She pulled the entire way. Every step, every field, every pavement stretch through Bothenhampton and down to West Bay — the lead taut, the nose forward, the general attitude of a dog who has somewhere very important to be and cannot understand why we are moving at this pace. She has learned to truly love this
This is Nellie. Black Labrador. Used to be a terrible running partner, now knows exactly what to do. Absolutely irreplaceable.
Nellie. Dorset AONB. Blue sky, hi-vis, not even slightly sorry about the pulling.
We run local when we run local — out from Walditch, through Bridport, down through Bothenhampton where the River Brit runs alongside the path and the fields open up on both sides, and eventually to West Bay where the Jurassic Coast meets the harbour and the whole thing feels, briefly, like somewhere you’d travel a long way to see. We didn’t travel far at all. That’s rather the point.
Nearly six miles in under an hour. Nellie logged it as a personal best in pulling-related cardiovascular training. We logged it as a good morning.
The long game
There are plans being made. Italy is coming — Ravenna, specifically, a city of mosaics and bicycles and extraordinary quiet where we intend to spend a great deal of time. Nellie has not been consulted on this. We expect she will adapt.
The dream — and it is stated here as a dream, not a plan, because the logistics of moving a Labrador across Europe have not yet been fully confronted — is that one day she runs the Adriatic shoreline with us. West Bay to the lungomare. Dorset AONB to Emilia-Romagna. The same lead, the same pulling, a different sea.
She’d probably still be faster than us.
5.94 miles. 59:27. 168ft. One very determined dog.