Ward Walks Home*

* Er, actually, I'm not fit enough to do that one yet. London to Southampton is about equivalent to the distance of my challenge next year. Not ready for that!

I went back to Southampton this weekend to spend an evening with my mum (although I'm sure she won't mind me saying that the main draw was seeing Jim Moray and Cara Dillon at the Eastleigh Music Festival on Friday really...) and took the opportunity to take my training to my home city.

Or rather, around my home city.

Saturday afternoon was spent walking 15 miles which took me around Southampton Sports Centre, Common, town centre, marina and docks. I took some pictures to stop myself obsessing about the oppressive heat and worrying about blisters.

As usual, you can see them nice and big (and with a few little stories in the descriptions) on my Flickr.

It was an afternoon with some pretty intense memories and sometimes I just wanted to stop and reflect for a bit. I don't like stopping, but I allowed myself a few moments to do just that at the boating lake on Southampton Common.

Back in 2003, I spent the first term of the last year of my degree on Southampton Common. I mapped every square based on memories and discoveries and it became QuiteCommon.com. It wasn't an entirely successful project, and I wince at some of the spelling mistakes on there, but it did provide me with many happy memories.

One day in early November, I took Dad to the boating lake to sail homemade boats just as he had done when he was a boy. The only difference was that he had told me stories of beautiful balsa wood constructions, and I had provided two tiny paper ones.

We cycled from our house to the Common and cautiously launched our crafts. Then we spent a good hour or so sitting on a bench nearby laughing ourselves stupid. Our boats had sunk almost immediately and a big motorised boat came along and stole the limelight.

Afterwards we went home and had a number of cups of tea at the kitchen table and laughed some more. It was a good day.