Guadeloupe ! A.K.A France. Ish!

The road signs are the same; the local Carrefour shop has the same stuff as we can get in Paris (admittedly quite overpriced here); the cops look the same; even the post boxes are identical. Administratively, for all intents and purposes, c’est la France!  

This said, it was nonetheless a tiny little bit warmer and more humid than in France (just a smidgen…) and somewhat more scenic than our Parisian suburbs. Also, notable even by French standards, they really know how to strike here: 3 times in the day before we arrived, the electric utility workers just … cut power to the island, which is a pretty brutal way to highlight your employment issues!

Basically just like Parisian suburbs (Pointe des Chateaux from a ULM!)

As for running, which obviously is the purpose of my waffling, well, the views were lovely. The running conditions, less so! (Though each to their own, I’m sure it’s perfect for some)

However, beggars can’t be choosers and my legs were (mostly) behaving these days and I was able to run so I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity, even if it meant scraping out of bed at 6am to avoid the heat.

To give an overview the island, it’s made of two halves and kinda in the shape of a butterfly. The left “wing” can best be described as mountainous (it’s about 20km by 70km and has a big volcano in the middle) and the right “wing” is flatter: it used to be a volcano, but it’s since subsided (this said, flatness IS relative, this isn’t the Netherlands by any stretch of the imagination…).

We started the trip on the east “wing”, near St François in the southeast. Because our ability to scrape out of bed at pace is somewhat limited by the new presence of a baby, plus our general inability to get out of bed quickly, my 6am starts tended to actually be nearer 6.45am, by which point there was only about 45 minutes to go before it felt too hot to run. Which, coincidentally, was a great excuse not to go too far for too long. As such, these runs mostly consisted of back roads through the countryside between the fields of sugar cane (endless) and the seafront.

My runs – exciting, right?

There’s a remarkable amount of life going on for that time of the morning in relatively remote places, but I guess they’re all used to being effective and making the most of the cooler hours. I saw lots of cows. Many pretty flowers. Only got chased by one dog (a bloody chihuahua of all breeds). And only took a few wrong turns. And had to cross one field with a (nice-ish looking) bull in it.

Some of the terrain, if you get lost…

In terms of running conditions, there are a lot of backroads in good condition which give lots of options to change the routes each day and feel safe. It’s not flat and there are lots of hills, but they are never really more than 100m or so long so most people wouldn’t whinge as much about them as me. And there’s very little traffic, even if running after breakfast time.

There’s not a huge amount else I can add in terms of running: this side of the island, however, has lots of non-running-related fun stuff to do: nice beaches, surfing, gyroplane flying, other small islands… good fun for a few days!

On the “eastern side” (Grande Terre), fields of sugar cane galore

The “west wing” is very different: not in terms of fun stuff (lots of very cool diving sites at the Cousteau Reserve) but more in terms of running conditions. Let’s just say that, on the first morning there, I ran a few hundred meters from the guest house, thought f*ck it, came back to the car, drove down to the seaside and went for a run there instead. With a volcano plonked in the middle, it is HILLY. To get to our gîte near Pointe-Noire, it was a 200m climb over the course of 2km which, believe me, is steep. And not something that I am sufficiently motivated for to run up or down. Hence the lazy car option.

The sea front, flatter though not flat, offers a good alternative and it’s also pretty much impossible to get lost as the road is the ring road around the outskirts of the island. Worst come to the worse (and this would be pretty bad), just keep running and you’ll get back after about 180km or so. There are fewer options in terms of running routes because of the nature of the terrain, unless you’re into vertical climbing type stuff, in which case there are no doubt lots of trail runs, but you need to find those which takes a bit more planning than we’d put into this trip. And, of course, if you’re into it, you can run up the dormant volcano, which is technically always an option!

So, all in all: really amazing place for a winter holiday. Not a really amazing place for a running boot camp! And this little one was having the time of her life!

Having the time of her life!

Scenery 5

Injuries 0

Difficulty 3