Recovered from my bug, I really enjoyed the run on the beach this morning - what a great break from dank, dark and dreary London! A colleague and I extended the business trip a couple of days to see a bit of Ghana. I had my doubts as we said goodbye to our driver and his lovely air conditioned vehicle, and moved pretty down-market in hotels, but it was great to see a bit of the country. It would have been a pity to go home only having seen the beach, a conference room, our western style hotel and the drive between!

Well, it was great except for the 3 hr drive to Cape Coast in a taxi with no AC, in horrible traffic (both ways!!) What a miserable journey, choking down petrol fumes and sweating! I guess one really needs to travel very early or very late to avoid the Accra congestion. Sometime we didn't move for 10 minutes, as people came up to the car trying to sell us everything from drinks to a dictionary (really!) But the music on the radio was reggae or West African highlife music which I'm going to search out at home!

But as we began climbing up into the rainforest at the Kukum National Park, I knew it was all worth it. The canopy walk, a roped bridge 40 m up in the trees was the Ghanian equivalent of an amusement park for masses of school kids, but it was fantastic all the same. We were dripping sweat as we waited our turn on the forest floor, it felt like 100% humidity! But high in the trees there was a breeze and what a view!

Then we visited the British forts at Cape Coast and Elmina - sobering and horrific reminders of the slave trade. I’ll never forget standing in a lightless, airless stone cell that held women in incredibly overcrowded and inhumane conditions for months before they were boarded on ships never to see their loved ones again.

I wandered around the market at Elmina by myself for an hour and chatted with women at the Kente cloth stalls, and explored the noisy fish market. I really wish Billy had been with me to photograph the impossibly ordered chaos!

Home now with lots of souveniers of Ghana, necklaces, paintings, cloth and other suprises that will re-appear on Christmas morning. I do hope I get to go back to Ghana again!

Its been an interesting week in Ghana, meeting with the Ghana National Petroleum Corporation and our counterparts at the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. We’ve been treated like visiting dignitaries, chauffeured around by a driver in a lovely Air Conditioned car and addressed with undeserved respect. The Ghanaians are incredibly warm and friendly people; they laugh alot.



We’ve spent all of the time in one conference room, reviewing documents, except for two hours a day driving from the hotel to the office and back. The stretch along which we are we are driven, from the capital, Accra to Tema, the container shipping port, is far off the tourist track and the inhabitants seem to live a pretty hard life. The women walk along the road balancing their wares on top of their heads (bags of water or fried plantains) and the shops are open shacks and most wares are set out in front on sides of road.

I most wanted to buy one of these coffins! To set out on that last journey in a giant duck or a model cruise ship would certainly lighten the mood at a funeral. I shudder to think how much it would cost to ship one to England!

I managed an beautiful early run on the beach a couple of mornings, but then caught a nasty food bug, and I didn’t want to stray too far from a toilet for a couple of days... But I’m feeling better now and we’ve a tourist day tomorrow visiting Cape Coast and the Kukum rainforest. It will be great to see a different stretch of road and some green space before heading home.

I saw this scary ad for a herbal AIDS treatment.... I hope they don't have many customers.

Santa Belly Challenge to lose 10 lbs between 20 Nov and Christmas

With swimsuit time threatening on the horizon (a trip to Mexico in January) it is time to make another dedicated effort to slim down. Join my online challenge at Buckeyeoutdoors!

I'm a bit ashamed to admit to admit that I'm back to low-carb, as Atkins is anathema to the running community. But I know it works. It's really the only way I've been successful in losing a significant amount of weight. And I'm not doing any serious running training, just the commute run 3-4 miles across London, and weekend dog runs and I seem to have enough energy for those. I'm not doing any speed work, hill climbs or long runs until after Christmas.

So far its gone well and I managed to get through the first week without the headaches I sometime get when my body goes into ketosis. I did read that people that travelled with the Alaskan Inuit and ate their blubber-based diet, found that it took a couple of weeks for their bodies to adapt to burning fat instead of glucose. But then they claim that their endurance came back- and they were dragging heavy sledges across the ice with ease. Hmm, I just have to drag myself to work in the morning or keep up with the dog.

Weekend in Paris 6-11 Nov 2008

My boss asked me if I'd go to a meeting for her... well if I have to...in Paris. Yeah! So I added another meeting with my French Govt counterpart on Monday and voila, a weekend in Paris! Billy joined me on the Eurostar, through the Channel Tunnel.

So far so good, but I brought nice clothes and decided I wanted to feel like a Parisian, instead of a gawking tourist, as I have on previous trips.... big mistake! My trendy street shoes were incredibly painful as Billy and I walked ALL over Paris.

Whatever was I thinking??? No one I knew saw me! Why didn't I just wear comfy running shoes!! After abandoning Billy during two days of meetings, I knew we'd want to explore together on the weekend, so I decided to skip running kit.

So my favorite places were the ones where we stopped walking!! Little out of the way restaurants, the Picasso Museum and an eclectic exhibit, "Academia" at l'Ecole des beaux-arts.

Paris is so cool and Parisians know it. Definite advantage in collaborating with the Germans in WWI, they didn't bomb it like the Blitz in London and Napoleon III's architect, Baron Haussmann, demolished most of Paris' medieval narrow streets, replacing them with grand monuments and parks with 12 avenues leading out from the Arc de Triomphe.

We walked from sunrise to sunset - far more than my 30 min requirement on Kelownagirl challenge.

