Fitness Friday: An adventurous run

Today was the only day this week that I could get out and do a really long run as marathon training. Typically this meant that the weather was the wettest we've had all week too! Undaunted I walked with my son to school to warm up and then headed out of town along Brigsteer Road so that I could get up onto Scout Scar:

This is open access land so there are lots of informal paths and I just followed random ones with the hope that I would end up in the right direction! It was pretty miserable up there and I saw only a couple of hardy dog walkers for the entire fell section:

It really felt like proper trail running with paths like these:

Eventually I came off the top and down through woodland on Helsington Barrows:

Then some lovely ladies told me I'd come down too soon for my target destination so I had to go back up again... I had never been on this section before so I was intrigued to find things like these ruins:

Once I reached the end of the barrow I recognised where I was as the vista across the Lyth Valley to Morecambe Bay opened up:

The first footpath sign I saw was the one on exiting this part of the route back onto Brigsteer Rd:

Of course being Cumbria I had a few stiles to negotiate on the return leg:

The fastest part of my run was from here passed Helsington church and through the farmland around Sizergh Castle. I paused at the castle tea rooms to use the loo!

Then I was running back down to the river to cross over at the suspension bridge:

I then followed the river and the old canal back towards Kendal. The run stopped at 14km as my phone was about to die! I think you can see how pleased I was with myself:

It may not have been my fastest every run but it was the longest and had plenty of elevation: