Travel by car and ferry

I had travelled by ferry before, but I had never driven to the ferry port; let alone from the ferry port on the other side. I was a bit nervous about the last bit! I have practically never driven in the Netherlands. I don’t know the roads. I am totally happy on the rail network, but I have no clue about the motorways! 

The first thing, though, was to get to Hull. I gave myself plenty of time. I had looked on the map; getting there seemed straightforward. Just drive to Manchester, do one left-right manoeuvre to bypass the city over the north, and then just keep driving until the docks in Hull. But it was so far it required at least one break. 

I was quite happily trundling on. I had a toilet break fairly early on. I also wanted a coffee break a bit later, but that seemed complicated. Lay-bys don’t seem to be a thing anymore, and any service station I might want to use was having building work done and not accessible. 

When I got to a nature reserve with beautiful barren hills (some northern end of the Peak District, I think) I just took an arbitrary exit. I found somewhere to park my car. And I could finally have my break. I needed it by then! And it was a combined coffee and lunch break by now. With the windows open for fresh air. And a loo break. In the bracken. 

Lunch break site

From there I drove on. Not too far from Hull I had another loo break. I didn’t know if there were loo facilities in the queue for driving onto the ferry! And then I drove on. The motorway leads you elegantly to the ferry port. And as nothing had gone wrong, and I had taken fewer breaks than intended, I was early. 

I hadn’t done a car check-in before. It was a bit weird, but easy enough. Soon I was parked, and could get to my hut. I decided to do some work there, and then have improvised dinner. Then I had some fresh air, seeing Hull vanish. Then I went to bed. 

The next morning I improvised some breakfast, and topped it up with a coffee and croissant from the ferry cafe. Then I packed. I was nervous! Now I would have to drive to Amersfoort over the Dutch roads. Scary!

Sunrise over the port of Rotterdam 

It went ok. After passport checks I planted myself behind the reassuring bum of a lorry that had come off the same ferry. And I just trundled along. I knew the route was simple: A15, A27, A28, done. But sometimes you still have to pay attention. Sometimes you suddenly have to be in a particular lane or something. But it went largely ok. 

Once I responded too slow and missed my junction. I took the opportunity to just come off at the next one, have a loo break, and recalibrate. And from there, all went well. And soon I was looking for a parking spot near my mum’s. I had made it! 

Back to the Netherlands

My mum had decided she wanted professional help. So we set the wheels on motion to make that happen. The first step was: a geriatric district nurse. She came when my sister was still there. We hoped things would move fast from then on. 

They didn’t. The nurse came on Monday. The next thing to happen would be a geriatrician, coming that Friday. My mum’s sister got back to visiting my mum every day to sort out tea and the occasional sandwich. But my sister and me were nervous about that. In between visits, my mum was bound to go to the loo. That could go wrong any time! I decided to go back. 

I decided to take car and ferry this time. Surely my mum would go into a home. We would have to empty her house. If I wanted to bring her administration home (I am the executor), or bring some keepsakes, this would be the time. And then you need a bit of space; hence the car. I booked a ticket on the next day’s ferry. 

Hopefully, the geriatrician would sort something out soon, but probably not that Friday, so I booked a flexible ticket back on the Tuesday. If I needed to stay longer I could move it. And I emailed work I was on my way again. And asked the neighbour again to look after the cat. 

I booked the ticket from the office, and on the way home I biked past Halfords. I needed a ‘UK’ sticker. And stickers for on my headlights. 

Then I could go and pack. Mum, here I come again! 

Reith lecture

I am quite familiar with the Reith lectures. An annual fixture, with an invited speaker who does a short series of lectures at various locations in the country. They invite what they consider innovative thinkers. last year, it was Rutger Bregman’s turn, and I consider him an interesting thinker. I made sure to listen to the entire series. 

I didn’t realise it, but this year, the speaker was Robert Macfarlane, and one of the venues would be Bangor University. Macfarlane has written loads of books, but as far as I know, the most famous (and very recent) is the one in which he  wonders if rivers are alive. He would talk about ‘The Human Superiority Complex’. Susan had spotted it. And asked if I wanted to come along. I sure did! She got tickets. 

On the day of the talk she said there would be ID checks and bag searches. Crikey. We would first have dinner in town. That was nice! I hadn’t seen Dean in a while. And I had an udon bowl. 

