The Edge of the Empire Part I

There's something that I have been meaning to do for some time: run the length of Hadrian's Wall. Why, I hear you ask...because it's there, of course. Why else?
So today I could put it off no longer. I had tried, of course, but Stu had put the kybosh on any more pipe dreams, and somewhat reluctantly, I made my way to the start of the Wall. It's 84 miles long, I thought. What if it's biting off more than I can chew? I recalled the feeling when I put the first stitch on a particularly complex tapestry. 18 years on, it is still unfinished. Will it be like that? After ditching the car at Brough By Sands, I got on an empty bus to Bowness on Solway, the start of Hadrian's Wall. The milky blueness of the day had given way to a stern greyness. The bus driver must have left something on the stove at home, as he raced his only passenger there and whizzed back past like a rally driver.
The path wound through gorse bushes and out past Port Carlisle, with its vestiges of grandness in the middle of absolutely nowhere. After doglegging for a while, the path followed the long, straight, flat road along the mudflats where the Vallum, or ditch had been built. After having trouble settling in to the run, I started to listen to a podcast about Steve Prefontaine. This dangerously talented runner, whose life was cut short at the age of 24 or so, has absolutely nothing in common with me. So much so that he could have been a different species. Still, something had struck a chord. In his running, he found a way of expressing creativity. In each of his performances, unlike anyone I'd heard speak of their running, he saw that it was a creative process in the same way as art or music is. I may never achieve such a creative act with speed or performance, but in a small way, running over Hadrian's Wall to me, is one tiny grain of something close to this.