This weekend Angela and I stayed over in Knipe, Askham for a wedding of two very close friends of ours. We stayed at Knipe Hall which is a beautiful stone-walled huge cottage which housed all of the wedding cast.

Looks like something you’d see in The Shire on Lord of the Rings

The day after the wedding which went on past 1am, I woke up with a delicate head and proper guilt about having done NO runs/cycles all week. Because I brought my running gear I thought I’ll go for one without attracting any attention to myself – hopefully just slipping away unnoticed. I headed off down a path and was going to do an easy run I pre-planned through Bampton Village until I passed by one of the groomsmen walking from his hotel from the village back to our cottage. This guy (Liam, the bride’s brother) is a bit fitter than me and has done Land’s End to John o’ Groats. So I said hello and that I was going to have a quick run through the village and then he said “Why don’t you run up that hill up there”.

Pictures never do it justice

I looked at the hill and thought he was kidding until he said with a straight face “I reckon you could do that in around 20 minutes”… Yeah so not kidding. So without losing face me and my ginger bum started to scale the small mountain. It was very steep and I was only stopping for my ankles to recover, my HR was fine. Towards the top it was like a forgotten land with craggy rocks and wildflowers everywhere. Once I got to the top I just laughed at how awesome the view was.

These pictures do it no justice at all. I just looks like a small mound.

And then I kinda started to get carried away.

I made this via Google Earth to illustrate the hill accent.

I got back to the wedding venue and everyone had woken up and was sat outside – then there’s me arriving in my tight Lycra gear feeling like an idiot haha! But Liam said “so you managed to do it then” and I was like “Yeah it was pretty good actually – only took me 15 minutes to get up” (BOOOM)! I’m such an idiot and a typical MAN 🙂