We then went to Pontio and found throngs there. There was a big queue and we joined it. It moved really slowly, and we saw a lot of people we knew. After an eternity in the queue, a former colleague approached us and said we had reservations and didn’t belong in the queue; that was for people without. (Mind that I had asked an employee what the queue was for, and he had said we should be in it.) We went to where we should have been. We got our tokens, but by then the venue was quite full. At ground level they sent us to the first balcony. The first balcony sent us to the second balcony. There the door was closed. We went back to the ground floor. Where we were let in after all! What a faff. But at least we were in. No ID checks, no bag search. 

After a while a lady appeared to get us ready for the recording. After a while she said someone had told her, through her ear piece, that she hadn’t introduced herself. It was Anita Anand. And then she introduced the speaker. 

Macfarlane appeared and started talking. He said his individual lectures, together making up his Reith lecture, had themes: this one’s was air. He would talk mainly about birds. 

He is an engaging and knowledgeable speaker about birds. I did enjoy it! But where was the human superiority complex? That is what we came for. He didn’t really say anything I didn’t already know. I was glad he said it so well. 

In the end there was time for questions. I don’t think any of them were particularly insightful. But he answered them well. 

Then a few things Anita Anand had said needed to be re-recorded, for reasons of microphone glitches and suchlike. And then it was done. 

We walked out, still a bit confused by the bad organisation and the lack of human superiority. But at least we had all enjoyed it! And on December 1st, it will be broadcast, so everyone can judge for themselves. I myself am mainly curious what the other lectures in the series (broadcast on different days) will be like! 

Borders League Birkenhead

In spring we ran a Borders League fixture in Birkenhead Park. And in November we would be back. The League is starting to get repetitive. The reason is that councils are decreasingly likely to give approval to races on public roads. So when you have a venue off them, everyone flocks to them. This time the organising club was Birkenhead AC, which makes sense, but in March it was Wrecsam Tri who were resorting to this park, as Wrexham council was being difficult. It seems Eryri used to do our race in Caernarfon, but have now moved to the Anglesey race track, where the Cybi Striders had already been organising their races. 

Anyway. I had missed the first fixture of the year as it clashed with the Bangor 10k. I was keen to join this time! And we would travel together; Anna and Helen were coming too. 

I drove to Anna’s, picked her up, drove to Conwy, and there we together got into Helen’s car. In Birkenhead we parked up, headed for the loos, did a warm-up and lined up. Jane, of Llandudno 10 mile fame, was there too. And we as Eryri Harriers had enough runners, both male and female, to not get penalty points! 

We started. Initially it was very busy and you were running in a crowd, but I knew that wouldn’t last. Soon enough the field thinned out. I was happily running along. 

Autumnal running 

I was feeling good, and was slowly overtaking people. A young Eryri girl was first. I admit I was thinking about my ranking in the Eryri Harriers Road Running Championships! I also saw Jane, who had outrun me in Llandudno. This time I thought I might actually be faster. And I was. 

I also overtook Robin; a young Harrier. It turned out later he had been out the night before. And slowly we got close to the finish. I saw a woman I thought I could still beat. And I did. And then there was another on in sight. I figured there would be just enough time to pick her off too! I hit a final sprint when I saw strange goings-on by the finish. The race is on paved paths, but the finish is on the grass. With some ribbon, a funnel is created, can you run into that. The actual finish was about 50 m from the path, and then there was another 50m or so in which the admin was done, with numbered tokens and such. But now there was a big queue, and marshals shouting at us to slow down. I had to stop before I even reached the grass. What had happened?

I figure they probably still knew in which order we had come in, but I didn't know if they would be able to give us a time. But that's ok. The whole competition is all about finishing order. So I got my  token and went to where the other harriers were. I had my finishing number registered and had a chat with the other finishers. And when everyone had come in, we did a group picture, and then a cool-down. Then we were ready to go. And the plan was to have a coffee before we would get back to Wales. I also heard what the problem had been; the person with the numbered tokens had dropped them. Oh dear!  That's why it had taken so long to find the correct token for people that there had been a big queue. I was glad it wasn't anything more sinister, like a runner getting unwell right at the finish, or something like that.

 

Club pic

Someone suggested a garden centre, so that's where we went. But it was lunchtime on Sunday, and it was heaving. I don't think the centre was very good at dealing with that. By the time I could finally pay for my coffee it wasn't hot anymore, and it was so busy we couldn't get a table that would fit us all. In the end we were having a coffee only with the people we were car-sharing with anyway. We had had hours to socialise with these! So that part of the day I would easily have skipped. Oh well. 

