A little Thames Meander Photothon for you...


Amanda is ready for action!


The Man in the Kilt. There's always one!


Well, ok, sometimes there's two. Not a runner, though, so maybe he doesn't count.


Ready for the off...


At Trionium events, you have to run up a *$%@-ing great hill before you get to the piper. This is for softies!


Only a few k, and already Ed (the eventual winner) is well out in front


Here's me kilt man again. The extra wind resistance is clearly not causing him a problem.


Aha! I know that woman!


And that one too! No funny remarks about "in the biblical sense" please.


At times you could think you were in the countryside, but you're not!


The idea (I think; and I may have this wrong) is that your kilt catches the air and you can fly by flapping your arms.


This is Michelle, Kirsty's sister. Who's Michelle? Who's Kirsty? Well, at this point, I didn't know either.


Merilyn still going strong!


Amanda isn't far behind. But her goal isn't really speed or a PB, it's just to finish after her previous attempt was compromised and ultimately destroyed by illness.


At the turnaround point, my kilted gentleman! I'm not sure whether a "Keep On Trucking" sign held upside-down was as good a motivator as intended.


"That's her, that's my sister". Yeah, but whose sister?


Ah, that's who Steve's rabbiting on about.


Back to women my own age!


Actually, Kirsty probably deserves a bit of a slap. I said, "Your sister's a lot younger than my wife, so it's ok she's in front". She said, "She looks young but she's actually 40".


By taking short cuts on my bicycle, I'm still ahead of my Scotsman, but it's getting tighter.


You wouldn't know Merilyn's suffering if you hadn't been told.


Mind, Amanda's suffering too. Partly this is because the towpath might look like it's rural, but it's actually in the middle of a major city with all the traffic fumes that implies. Ironically, we've come by bicycle precisely because driving and parking in the vicinity is such a nightmare.


Buccleuch Gardens. I'm sure it's not named after the noise of a runner clearing the phlegm...


Wikipedia tells us that the Scottish Dukedom of Buccleuch is pronounced "ba-clew". Dunno whether the Richmond venue is any different.


Merilyn on the home straight! (Apart from that slight kink in the road.)


Yay! She's done it!


Amanda passes Merilyn on one side, Steve on the other, but has eyes only for the finish line.


And she's done it. After the psychological trauma of a DNF in 2012 (she was ill FFS!) she was paranoid about finishing. Nobody but her had the slightest worry whether she'd do it.


"That hurt so much, we're never going to do it again."

Yeah, right.

Steve.