Is it possible to get lost running a route you’ve run hundred time before? Yes, if it’s been four years since you last run it.

I was working in our Larbert office today and I decided to run a route that I’d run since before the covid lockdown in March 2020. It used to be one of my regular lunch time routes, a run from the office at the edge of Larbert to the ruins of Torwood Castle, a couple of miles away and on the crest of a small hill overlooking Larbert and Torwood. 

As I ran I started to spot subtle changes like the additional cabins in the ground of the Glenbervie Hotel, the new gravel on a woodland track and the , blimey, where did they come from new housing developments of flats and massive five bedroom homes. They weren’t their last time?!?

It was only then that I realised how long it had been since I last ran this route and that lockdown timetravel, the ability to forgot everything that happening in the pandemic and assume time jumped instantly from March 2020 to March 2022, was in full effect. I hadn’t just run this route yesterday, it was a pandemic, a three-year-old daughter and a lifetime away. It was no longer the same route.