I woke up feeling better than I thought I would, which was good news, as was the sunshine and blue skies. I packed up and drove to Stratford St Andrew to start the 15 mile ‘night’ section to Aldeburgh; it would be nice to see it on a fine day.

Just as I was leaving the car a couple of other recceers were walking up the road, so the usual pleasantries were exchanged. It turned out that they were from Derbyshire, this would be Jan’s first hundred and she likes a ‘hill’; I just hope that she won’t be disappointed with this pan-flat course.

Feeling partly ‘full of beans’ I set off at a jog (in my larger running shoes) on a well described route into sunshine and a chilly headwind. Through a shady wooded section I saw a dog walker approaching me in the distance, but only saw the black Staffordshire Bull Terrier when it suddenly sprang out of a crouching position and started charging towards me, barking aggressively. This has happened on many occasions over years of running. I really don’t mind dogs, but I really hate uncontrolled dogs, whose owners feel it is not their fault as they have done nothing wrong and don’t apologise. Rant over. The wonderful scenery soon made me forget about it.

After the footpath took me directly in front of the 1st Tee at Thorpeness Golf Club (the “extreme care golfers driving sign” does not understate the risk either). I then passed a windmill and the ‘house in the clouds’ which used to be a water tower and receive pumped water from the windmill up until 1963 when a new water supply was introduced and the tower then only acted as a storage tank until 1977 when it was purchased by a private owner. It is now a 5 bedroom holiday home. A detailed history of this interesting place can be found at: House in the Clouds | Self Catering Holiday Accommodation – Thorpeness, Suffolk

I had my first coffee stop of the trip in Thorpeness overlooking the boating lake or Meare. It was built by the Ogilvies, rich local landowners who had earned their wealth from railways in the 19th Century and used to own much of Thorpeness. I had already seen few ‘Ogilvie’ almshouses on the route, so this answered that question.

The route then took me out to the shingle beach and the final 3 miles down to the checkpoint at Aldeburgh, passing the Scallop sculpture, a tribute to the composer Benjamin Britten, a former Aldeburgh resident.

Still hungry, I returned to the same Co-op as I did on Day 2 (just 27 hours earlier, but feeling like days ago) for a slightly different Meal Deal on the bus back to Stratford St Andrew.

It was sad that this was the end of the training, which had been enjoyable but I was tired and really looking forward to a rest. I was also looking forward to the event. As always a 100 recce has many practical objectives, but this had been a scenic and interesting trip too around another nice part of the UK. And for anyone wanting to follow the route of the FoS100, or any of the previous 100s, the route descriptions can be found at: 100s Archive – Route, Results and Certificate