Canicross Scotland

There’s a new parkrun coming to our local park – Eglinton parkrun. It starts on the 16th March 2013, but when the course map was published the other day we couldn’t resist giving it a trial run. We had a fabulous time and the pups have given the course their seal of approval.

Last Tuesday was such a lovely day that we felt we had to go somewhere a bit special. We started the day before dawn in the North Ayrshire hills and ended it in the far South of Ayrshire at Loch Doon.

2013 really isn’t getting off to the healthiest of starts. After the coughing, sneezing, aches and pains of Lurgy January we consoled ourselves with the fact that we’d had our share of illness for the year. And for a couple of blissful ailment free days things went to plan. We even managed to get some nice shots during one of our early evening outings – these were taken along the Ayrshire Coastal Path at Turnberry Lighthouse and Dunure Castle.

It’s thought to be very bad for us (humans) to spend long periods inactive. Being on your feet all day and keeping busy was much better for you than sitting at a desk all day and hitting the gym (or pavement) in the evening. Makes sense. But does it apply to dogs too? Are regular short walks / play sessions throughout the day better for them than one big run/walk and a sleep-fest for the rest of the day?

This month our challenge is more to do with building fitness for the planned canicross fun & games of 2013! We figured we’d try and make the boring but necessary stuff more fun by turning it into a challenge. I’ll report back at the end of the month and let you know how it all goes.

2013 hasn’t got off to the best of starts, with virtually the whole of the month of January wiped out by the dreaded lurgi! Persistent chest colds for Paul and I (with accompanying aches, pains and muscle tweaks), and a mystery sore back for Beanie – which I’m pleased to say cleared up in double quick time.

We weren’t feeling particularly energetic on News Year’s Day so chose a short hill walk close to home. Knock Hill – a five mile cross country round trip to the summit of a little hill with some great views.

2012 has gone by so quickly that it’s easy to forget how much fun we’ve had! I was browsing through our photos the other day and decided to put together a little montage of our memories.

In an attempt to escape a traditional Christmas we headed for the hills around Arrochar on Christmas day. We had planned to climb Ben Ime (the highest of the Arrochar peaks) and celebrate Christmas there. We were certainly well equipped for the task; in addition to extra clothing and snow spikes we were weighed down with warm Beagles coats, Beagle Santa suits (yes, really!), blankies, treats, thermally insulated mats – everything the discerning Beagle might need to be warm and comfy on Christmas day. And of course, other necessities such as tinsel, battery-operated Christmas lights and enough turkey sandwiches and mince pies to feed a small army.

Our local explorations took us out towards Largs and a lovely find – Greeto Falls. After a short but very steep initial climb the route becomes very runnable and has some spectacular views. With views out to the sea on the West coast it makes a particularly nice sunset run.

A promising weather forecast called for an impromptu hill walking trip. We’d both been training very hard in recent weeks (and had been to a particular taxing spin class the night before) and didn’t feel up to anything strenuous so decided upon an old favorite – Bien Dubh.

Although not a cross country route, our local windfarm is quite a good place to run when you want an easy to follow route and no traffic to contend with. There’s a nice little hilly 8k route that we sometimes use for speed training. It has to be said, this isn’t the prettiest or most dramatic of routes – far from it. However, as this pictures shows, if you’re there at the right time you can be rewarded with some lovely sights.

Having walked up The Cobbler during the night back in April we knew it would be very cold up there so we made sure we had plenty of warm clothing and our faithful old bothy bag. Sunrise was due at around 7.45 so we were on the road by 3am and making a start up the mountain by 4.45am. The car thermometer informed us that it was -2 degrees outside – it was going to be cold at the summit!

A short drive away from home, Auchincruive Estate is a fabulous place for trail running. It has a network of picturesque trails ranging from 2km to around 10km – all of which can be joined together to create longer routes.

Ben A’an is a perfect little hill for an evening walk. What’s not so perfect is the fact that it’s about an hour and a half’s drive from us. The views to the West from the summit are spectacular so the drive is well worth it when the forecast indicates that there might be a nice sunset. Yesterday was one of those days…

We often have our morning walks and canicross runs in Eglinton park. So frequently that we’ve long since stopped appreciating how lovely it can be. Well, this morning we were reminded…

A spell of good weather in the week before Beanie’s fifth birthday had us heading to a campsite in Galloway for a few days of canicross adventures around the rugged coastline.

We only had a small window of good weather so restricted our island hopping to a day trip incorporating both Mull and Iona. The first ferry left before sunrise so we took the opportunity to climb to the top of the hill above Oban to get a great view of our ferry sitting in the harbour in darkness.

Our caravan has spent far too much time sitting unused in our drive this year. When a few dry days showed up in the forecasts last week we dusted it off and headed to a campsite a few miles out of Oban with a view to using it as a base for a spot of [...]

The nice thing about being a Beagle with your own website is you get to do lots of fun stuff. Magazines send photographers to take photos of you running; they publish stories about your canicross adventures; you get nice letters from other Beagles (and all sorts of other dogs) that like to run; Beanie’s running [...]