House to House Relay, 18th & 19th July 2020

The Claremont House to House Relay started early on Saturday morning with a long run by Nina from Morpeth to Chris Jones at Ponteland. Being Nina, she did a couplle of extra miles to avoid arriving early! Saturday was a mixed day or the runners weather wise – the early birds caught the rain, the afternoon ones got a sun tan, before finishing in the evening with Ay handing over to Mungai. In between, the virtual baton crossed the Tyne, headed out to the coast to be thrown over the Tyne once more and then returned to take a convoluted route around Newcastle.

Mungai got Sunday off to a good start by running the long way to Julie Cross (5 miles there and back is just not enough!). Sunday’s route was then a bit of a spider’s web as it criss-crossed across the city. It ended with our leader, Alice, taking the virtual baton for a well earned pint in the garden of the Blue Bell where she was joined by a number of others. Sadly, the TV cameras never arrived, but Richard stepped in to interview our heroine for “Claremont News”!

A few runners used the Garmin Live Track facility to show their runs in real-time, and the event was keenly followed throughout the two days in a special WhatsApp group. Each runner posted a selfie of the handover, apart from one idiot (me!) who took the selfies but forgot to post until he got home! This caused a bit of panic as Alice was worried that my handover to Rose hadn’t happened!

Well done, everybody, but special thanks to Alice for organising the event. It must have been a lot of hard work – nous te remercions infiniment!