Creative Backpacking

A beautiful evening in Bournemouth brought together 14 runners looking to do good and do a bit of exercise along the way.

We welcomed back Sophie from last week, now a fully fledged member...hopefully you won't have to wait as long for your t-shirt as Phil!

It was Janet's first group run with us and she more than held her own on a testing route. She will be more than alright!

We also had Nicola and Kristina join us after taking a little break. Nicola managed to complete the London Marathon a few weekends ago and loved it too! Brilliant!

We set off through the gardens and down along the prom..and soon spotted out first photo opp next to a lifeguard tower with Bournemouth Pier as a backdrop. We enjoyed the nice flat terrain, mixed in with a little sand at a gentle pace, catching up and chatting with each other. We regrouped at Boscombe Pier...took a deep breath and powered up the steep incline on Sea Road and into Boscombe Town Centre where Cary was waiting for us inside the Sovereign Centre. She runs a charity called Creative Kids that run after school programs for children to help them express themselves by being creative through art.

After a quick briefing on what needed doing the gang soon started moving props, boxes and all types out of one unit and over to the next. This all on the roof of the Sovereign Centre, where none of us had even been before...yep we were a little excited!

We had to move gazeebos, boxes of decorations, marquee stands, chairs..you name it! It made taking photos pretty easy this evening...and of course the fact that everyone is so photogenic!!! Why so many backpacks??? Well Cary was so happy with the team that she gifted them some...after about a 1km of chafing and numerous attempts at wearing them in different ways, most just accepted the discomfort and embraced the feeling of gratitude instead!

The gang managed to do all the moving in a record time of 20 minutes! Saving Cary hours of work! With all that time spare we decided to extend out run home a little to include some hills and stairs...they begged for them...honestly!

We headed back down the way we came to Boscombe Pier, then up the stairs from Boscombe garden to the top of the overcliff...then back down again to the middle of the garden....David feeling the need for hills did a repeat of the stairs and the garden hill...why not right??!!!

We came back up the gardens again on looped back onto the Overcliff again and headed back towards Bournemouth Pier where we regrouped and got set to do our last hill. Neil and David still had enough energy to try to beat their PB on the Strava segment climb back to Flirt.....fingers crossed they managed it!

Thank you Mark for back marking for us, much appreciated. And thank you Caprice for some fun photos!

Good luck Daryl running the OX and to Nicola and Kristina running their 10k this weekend. Hope you guys enjoy it and tell us all about it next time!

Next week we are doing some therapeutic gardening just up the road. Come along!