Friday 15 May 2015

Looking back: Blue sky moments

In the run up to this year's big event we're looking back at last year's relay and reliving some of our epic journeys. We continue with this post from Alison Cameron in Evanton, Scotland, who saved the day on more than one occasion... She tells some of the story behind the main photo we used for our blog - Ed.

Taking part in the GB Relay 2014 last year was great fun, I’d recommend it to anyone. It started off with myself taking on one stage, from the village where I live: Evanton – Invergordon on the 5th June. That initial signing up led on to what can only be called a mammoth running extravaganza, roping in my other half William to take on the stage before me from Culbokie to Evanton! Time passed and a fair few of the northerly stages were not filling up. So still having some contacts from when I took part in the Real Relay in 2012 and Barry the Baton’s Coasters Relay in 2010, I duly sent out quite a lot of emails to try and entice some more running chums into the cause, word spread and the stages started to fill.

However, there were still some gaps, so as it turned out William managed to persuade me that between the two of us we could bridge these gaps. That’s just what we did, taking up the slack between Helmsdale and Laidhay Croft in the wee small hours of the 6th June. It was very peaceful running at night in the summer and the weather was kind.

Our favourite stage was to follow the next day on the 7th June where we ran along an undulating single track road between Achfary and Fiag Bridge. The sun shone brightly as we took turns to carry the little black box on its journey. This is one of my favourite photos of our time in the relay:

This is the handover to me, in the pink, just past Achfary. The one below is just after I’ve handed it to Will several miles further along on the same stage:

Later the same day we took on another two stages, a little closer to home this time from Alness to Dingwall and then Dingwall to Contin, running it between the two of us, a few miles each, taking turns. The weather however gradually turned to rain for the last bits from Dingwall to Contin.

All said and done we had a great time, made some new friends, received some delicious cakes and slept like logs that night after three epic running days.


All photos published in this blog post are property of Alison Cameron/William MacLennan

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