Sunday 13 September 2026 - Spunch Altrincham

Fechin joined me and Sue for a couple of hours' Spunching on a fine Sunday morning. The Spunch points were mainly close together, so we got our best ever scores. A little local knowledge helped, though I missed an obvious short cut at the end and was penalised for going 19 seconds over the two hour limit.

These two photos were taken on the long straight track that some allege to be the course of a Roman road. It may be more recent, but it's a delight to walk down.

The route that we planned crossed the canal at Altrincham Bridge and took in lots of points between the canal and the railway, before re-crossing the canal at Seamons Bridge. The towpath was then followed all the way back to the environs of Timperley Brook and West Timperley Nature Reserve. In places the canal is full of weed; very few boats come this way these days due to the canal being closed at Dunham thanks to the breach that occurred a couple of years ago. A little further on, a heron chose to ignore the fact that we were only a couple of metres away on the towpath.

Sue went ahead and collected a couple of extra points that Fechin and I didn't have time to visit, and Fechin got a time penalty after failing to keep up and getting slightly misplaced.

Kickback Coffee provided welcome refreshments, and then we returned a few metres to the host venue, Twisted Running, where Sue spashed out on a t-shirt and shorts.

Here's my Garmin 245's take on the route we took - it recorded 11.7 km, whereas Spunch's 'MapRun' app recorded 12.7 km. Click on the next two images for better detail. The second image is an extract from the '120' results for the 53 finishers

Well, that was fun. Our next Spunch will be at Northenden on the evening of 24 September. See here for a link to future events.

Saturday 12 September 2026 - Ganavan Sands parkrun

Fort William parkrun was cancelled due to a mountain bike race - the second time this year that we've missed it for that reason. Anyway, we left Linnhe Holidays after a pleasurable week in the mobile home, at 7:45, and enjoyed the scenic drive to Oban, where Ganavan Sands parkrun has the disadvantage of being rather hilly (60 metres ascent) but the advantage for some of being next to a good beach.

We lingered near the start, expecting a few midges, but the breeze was sufficient to deter them.

The story of the Appin murder was provided on an information board. Click on the image to see the detail.

It's a lovely beach.

9:30, and the time to run or walk up a steep hill had arrived. Sue ran, I walked.

Long before I reached the turnaround point, the lead runners were returning along the good tarmaced path.

Sue would normally come back along the route to walk in with me, but today was a no-brainer for her - a dip in the ocean would always take precedence over a run back up the hill.

We'd come armed with coffee and cake as we didn't want to hang around in a coffee shop when we really needed to be getting on with the 330 mile drive home.

The last of Ali's excellent carrot cake went down very well. Thanks Ali.

We left just as a rescue boat hit the waves to look for any parkrunners who had overshot the finish.

Full results are here.

Sue finished in 28:00, much slower than usual - position 31 out of 79 finishers - many first timers at this event - people like us who were on holiday.

Meanwhile I took a leisurely 39:52 in position 72. Not much slower than on Penrith's flat course last week.