Isle of Wight Run #3

Day 3 (8^th July 2013): East Cowes to Totland Bay (21 miles)

All taxi drivers on the IoW are mad. In a nice way. In London taxi drivers don’t often talk much, but here it’s like they are just waiting for a conversation!

So back to the glamorous start line at the petrol station, then 1 mile downhill to the floating bridge at Cowes. Ran through Cowes and the nice sailing shops and boats, and then out onto the promenade for a nice while with views over to the mainland and the Solent.  Then up onto the cliff top path and running along a rough track in the scrub, then back down to the beach. The main part of the run is all inland today, as a lot of the coast is owned privately. Cold lemonade stop at the New Inn Pub in Shafleet – delicious! Then we ran through the prettiest field in the world, tiny blue and yellow and pink flowers with a stream at the bottom and the sun shining. Next up were some pine woods which was nice and cool in the shade, and running over wooden causeways over some march land. Picnic stop on the beach = tick!

Then back into the woods and got lost again around an enormous farm house and made a swift (ish) getaway before being eaten by the guard dog.

Then, easily my favourite bit of running yet! Bouldner Copse is set on a slope, which fortunately we were running down, so over a mile of easy running and really just a beautiful peaceful place!

Reached Yarmouth. Really wanted to stop there, and have an ice-cream. Dreams shattered...must crack on! Onwards through the Victoria Country Park which is great running though the forest. Then down and around an enormous holiday park (really I think that path could go through the middle of it), on into Freshwater, where we were planning on stopping, only we didn’t realise that Freshwater wasn’t on the coast, so we ran past it....

...and into a closed section of the coastal path where the cliffs had fallen in! Oh well, we kept going, but it was quite intimidating, thinking of how small you are in comparison to the massive cliffs. We made it to Totland Bay where we had cold drinks and crisps in the pub.

Quite tired but really loved today’s running. And now only 11 miles left!