Northerners - not funny

I had been looking forward to this run for a couple of days and had prepared by buying a new rucksack to give me the ability to start and finish somewhere other than my house.

Its very lightweight, clings to your back and fastens around the chest and waist.

I would attach a picture but I cannot find it on the internet. 

As with all of Adidas' online content, it's flash and looks impressive, but you can't find sod all that you actually want.

So, the run.

I hopped on the train at Earlsfield and hopped up 5 minutes later at Vauxhall.

After rebuffing a tramp for his request for a change 'to get a drink', I did him the favour of helping him sober up for another moment or two, I did my stretches on one of the walls of the MI5 building.

I was disappointed not to be spirited away to a secret bunker and water-boarded and started to run, pressing Start on the trusty Garmin watch.

That trusty Garmin is only trusty if you fully charge the damn thing.

So one mile in to the run, somewhere near the Southbank Centre it ran out of juice.

Balls.

So I just decided to run for about an hour and a half and that would amply cover the expected 12 miles I was to cover today.

I continued along the South bank until Tower Bridge where I scampered across and ran past the tourists and ice-cream vans of the Tower of London.

Unbenownst to me their was a BUPA 10K run taking place from St James Park and coming at me coming at them so I went past the Houses of Parliament without claiming any expenses and up to Hyde Park.

I don't know Hyde Park that well so I stuck to the main road and ran past the Serpentine and up to Bayswater road.

By this time my hayfever decided to pop its head up for the first time and I sneezed and rubbed my eyes all the way to Baker Street.

Going up Marylebone Road I got my first sightings of the throngs of northeners who had descended to see which of their teams would spend one season in the Premier League.

I managed to squeeze past their morning pints and pies and guts and flapping pages of the Sun and got back out into the middle upper class areas I was more familiar with.

I had no idea where to finish this run and looking at my Blackberry I had secreted away in one of many useful pockets of the rucksacks I had already done my alloted time.

However, I decided to end the run at Euston so I could go and meet the wife and wangle well-deserved free breakfast.

It was at Euston, warming down when a group of these northern people mimicked my stretches (the calf stretch where you stick a leg out while pressing on to a wall and, yes, hilariously it looks like you are trying to push a building over)

"Heeyar mate can I help thee" they cackled.

I knew someone was going to do it in such a populated area, it's so predictable.

When I didn't react and carried on they just walked off like a squad of monkeys muttering 'fuckin southerners'.

I think they had about three teeth and one frontal lobe between them.

I saw them again in the underground trying to work out the Oyster travelcard machines. I bet they're still there now.