Ed & Jim's Historic Run Series II
The second in the series of historic marathon training runs around Cambridgeshire started just the other side of Newmarket racecourse in a village called Woodditton, in a snow shower, yesterday. The route we intended to take would have seen us run one defensive earthwork, at least two roman canal routes (Reach Lode and Car Dyke) and another two lodes I don't know the history of (Swaffham Bulbeck Lode and Bottisham Lode).
The weather soon turned fair, and although there was a brisk and chilly NE wind, we were treated to some stunning sights of Devils Ditch (or Dyke). Devils Dyke is an Anglo Saxon defensive earthwork from the 6th/7th century. In places it's ditch character is more obvious and it's more of a haha than a wall, in other places it definitely a big wall. Looking on the map you'd think it was another defense to keep the wild fen types out of the civilized central lands, but it's immediately obvious when you're running on it that it was built to stop the Britons (on your left as you're running North) from attacking the Anglo Saxons.
At the end of the Dyke is the historic village of Reach. From Reach we ran up the east side of Reach Lode, a Roman navigation canal. If you study the route we actually took, or an OS map, you'll see why this was an error; at the end of Reach Lode, we realized we were about 5yds of cold water / 6km of track away from where we wanted to be. The romans, apparently, didn't believe in bridges.
Ed felt the emotional blow of having to retread our steps more heavily than I did. That's the blow that was heavier, not our steps retrod. In either case, Ed pulled at Upware and stowed himself away in a strange pub, leaving me to fly downwind back to Waterbeach, with a little wiggle down Bottisham Lode (that Winston described weeks ago) and a diversion up Car Dyke, another Roman canal built to bring Clay from Clayhithe to Waterbeach and pottery back the other way.
posted by Jim @ 7:55 AM
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