’t be that hard. Yes I knew already that the white cones were for ice cream, thank you very much.
Colin
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