But I was barely shuffling by the time we got back to the Eurostar and I had to take most of the week off running as my feet still ache!

The Yorkshire Dales 19-25th October 2008

The Dales Way is an 84 mile long-distance footpath which follows the lovely Wharfedale valley through the beautiful Yorkshire Dales National Park all the way to the Lake District. With only a week we knew it would be a challenge - of logistics at least, with a campervan to move along with us, as well as the dog. Fortunately the forcast was rain and everyone else stayed home -we saw very few people, some days no-one!

We wanted to find hideaway spots (hidden away outside of commercial campsites) but the first commercial campsite we happened to look at was so deserted, we felt like it was ours alone and there is no delying that a warm toilet, shower and dish washup area are a plus.

The outcrop is predominantly Carboniferous Limestone and the "Yoredale Series" of layered limestones interspersed with shales and sandstones, capped on the higher fells by Millstone Grit. The first day we walked along a stream valley,Troller's Ghyll near Appletreewick, and sometimes the flow totally disappeared into caverns and then later the dry valley would suddenly have a river emerging from a spring.

The second day we raced down the dirt lane and just manage to catch the local bus to the ruins of Bouton Priory (that training paid off!) and walked back to Appletreewick. Then the next day we bussed up to Grassington and walked back. The autumn colours were beautiful and both days the rain held off almost until we made it back - just in time to head for the pub!

When the limestone was at the surface, we walked across an other-worldly "limestone pavement". Nelly didn't like jumping between the blocks!

Finding a place to camp in Barden was harder, and we finally negociated a spot snuggled up against a stone barn with some privacy out of the weather.

Then we headed up into the deserted upper Wharfdale valley where Billy chatted with this stonewall-mending air-guitar player. The rain settled in, so we drove the loop to the north of the national park, stopping off at the Wensleydale Cheese factory where we saw the most walkers in the whole trip!

National Parks are different in the UK than the US. People live in the parks and own the land here. Wilderness is hard to find, but the picturesque stone-cottage villages are really inhabited with craft workshops, antique and other speciality shops, hotels, pubs, restaurants and cafés. Some tourist tat, but not alot.

The best day out was the last when we made a 12 mile loop up Flintergill and around the village of Dent. I liked the history of Dent which was at one time a veritable power-house of hand-knitting, the profits from which provided an often essential addition to their meagre farming income. The "terrible knitters of Dent" would knit during church (shock!) and until the early 19th century the men, women and children would knit by holding one of the needles protruding from a belt, and with the other in the right hand, the left hand was free to do another job, such as churning the butter or wrapping the cheeses.. Cool, I'll have to try it for knitting and walking!

World Wide Half 2008

Our plans to run the Mendip Muddle fell apart today when Nick brought the car home sounding like a tractor. It apparently needs a new muffler/silencer, so we decided to RUN LOCAL! We printed out our WWH race bibs and set off with Nelly (the dog).

This is the second year we've pulled out of the Mendip Muddle at the last minute. NEXT YEAR we're REALLY going to do it!


We chose a route along the Grand Union Canal from Chorleywood. Using my Garmin we ran north for 6.6 mi and then retraced our steps along the tow path. It was a foggy morning and very quiet as we padded past the longboats moored along the canal.

It is impossible to resist peaking into the longboats - some are elegant and others are pretty rough. Many in this stretch are on long-term moorings and it feels a bit voyeuristic running a few feet away from someone's private home!

As the miles and heat increased, Nick began suffering the effects of little running training and a late night partying the night before. Ah, the recklessness of youth! He thought that running a little half with Mom would be easy! I resisted smug rightousness (early to bed last night, and being better trained for running despite being 52!) when he dropped out with a pulled groin muscle about mile 10. To his credit, he is incredibly supportive to agree to run with me as he's far more interested in rock climbing and bike riding!

They say that pride comes before a fall... well I was humbled by a tumble on a tree root which resulted in a skinned knee and a tweeked ankle. But I limped on, ignoring the funny looks at the blood dripping down my leg. If I take out the time I spent rolling around in the ditch and brushing myself off, I figure I finished in 2:14. Not a PR, but at least I finished the WWH this year!

Then I shuffled back up the canal path very slowly to meet Nick and buy us ice cream. (Which tasted the best ever!)

There's a sucker born every minute... (and I'm a sucker for any fitness kit)

My friend Liz suggested I check out these shoes, and I think they will really help me (and are just, so ooh cool new shoes!!) They are designed to simulate barefoot walking on uneven ground, like the Masai tribesmen of East Africa, the idea being that this will activate muscles that atrophy when we walk on hard, even surfaces wearing conventional shoes. Hence the name BMT (Barefoot Massai Techology).

Struggling as I do with tight calf muscles which result in plantar fasciitis, anything that lengthens those muscles and tendons has got to help - and the second benefit is better posture. I've found that if I slouch, I tip over forward!

I went shopping with my sister, fully intending to buy a pair of street shoes and, well, the trainers were on sale... and she encouraged me... so I bought two pairs!! (in photos) I did manage to resist the private lessons to learn to run in the trainers...

Well, the street shoes are not obviously strange looking, and once I got over falling forward all the time, I like them. They sort of feel like the Earth shoes I wore back in the 70's, with the heel lower than the foot. However, running in the trainers is pretty odd, but for my cross-London 3 mi commute run, really OK. I don't think I'd recommend them for fast or long runs, because they are heavy and you really can't lean forward in them to push off. But, hey I'm having fun.