Getting lost while running keeps me on my toes

David Syme has written about the Li River

The sensible voice at the back of his head was telling him "turn back". At the same time his mind was racing with the prospect that, if he couldn't find a bridge or crossing soon, he might be quicker swimming home.

Yet still, when most people would have reached for a mobile phone and pleaded at least for directions and quite possibly to be rescued, he ploughed on even more determined to push further into a foreign landscape that, so far, threw up precious few clues as to where exactly it might take him...

What started out as a gentle jog to burn off several days of calorific Chinese hospitality from a business trip was turning into a kind of mystery tour in trainers - with impenetrable spiky bushes, crumbling rocky slopes and a 50-metre-wide roaring river thrown in.

"What I like about running, especially when I'm running away from home, is that you don't know what is around the next corner," smiles the retired Territorial Army major as he recalls what for most of us would have been the run from hell.

"I like to almost deliberately go out of that comfort zone, cutting off roads, going across the route instead of straight along it.

"That particular run just about sums it all up. I got completely lost taking a shortcut, yet when I finally got back to the hotel three hours later I felt great."

It seems then that for this intrepid 69-year-old a sensible jog around the Meadows on a Sunday morning with a stop-off on the way for a bacon butty just won't do. As for carefully timing his run, checking his speed, or even, for that matter, actually bothering to plan any kind of route, there's as much chance of that as the former Merchiston Castle languages teacher, and one time Nato linguist, forgetting to pack his running gear on one of his many foreign trips.

Indeed, his preferred mode of getting from A to B is via every other letter in the alphabet - a kind of "extreme random running" that has taken him off the beaten track to places that even the locals might not have known existed.

As a result he's been treated to spectacular scenery in China - on that particular run in the stunning Li River valley he gazed - quite lost - upon a magnificent panorama of terraced rice fields and dramatic sheer-sided mountains normally unseen by the typical traveller.

He's stumbled across early morning Turkish fishermen perched over parapets reeling in their catch from the Bosphorus and encountered, grateful for the glow of a full moon, a crumbling Russian cemetery of broken urns and tumbled headstones on one particularly odd night run through the Azerbaijani capital, Baku.

He's even dangled precariously several metres above ground on a shaky branch after an outing in a resort aptly called "Wilderness" in South Africa went rather awry - perhaps the first known case of a running injury caused by nearly falling from a tree. And he has pondered the fallout from war as he jogged, deep in thought, across a bullet-ridden area of Sarajevo.

His is certainly an off-piste approach to running - one which, he admits, frequently gets him temporarily lost but almost always throws up a unique and exciting experience.

As he runs without the luxury of a camera, David started to jot down notes to share with his family - details of runs in places as diverse as Hong Kong and Chile, South Africa and even Tillicoultry, where he ended one lengthy session by buying a sofa.

Now some of his most memorable outings have been compiled into a fundraising book - proceeds will go to an Edinburgh-based charity - alongside similarly quirky tales supplied by his own son and daughter, Andrew and Fiona, and fellow runners Frank Tooley and Paul Houston of Edinburgh club Harmeny Athletic.

Because of David's globe-trotting work with Nato, his runs cover some of the world's most spectacular scenery - such as the Li River valley run.

David had been part of a delegation touring secondary schools in the area which was rounded off with a journey, by tourist boat, through the spectacular landscape of karst rock formations upstream to Yangshuo, a small town embraced by rice fields and sheer mountains.

"I slipped into my running kit and crept out of the hotel very early," recalls David. "The sky was deep blue, the streets deserted and the whole day was mine."

Soon he was running out of the town and alongside wheat fields, his eye on a gap between two rounded tree-covered hills which he guessed should take him on to a riverside road and back to town.

Except it didn't. The road curled even further from Yangshuo and while David could see the opposite bank of the Li River, a steep slope on his side meant he couldn't see the side closest to him. "The sensible thing to do would have been to retrace my steps back along the road, a pleasant downhill trot and then an easy jog back to the hotel and breakfast," he recalls.

In his world of "random running", however, where maps and sensible thoughts are for other runners, David opted instead to tackle the slope leading to the river bank hoping it might lead to a path. He saw bright yellow butterflies in the dappled sunlight and a swiftly-flowing river 50m wide but no path.

Again rather than turn back, he carried on, battling with nature in the form of near-impenetrable bushes and clinging to steep crumbly rock that threatened to send him into the water at any point.

Hot, sweaty and having encountered one setback after another, the sight of a road leading to a ferry ramp to take him back to Yangshuo three hours after he'd set out, was more than welcome.

It was on a par with one particular run in South Africa. Convinced he only had to push his way through some thick and nasty bushes to reach a road and the route back to his hotel, he discovered the bushes were, in fact, treetops and he was dangling several metres above a sheer drop, scratched and very uncomfortable.

Still, it's that kind of random run that makes it worth while, he says with a laugh.

"Mainstream race runners do a run and time themselves and want to find out if they are faster or better than they were last time they ran. But this is recreational running, it's about seeing what's around the next corner.

"In some cases it's the getting lost and finding your way back that's the triumph."

It's a unique style carefully honed after starting out running aged 39, cajoled into taking part in a marathon while he served as a senior education officer at the Scottish Infantry Depot in Bridge of Don.

Bitten by the running bug, he carried it on while he taught at Merchiston Castle - he left in 1997 - and later when he rejoined the Territorial Army. He retired from the TA last year - the oldest uniformed major at the time - after having spent a period seconded to Nato as a linguist.

Each time he packed his case, he made sure it contained his running kit. "I'm not a natural runner - I'm 14 stone and nearly 70," he laughs. "I take a Jogscotland group - I'm a jog leader - and the first thing I tell new runners is that if they think they won't be able to run, just take a look at me! Really, anyone can do it."

Running Away From Home, stories collected by David Syme, is published by Diadem Books priced 6.99 and is available from www.amazon.co.uk.

TRAGIC LINKS

DAVID Syme's "random runs" have taken place all over the world, but it's children in a small corner of India who will benefit as proceeds from the book will go to Edinburgh-based charity The Tong-Len Charitable Trust.

It was set up in 2005 by Corstorphine couple Anna and Gareth Owen to help poverty-stricken refugees in the Dharamsala region of northern India. The charity's aim is to provide education, health and community-based projects for the area.

However, it was shattered in 2006 when young volunteer Michael Blakey, from Lancashire, was murdered while working for the charity in the area alongside the couple's daughter Rachel.

One theory was that the devout Christian, left, was murdered by a thief who robbed him of his mobile phone and credit cards.

At one point Rachel's husband Pawan Bhardjah, 33, was arrested in connection with the 23-year-old's death but later released. Rachel was pregnant with twins at the time.

In January it emerged that police in India are to reopen the investigation into Mr Blakey's death.