Monday, July 22, 2013

Never a Dull Moment


Aside from last weekend when I went to Hong Kong, I've been trying to make it for a trail walk (and a run on the flat patches) at least once every weekend. It seems a shame not to when the whole central catchment area is essentially in my playground and you get such a good workout in under 2 hours.

My favourite part about hitting the trails though is that nothing is ever the same! I generally go out and back and this is what happened yesterday:

As I was heading back, I saw a twig move in the distance. On getting closer I realised that said twig was actually a snake. A nice, long, green, yellow and black snake. Now I'm of the 'if I don't bother it , it won't bother me' school of thought, so I didn't think the snake would actually start slithering over to me. If it did though, I figured I could maybe out run it. Then I thought, should I run and jump over it or wait for it to cross over to the other side? I went with the waiting. I didn't really fancy the snake turning back and snapping its fangs into my ankle as I jumped over and as unlikely as that scenario was I didn't really want to put it to the test. So I waited patiently for the snake to make its slow slither over to the other side of the path and continued trotting on before I realised that when I was scrambling down the Nature Reserve a tree had somehow fallen and was now blocking my path.

I didn't really want to wander back to snake land since my aim was to get as far from it as possible and the tree was way to big to even attempt to jump over. So the plan would have to involve stepping into the undergrowth and skirting round the tree. Now I'd have been a wee bit squeamish but fine had I not see the snake before. But now that I had seen the snake, I wasn't dying to put my unprotected ankle into a huge area of tall-ish grass. Laziness trumped in the end. I could smell the end of the trail and I had no intention of back-tracking (to where the real snake was) and then taking the long route by road back. So I removed my ear phones and strained my ears to hear for any hint of a hiss, and ran (with high steps) through the undergrowth whilst yelping 'no snake, no snake, no snake'. I'm sure I looked like a complete fool, but there wasn't anyone else around to judge.

You'll all be pleased to know I made it back in one piece and even had the chance to regale you with my adventures yesterday. Will I go back again next week, snake and all? Hell yeah!

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