These Shoes are Made for Walking

These shoes may look alluring, but would have been no use whatever in today's London Marathon.

I was glued to the television this morning running a virtual race with the 37,000 runners.
When the marathon music heralds the BBC transmission, the hairs rise on the back of my neck and I get butterflies in my stomach remembering the nerves and angst I experienced at the starts.

His Lordship and I have run 3 London Marathons in total, and in fact got engaged at the finish of our first one. It's 9 years since our last one and finally we've hung up our running shoes and moved on to cycling which is much kinder on ageing knees.
However we both miss the atmosphere of the occasion and the feeling of achievement and pride you feel as you turn from Bird Cage Walk in to the Mall and see the finish line. What we don't miss are the long, lonely, cold miles spent training over the winter.
Hats off to all the finishers whether they're elite runners, club runners or fun runners. It's a long way and they all deserve their medal.

As soon as we'd found out the winners, we went to the local garden centre to buy moss killer for the castle lawn. Given that we are moving in the summer to the Dower House which only has a patio,it seemed slightly bizarre to be worrying about a bit of moss on the present lawn. But there you are : you can take the man out of the garden but you can't take the gardener out of the man.