To my surprise, we did get  results, including times, two days later. I think they just noted the times people were stopped. So for some people, that was tens of meters before the finish. But what could they do. I was quite chuffed; I had done well. My time was good but that might have been because I didn't run the full course. If I had done with that time,  I would have run as fast as I had done in the Abergele 5k, and I don't think that's realistic. But what was undeniable: I had been the fastest woman over 50! In most other races, that is trivial. But this is Borders League. It meant I had beaten both Jane of the Buckley Runners and Louise Blizzard, the lady who had beaten me at the Trentham 10. I was very proud of that! And the Eryri ladies had come first in our division. Success! 

Trying it again with Neil

It had been me who had pulled the plug out of the relationship with Neil. My coping mechanisms and his coping mechanisms had been reinforcing each other until it had resulted in deafening feedback. And that had inspired me to call it a day. 

Only afterwards did I realise, with the help of my sister, how mine had reinforced his. And how I could have acted differently. And having been dumped made Neil realise how his coping mechanisms had acted against him, and how much he had lost. 

We never broke off contact. That is how I heard he had started seriously dealing with his coping mechanisms, which to me seemed unsuitable for this stage of his life. And he was very supportive when I was worried about my mum. And when I got back, we met up again. And we talked. And we decided to give it another go. Can you let go of your baggage so quickly you can pick up a failed relationship only after a few weeks apart? Well, one way to find out. We both think we have little to lose, and could have a lot to win… wish us luck! 

 

We went for a walk the day we got back together 

Registering for the Welsh Masters

My running is going so well, including being selected to run for North Wales, I was starting to dream of running for Wales as a whole. That both times I ran for North Wales I was the slowest of the team didn’t deter me. And Louise has started to ask me about it. I started looking it information about it, but only found anything about 2026. Too late for that. 

During the Own the Night run, Emma also started talking about it. She explicitly named the Welsh Masters, and said the info about 2027 had just been published. So I looked again! And found what I needed.

From the WA website 

The Welsh Masters are for runners over 35. Each year they pick one event to represent the distances they cover: 5k, 10k, half marathon, marathon. (And then a trail and cross-country event, but I am ignoring these.) And they published the qualifying times. I looked; I haven’t run a marathon in 11 years so I am out for that, but I qualified for all three other distances. For the 10k, that wasn’t totally relevant as the chosen race was on the same day as the Snowdonia Half Marathon, which I really like. The 5k would be in June in Shrewsbury. I decided to think about that. I don’t have to decide until May. And the half marathon was the Caernarfon one. I absolutely would want to do that! So I officially registered my interest. I hope I will get selected! It will be summer 2027 by the time I will find out. 

I think my chances are good. They have teams of up to six runners in each age category. I obviously have no idea how many amazing F50 women there are in the south, but how many would be willing to come all the way to Caernarfon? And in the north there are only few in that category who can beat me. Jen can; she recently ran a sub-3 hr marathon and that's amazing, but I doubt she wants to compete here. Bad news for the other countries if she does! Jane from Buckley Runners sometimes can. That’s sort of it! In the last 13 races I ran, I had 12 category wins. And in the one race where I didn’t, the lady who managed to stay ahead of me was running for Cheshire, so wouldn’t qualify to run for Wales. She might be there for England though! She is quite the opponent… 

Nothing will happen for months now. But I am already excited! 

From the Netherlands: another shift

I was still reeling from my mother’s change of hart about professional help, and then my sister reported the next one. She said my mother had mentioned she was fed up, both with being ill and with life altogether, and my sister logically brought up euthanasia. I had done that too, and she wouldn’t hear of it then. But now she responded differently. Maybe because she realised her future was now lying in a nursing home. She now was in favour. 

I remember my mum speaking, over the past years, about euthanasia in different ways. I suppose that one’s opinion changes when circumstances change, but circumstances couldn’t explain all variability. I guess she still has some ambiguity about the topic. And ambiguity might very well mean it’s not offered. We will see how this develops.

I don’t know how long the process even takes. I am confident she meets the criteria regarding her situation. But we will have to see if she sticks with her decision. It could be one thing to want it when you find yourself bed-bound and fed up, and another one to want it once the process has actually started and it becomes starkly real. We will see! I personally find it a big relief this possibility is there in the Netherlands. Once quality of life has gone, it is possible to gently bail out…