Date: 23/05/2021
Locations: Isle of Portland to Freshwater Beach
Distance: 43.61km
Cumulative total: 133.57km
Accommodation: Freshwater Beach Holiday Park
Day three of Walk for Anabella 2021, 28 marathons in 28 days, and it started off on a positive note: it wasn’t raining and the terrain around Portland was firm. It was relatively rocky, but I still had fresh legs with enough spring in them to enjoy this. Bounding down the steps on the west side of the island I was certainly enjoying it and was making good time to the point I was even optimistic about arriving at the campsite arriving!
Around the Isle, I stopped to have my picture taken and to take a picture of a group in need of a photographer. Both moments gave me opportunities to speak about AnaBella and why I had decided to take on such an insane challenge as this.
Having a reason to talk about AnaBella and the others we lost through miscarriages was an unforeseen benefit of this event. A parent’s instinct is to talk about their children all time because they are such a massive part of their lives, and commonly friends and family are more than happy to listen often even instigating the conversation by asking questions.
However, when your child dies, even though your dead baby remains a massive part of your life, no questions are asked, and people rarely want to hear you talking about them. Feeling by staying silent they are respecting your grief when quite often it is the last thing you want, and you’d love to have them acknowledged.
So having complete strangers actively ask questions about AnaBella and stick around to listen to the answers was so refreshing.
There is only one way on and off the Isle of Portland and that is along Portland Beach Road, a long straight road running adjacent to the sea. As I rejoined the mainland, I rejoined the course of the Jurassic challenge which was still going on as some runners had chosen to do the event over two days. It really was a race of two halves for these participants though as yesterday the sun was shining today the heavens opened and it poured.
The rains flipped the day upside down turning the skies from a Springfield blue to a Brontë grey adding to the atmosphere as I ran along Chesil Beach. Previously I had mistakenly thought Chesil beach was that which ran along Portland Beach Road however I was soon to discover it was much longer and more challenging than that.
Chesil Beach isn’t a sandy beach, it’s an 18-mile pebble beach and not just any pebble beach. The pebbles on this beach are large and round which makes running on them very precarious. Not only are you more susceptible to ankle rolls the pebbles tend to give way under your weight making it extremely hard going.
Stories have been told of shipwreck survivors washing ashore Chesil, desperately clambering up the beach only to fall victim to the pebbles and slipping back into the sea.
This whole section had a very ominous feel to it. I saw a man walking to the sea by himself and something in me was telling me to speak with him. He looked as if he had come with intent but wasn’t prepared to stay long. With the dramatic scenery, the atrocious weather and violent sea thoughts of suicide ran through my head. Not mine but his.
Why I didn’t say something to him I don’t know, concentrating on my own struggle I suppose, but that is often just our excuse for not reaching out to others. I berated myself afterwards determined not to let a moment like that pass again. Wasn’t one of the driving forces behind this whole challenge to reach out and get people, especially men, talking! It’s so easy to get distracted even when we are right in the middle of something.
After running along with the pebbles for seemingly ages, the path turned into an actual path which made life easier. The scenery was still very much wuthering heights: aided by the raging weather but at least the ground was firm beneath my feet.
I came across two people dressed in identical fisherman ponchos, one had a go-pro type action camera and was busy taking pictures of the scenery and of themselves as they skipped along the path. As I got close, I enquired about the distance to my camp for the night and was surprised to see they were identical twins, women in their fifties. I couldn’t make out what they were saying in their strong Dorset accents as I was too busy imagining their lives as spinsters living in a stone cottage where they still had to boil the kettle over an open fire.
Others that I passed have begun to notice and comment on the big bag that I am carrying saying I look loaded down, which is symbolic of grief: When AnaBella died the grief was heavy, it still is heavy: grief is something you don’t get rid of, you just you learn to carry it better. This will hopefully happen with this bag; the bag will be the same weight it will just feel lighter because I’ve learned to carry it a bit more. Or that’s at least the idea.
With my early optimism having been scuppered by the weather I eventually got to my campsite around 19:00 to find the reception closed. Dragging my very wet self to the bar I checked in to find the pitch I had been given was in the middle of a very exposed field. Luckily there weren’t too many other campers, so I had the pick of the field, unluckily there wasn’t much to be seen in the way of shelter.
I settled on the corner between two knee-high walls, this would normally be next to useless but due to the height of my tent, it did offer a little protection. During setup, I did learn a valuable lesson to secure everything when pitching in the wind as I lost both my peg and pole bag, and this started a long relationship with a black bin lining given to me by the Holiday Park.
Cold and wet I was grateful for the large mostly empty shower block where I could spend my time arranging my gear and having what proved to be one of the best showers of my entire trip. Best of all there was an onsite launderette where I could clean and most importantly dry my clothes for the first time in four days.
