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Lost in the farmlands :D

February 26, 2012 (Morning)

Exercise Type: Run

Comments:
I ran out the way I intended, several miles north out of the city and into the gorgeous middle of nowhere, suffering the mile-or-so up followed by the mile-or-so down that repeated itself over and over for the entirety of this run. I ran up a long steep hill that Krzysztof had shown me a few weeks ago but kept going past the lovely horses and farms until I could tell I'd reached the outskirts of another small village. Then I turned around with the intention of going straight back. I ran about a mile and a half straight down a steep hill - terrified because the road was too narrow for two lanes of traffic to operate smoothly and I was making the traffic even worse, as cars whipped around the steep, tight corners and swerved to avoid me. there was no sidewalk, just hedges up against the road. I was fairly certain I was going to get hit. Then I realized that I hadn't recognized anything for that entire mile-and-a-half downhill.

I didn't want to turn around and go straight up again, and I wasn't thinking very clearly, so I stopped at a farm and talked out my options with a couple of lovely horses at the fence. They were exactly what you'd expect in Britain: smaller, hair think and often matted, covered with a blanket. The horses here look little miniature Shires that haven't had their coats brushed properly in years - yet they look extremely content about it. Anyway, they listened intently to my problems and I calmed down and looked around and saw a taxi pulled over up the road aways.

I went to the driver and asked him for directions to Roath, Cardiff. He was incredulous that I'd made it all the way out here. He told me, though, in a think Welsh accent and with typical Welsh mannerisms, that I could continue to follow the road "around and about" (and around and about and around and about...) and it would magically come to Roath Lake. That was only a mile from my house, and I'd run there loads of times. I asked him how far it was, did he think, and he replied, laughing, "too far for me!!" I asked him how long would it take him to drive it, and he said around five or six minutes. I took off, grateful that it couldn't be more than a few miles away.

Five and a half miles later... Roath Lake! This leads me to the conclusion that the taxi driver would have expected to travel at around 60 MPH around those treaturous winding back roads and though the bustling, trafficked city suburb. That's even scarier than I knew the taxi drivers to drive around here! The moral of the story, then, is this:

NEVER take a cab.