Tuesday 23 April 2013

And now for this weekend

With a high degree of inevitability, after a week of rest, relaxation and enjoyment we overdid it at the weekend.  It wasn't all our fault.

On Saturday we went on a 'Sonnet walk' organised by The Globe theatre.  Essentially this took us from the top end of Shoreditch to The Globe via the places important to Shakespeare, with the odd actor leaping out and reciting a sonnet to us along the way.  Now I realise that the sonnet bit is pretty specialised and not to everyone's taste...but, but, but the flipside is that it took us to bits of backstreet London we wouldn't normally see...and, and, and there were plenty of hostelries on the way, so it will be walked again as a pub crawl...and given the distance it will indeed be a crawl by the time we reach the end!  Our legs ached as we reached our destination.

 Not everyday you see a labourer reciting a Shakespearean sonnet
 This one was a fairy (on the left)
 We never did work what this building was...completely surrounded by modern offices
 A sonic sonnet
 All shapes and sizes
A bicycle substituted for a horse...and it worked incredibly well

Sunday was exercise of a different sort...and we got the easy part of it.  One of our friends was running the London Marathon.  For the first time...at an age when she like us should be putting her feet up.  We braved the crowds and headed for Greenwich for a glimpse before moving on to Mudchute on the Isle of Dogs for a second look, and then onto Tower Hill and finally along the river at the 40km mark.  We cheered, we clapped, we shouted.  The Boy and I were made to carry heavy rucksacks full of provisions because getting a drink and bite to eat in central London is a difficult task. Humph.  There was, of course a great atmosphere.  Really fabulous...and probably all the more emotional because of the bombings in Boston the week before - one of my good friends was running in that and she was pulled up half a mile from the end because of the atrocity.

 17 miles....
 Still going strong near the end
...and we bumped into some Olympic drummers