Off On A New Trail!

   Mondays are one of my days off and, as I have been

bemoaning the fact that I only seem to run on the weekends, I decided to force myself out the door today and try a new trail!
   I headed off to the north end of town to familiarize myself with the Medway Valley Heritage Forest, a London ESA (Environmentally Significant Area). I had heard glowing reviews and thought it was worth a try.
   It was about -3C (27F) and overcast. Overcast is what you get, for the most part, in London these days (although it was suddenly gloriously sunny later on) with a minimal breeze.
   

Lots of bridges....

There are a whole bunch of entry points to Medway and I tried to find the one which gave me the most trail access. I chose to go in at the northernmost point, just off Sunningdale Ave. 
   What I encountered for the first kilometer and a half was snow-packed to bare multi-use path. This meant I was running with screwshoes on asphalt occasionally, not the best mix. I tried as much as possible to stay on the snowy parts and eventually found myself on actual trail, much of it alongside Medway Creek. It appears that the trail there at one point recently had been flooded, as I found myself running on very thin ice over very wet ground. You could hear the ice cracking as you ran and several times my feet plunged through into icy water past my ankles. Not too pleasant but then I remembered that I Am A

...and boardwalks...

Trail Runner And Will Not Be Deterred, or something like that...
   At this point, there was very little in the way of human footprints but all sorts of animal ones and it was kinda fun trying to guess which animals the prints belonged to (I'm guessing deer and bunny rabbits, for the most part). Unfortunately, the actual trail seemed to peter out into fairly dense brush and I also stopped seeing trail blazes. It's possible I just came to the end of things but usually the end of things is fairly well marked. 
  I did spend some time backtracking and checking things out as I was a newbie on this trail for sure. At one point, I ran onto someone who hiked the trail all the time and he gave me some pointers on better entry points. My biggest complaint today was that I was running on so much multi-use path and when you looked up to the edges of the valley there seemed to be a constant view of peoples' mansions---neither being conducive to the "trail" feel.
   

...til you get to trails....

Because it was winter and I was running it for the first time, I think I might reserve judgement on the Medway Valley Heritage Forest for the time being and give myself an opportunity to explore all parts of it and in different seasons as well before giving it the thumbs up or down.

...and scenery

   One thing worth mentioning is that I've actually run twice in three days! I was a little apprehensive that my legs would not hold up well running so close together like that. The good news is that the legs felt fine at the end. I took a little extra time to stretch before hopping in the car and I managed to avoid that nasty little leg cramp which had bothered me the last couple of times out. So...woo hoo!