Both Daren & Nick are friends with Jamie at The Half Moon in Warninglid, so it seemed only right and proper to go and sample the fare there last night. Jamie has apparently transformed the place in the last year or so and it’s now a real, proper gastropub. The food was totally delicious! I had tender liver & crispy bacon with mash potato and shredded cabbage that would have won a competition in a sculpture contest – I ate every last scrap despite the fact that it was a rather large portion. In fact, all six plates were virtually scraped clean! And despite having a full-on meal for six with liberal quantities of wine, yummy sticky puddings and coffees, the bill was only £25 per head.
My only beef was the fact that of the range of great bitters that Jamie serves, he doesn’t currently have any Hepworths… I can see I’ll have to work on him!
Anyway, it will come as small surprise that the 7.30am gathering this morning was slightly more muted than normal! But it was a beautiful, brisk morning and it didn’t take us too long to get over the edge of tiredness. Once again it was a real pleasure running with Daren (his being slightly less fit than normal) as the pace was gloriously manageable and we could all chat contentedly without running out of steam. The Bok would shoot off every so often like a springer spaniel, egging us to join in the fun, but was eventually reigned in to enjoy the gentle run & conversation.
We headed out to the Royal Oak and round the back of the (fast becoming monstrous) St Georges Retreat, out to Hundred Acre Lane, back across to Wellhouse Lane and returned alongside the railway. The going was firm with muddy interludes and I managed to get called rude names when I, er… missed my step and splashed in a puddle. Twice. I felt particularly triumphant that Nick’s trainers looked as if they had actually seen some countryside! Mine, of course, were still dirty from last autumn and were once again dripping with mud by the time we got back: so no change there then.
We ran for one hour twelve minutes, covered 7.25 miles at an average speed of just over 6mph and used sufficient of the calorie intake from last night to be able to woof down half-a-loaf-of-bread’s worth of toast with honey & peanut butter.