We Have Lift Off

Another day, another city. This time a short hop across the East Midlands to Leicester for Rocket Round Leicester. This was the first time I had done a trail here, but having friends who live there I was familiar with the city. At least that’s what I thought. Given that the National Space Centre is in Leicester they had gone with Rockets as their choice of sculpture with 40 of them placed far and wide. It was this far and wide aspect that nearly finished me off.

I started from our hotel and figured I’d work my way out to the ones north of the city centre first. This involved a walk out as far the Space Centre before heading back citywards. It turned out to be further than I anticipated! But I had started now, no turning back. I worked my way back in to the centre and mopped all of those up quite easily. It’s the home straight now, just a few to the south of the centre…

Typically it wasn’t until I was at virtually the furthest point before I encountered a new treat. Rain. Prolonged heavy rain. It also turned out that while I thought the northern section was a bit of a slog this southern section really ramped it up. It meant an arduous 90 minutes of plodding, seeking shelter occasionally, to see all of the Rockets. I have never been so relieved to see a hotel as I was that night.

Typically my fitness app decided that this was the day when it wouldn’t function so I don’t know exactly how far I walked/trudged, but mentally comparing it with all of the other days I am guessing it was pretty close to 30km. Luckily the city is relatively flat, although not entirely. Still, for the second day running all of the sculptures were out in situ, and furthermore I had seen them all!