Trumpeting elephants?

So, elephants are my favourite animal.  I even have a. Cuddly elephant with a lavender pillow belly that I can warm up to keep me warm in winter, so when I was planning my route for today's 15 mile run, and I read the route instructions about it passing close enough to Colchester zoo that you could hear elephants trumpeting, I was sold.

First I had to get to the starting point of the route though.  The route is here: http://www.essexwalks.com/walks/layerdelahaye.html#page=page-1

I figured it was about 3.5 -4miles from home giving me a perfect 14 -15 mile run.  When I got to Gosbecks road and saw this sign,

I assumed the starting point car park would be really obvious and on Gosbecks road.  I got my map out to try to figure it out an just couldn't see a car park, nor could I see it on my iPhone maps.  After much looking and trying to figure this out, a man came out of his house on the other side of the road and asked if he could help!  How kind!  I showed him the map, and he pointed me back to the main road.  I was only about 500m short of the car park.  He said that it was a lovely route especially this time of year with the autumn leaves.

I'd never been here before, but for a brief history lesson, Colchester is Britain's oldest recorded town and was a key settlement for the Romans.  As such there are many roman ruins in the town, and Gosbecks is an archeological site where a rather impressive fort, and amphitheatre were excavated.

I started on the run and took some pics.  Loving the crisp and brightness of the day:

In the next picture you can make out the tops of the buildings of Colchester Zoo.  I didn't hear the animals on my way out, but on the way back I certainly heard some exotic sounding birds:

I put the camera away and got on with following the route.  I passed a couple walking, sensibly in wellies and they told me it was really sloppy where I was about to go.  Having just passed through a muddy patch I thought it must be the same and nothing I couldn't deal with.  I was wrong though, this was the kind of mud that let's you sink in further than ankle deep and then tried to steal your shoes:

Had quite a few muddy patches to go though, and the route instructions were clear.  I gave in to the fact that those purple trainers I've had my eye on will now need to be bougt for my spring marathons and these relegated to just my winter training shoes.  I've probably already done 100 miles in them, and I tend to need to replace them at 300 miles anyway, so not too fussed.  At least they started off grey, so once cleaned, the brown they will become won't be too noticeable.

The route instructions were so good, they even described a path to the ruined st Mary's church, which is on private land, but obviously quite interesting.

From the Essex walks website: "The church itself is of Norman origins, with much of the north wall built during the 14th century. The upper part of the tower is Tudor. The church fell into disuse in 1598, and by 1768 was a ruin."

The next part of the run went to the Roman river and though the Roman River nature reserve.  Here I did indeed see some nature, I thought I glimpsed a weasel, then several pheasants, a heron, and of course a squirrel.  Nowhere near as tame as the ones in castle park though.

On the next part of the run, I got a bit lost.  I think the trees down from last weeks storm meant that obvious paths weren't so obvious, but I found my way back to the route, and ran past the pub they recommend as a refreshment stop:

Back through the reserve and back to Gosbecks park.  The sites of the amphitheatre and fort are marked out in the grass and there are signs up too:

Back to the car park and along the roads home.

This was a lovely run!  The parts in the woods and nature reserve were really muddy and so I had to walk quite a lot of it.  I managed to complete the 15 miles in 3 hours, taking on water and 2 SiS Go gels, one of which with caffeine.

29 miles run this week- it feels like I'm in marathon training :)