Look on the bright side of life!

This is a misquotation from "The Life of Brian", used inappropriately.

But if things are looking a bit grey, this will brighten them up - a fantastic picture from Peter, via Streetlife.

Water water everywhere ....

OK, not the most original title, but appropriate.

This morning the Stray was awash. The Park Runners splashed through mud and puddles, and I assume the Military Fitness group got thoroughly soaked doing their fitness stuff. The West Park area was massively flooded, as was the grass around the Empress on the Stray. Oddly, the area around St. Aidan's was flooded but not much worse than usual.  And the floods didn't seem to put anyone off.

Nothing special

Just a couple of pictures of the Stray looking really lovely on a sunny day.

The weather's too nice to embark on anything controversial, but it's worth making the point that the Parks Department does an amazing job keeping Harrogate beautiful.

Not just floods

This is a picture of Christchurch looking beautiful yesterday evening, after the weather had settled.

But here are some slightly less lovely pictures of the area near St. Aidan's School this morning, after a night of rain. The whole of that part of the Stray was water-logged, and Slingsby Walk where it joins Stray Rein (in the two top pictures), is almost always like this. Not too bad at this time of year, very difficult when there's ice, especially for those of us not in the first flush of youth.

These aren't just puddles ...

Yorkshire Water have asked us to monitor flooding on the Stray so that they have more, and better, information about what's going on. Of course we're more than happy to do this for them.

However, I'm not sure how to distinguish between and small flood and a big puddle. This is what it was like this morning:

Small floods?

The top two are on the road round the back of Christchurch. The third is the town end of Oatlands Drive.

Big puddles?

The top one is near St. Aidan's School, the bottom one near the Empress on the Stray. I don't think they count as floods, though there are a lot like this and they probably would be floods if they joined together.

 Anyone like to join in? It's good fun.

It's like this every Saturday!

It's a brilliant event and it happens every Saturday morning, a 5k run on the part of the Stray between Oatlands Drive and the Wetherby Road. Anyone of any standard can join in, so there are dogs, small children, older people, much older people, all having fun. And the marshals are amazing, consistently cheerful and encouraging.

If you're interested, there's all the information you need on this website:

http://www.parkrun.org.uk/harrogate/

Back in the day ...

...when the Stray was used as a race course!

I wonder when horses were banned. And come to that, why?