The morning was gun-metal grey, and despite the promise of sun later in the day, the early hours were working well to give an entirely different impression. The air was cool and moist and stung a little against the back of Harry’s throat as he sucked it down into his lungs. Graceful his running style was not, of that he was very sure, but he was out and moving and that meant he was at the very least going further than if he was just sat on his bed back in the hotel eating biscuits for no reason other than the fact that there were there.
Back in his twenties, Harry had been fit, particularly when he had been in the Parachute Regiment. But then it was impossible not to be if you were a member of that particular branch of the armed forces. Harry had fond memories of his P Company training, not so much because it was fun, but more so because it had been a relentless attack on everything he had ever thought he was capable of, and he’d survived it. Though memories of what he had been like back then weren’t exactly helping in the here and now. He was an out of shape middle-aged man, and he was pretty sure that the sight of him flapping his massive feet against the ground, as his belly wobbled out in front, was something a law should quickly be rushed through parliament to prevent.
Huffing and puffing, Harry did his best to push on, and all the time his mind kept reminding him of what he had once been, sadistically intent on motivating him by constantly reminding him of just how hideously unfit he truly was.
And to think you used to weigh eleven stone, it whispered. Now look at you! It’s enough to make someone’s eyes bleed. You’re a bloody embarrassment! Give up now. Go on, just give up and eat some doughnuts, a nice piece of cake. Embrace the real you. The fat you.
Harry wasn’t sure what it said about who he was that his own mind was trying to fat-shame him into moving more. It was working though, and he swore through gritted teeth and pushed on.
To get himself motivated and moving, Harry had initially started with an app on his phone which had promised to get him from a couch to five kilometres in twelve weeks. But he didn’t like running with a phone, not just because people kept calling him on it, but also because the app had an horrendous, chirpy American voiceover, which Harry had ended up arguing with.
‘That’s one kilometre done.’
‘Shut it . . .’
‘You’ve got this!’
‘Like balls I have . . .’
‘Remember, never ever ever ever give up!’
‘That’s too many evers . . .’
‘You’re awesome!’
‘Oh just piss off will you!’
So that hadn’t lasted much longer than a few days.
Instead, Harry had managed to come up with a little three and a half mile route around the picturesque lanes of Hawes and Gayle, the two almost conjoined villages-cum-small-county-towns which sat together at the top end of Wensleydale, and was working slowly up from a mix of running, jogging, swearing and walking, to eventually – hopefully – being able to do the whole thing in one go, although the swearing would probably stay. If he was honest, that was the only bit he really enjoyed, and some days his creative use of expletives surprised even himself. Three and a half miles didn’t sound far, but this was the dales and wherever Harry looked, wherever he walked, there were hills.
Starting from the hotel, Harry’s route had taken him through Hawes marketplace then out of the town and past the garage, with a left up Tufty Hill, which was a lovely, cute name, Harry had thought, for something that made him feel like he was going to cough up a lung.
The hill was a main road but not exactly busy early in the morning and, after just over a mile of huffing and puffing, Harry took another left onto Cam Road. This turned his view from staring up the dale, to instead gaze on towards the wonderfully named Snaizeholme Fell, which rose slowly in front of him, a wide swathe of greens and browns, the fields and distant moors quietly contained inside the ancient network of drystone walls, the sheep inside them like a splattering of little dots of white paint from an artist’s brush.
Harry did his best to focus on the countryside, to distract himself from the pain of moving through it at speed, but it didn’t work. Hills are bastards, Harry thought, and pounded onwards even harder in a hopeless attempt to flatten them.
Back in his hometown of Bristol, Harry had tried and failed numerous times to get back into running. He’d always managed it enough to make sure he could pass the regular police fitness test, but keeping it going had always been a problem. Running the streets, dodging traffic, trying to avoid commuters and shoppers and then just smashing into them, just wasn’t his idea of a good time. But up in the dales, Harry could already sense that running was altogether different. He wasn’t any less knackered or unfit, but he was certainly getting a lot more out of it. Enjoying was perhaps too strong a word, but it was definitely more rewarding, he thought, as he stumbled forwards for the next mile or so, which was now all on single track lanes, the kind that even Google hadn’t bothered to send its cameras down to film.
From there the route brought him into the top end of Gayle, down Harker Hill and eventually past the Methodist Chapel, then right and over the bridge, which rose over the bubbling laughter of the clear water of Gayle beck, and left down Old
