Discovering new roads - in my 'hood

For my weekly long run with Rob, I thought I'd take him on roads that I haven't run for ages. I had in mind a route through Bruma and into Observatory to find a big open park that I've run past before and which we saw from the Scottish War Memorial in Kensington last week.

So, we headed through to Bruma and then got meandering on wickedly steep roads on the side of Linksfield Ridge - the suburb is probably Cyrildene. I haven't run some of those roads for years and some of them I've never run. It's an old suburb with huge, established oak trees. Autumn is here and winter is coming.

A highlight was discovering a single-lane, winding road leading down the ridge on the other side. Lovely evening light, great view... photo op!

When we took the winding road down we were kinda committed to a route home from the other side of the ridge.

Rob says, "Should we just run around?".

I reply, "Yes".

It's actually quite a distance to run around; always further than you think. But we were coming at it from a more favourable direction - one that, I think, has a bit more downhill gradient, which I was very grateful for after the nasty steep hills on the other side.

Into the groove with seeking out new roads, we found a beautiful, quiet road that I've never run before. Nice properties to gawk at and a decent look at the crazy-big, North-facing houses on the Ridge. And then we found this striking succulent growing outside a house. An abundance of it. In the evening light it looked magnificent!

17-kilometres after setting out we returned, in the dark, to my door.

A bit of adventure, some new terrain... this was one of those really great runs.