500th Marilyn

I just thought I would post a rather shocking photo of a very beardy (and topless) me with Owen on my 500th Marilyn - High Willhays on Dartmoor. This was the culmination of hectic week bagging hills down south. Although not high some of the hills were great to run and dodgy the rain showers on Bodmin Moor was particularly memorable.

Trail of the 7 lochs (T7L)

After postponing an attempt in April (too much cold weather) and another go in June (due to the whole family going down with tonsillitis) I have finally got round to running the Trail of the seven lochs or the T7L if you are local ; ).

This is a 50 mile trail set up around the hills south and west of Inverness primarily aimed at horse riders. You can get more info here and maps here. I fancied running it primarily as it on my doorstep and it would be good training. Having have a look at the maps I realised the route was quite complex and spent a couple of very enjoyable days with Owen checking some sections out. In hindsight I wish I had spent more time checking out the route as the waymarking (either posts or white stones) is a bit scant in parts - not helped with the overgrown nature of some of the trails. Probably take more heed of the trail notes than I did!

The weather forecast for Monday was good - overcast, not too much wind and only showers forecast, so at 7am I started out from near Cullaird. All went well until I got lost just after Loch Ashie, but I don't think it mattered too much time-wise. The trail uses all sorts of surfaces - road, forestry track, grassy rides, single track and some seriously off-road knee-deep heather sections. The views down the Great Glen were superb and the area in general has some great scenery. Soon after the momentous heather-bashing section to Tom na Croich (I couldn't resist going up this rocky knoll) it all went wrong again in the woods surrounding Creag Innis an Daimh Dhuibh. I got badly lost (I had to get the compass out) and added a few miles on the the days mileage. At least no-one was about the hear my rantings and ravings.

The section around Loch Mhor dragged and after about 5 hours I hit the wall. With little motivation I staggered on, only regaining my sense of humour on the superb trails that drop you down to Inverfarigaig.

Emily and Owen had kindly driven to the FC carpark and a 30min sit down with IrnBru and a cheese sandwich made the prospect of finishing the route all the more likely. The big climb out to the Pass of the Fairheaded Lad went well, despite the forecast heavy showers arriving a wee bit early. From here on in it is about 12 miles of forestry track. Not overly interesting, but it was great to see the distance to Dores and Inverness steadily decreasing and it didn't feel too bad. Finally the finish was in sight after 10 hours with a run time of 9 hours 30 minutes. This was pretty much spot on as I predicted. The running and views were much better than expected and having a bad spell is always to be expected so all in all I am pretty chuffed with the days efforts.

I am pretty sure know the Paddy Buckley is off - mainly due the cost of travelling down for an attempt and anyway I have to leave something to train for next year : )

Old County Tops

Looking back over my photographs there seems to be a lot more cloud than I remember as my overwhelming impression of the Old County Tops is of heat and sun. The day seemed to be a constant battle to keep fed, watered and cool enough to keep going.

Starting in Langdale the 37 mile route traces a path over Helvellyn before a thigh bursting descent down Thirlmere. A long section then heads over to Scafell Pike, followed by another drop to Cockley Beck. Lastly a final climb up to the Old Man and then downhill all the way back to the start in Langdale.

Myself and Jonathan had a pretty simple plan - take it steady and try and hit the cut-offs. That was all. The route was initially over tracks and road to Grasmere, and by the first burn crossing about 5km into the run the heat was already making itself felt. Climbing up to Helvellyn via Tongue Gill and Grisedale Tarm was just a matter of keeping it steady and once the angle of the slopes increased we began to pick up places, receiving a healthy number of compliments on the Highland race strip along the way. The Whelp Side descent from the summit cairn was steep, grassy and a real thigh burner. A short crash through the forest to the car park where there was a food and drink stop about 50 minutes up on the schedule.

The following long jog through Wythburn, over Greenup Edge along to Angle Tarn was scenic and hot following indistinct trods along the south slopes of Langstrath. Angle Tarn was reached about 50 minutes before the cut-off, but we didn't linger. I knew most of the next section up to Scafell Pike from my Bob Graham a few years back. It didn't feel nearly as bad this time and there was a welcome breeze.

After Jonathan tagged the true summit, adding his second Lakes marilyn to his tally, we dropped back down to Little Narrowcove - a steep scree footpath leading to Great Moss. It was definitely a case of 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'. Not even the hint of a breeze and it wasn't until Moasdale that we were able to get a proper rhythm going.

After a quick pit stop at Cockley Beck we set off up to the col between Grey Friar and Great Carrs. I wasn't feeling too bad, but Jonathan was struggling in the heat and with a lack of energy. After a while I took his bag and as soon as topped the slope the welcoming breeze encouraged a faster walk/jog, and I thankfully gave Jonathan his bag back. Soon after I misread the map and swapped the Old Man with Dow Crag and if it hadn't been for Jonathan we would have ended up with a extremely embarrassing and demoralising detour. Thankfully the summit of the Old Man was reached without further mishap and now it really was downhill all the way. Jogging back along Swirl How we met lots of runners coming up the hill. Somehow, despite feeling that we were running slowly, we had managed to overtake and pull out time a whole heap of other teams.

The rest of the run was steady and we ran pretty much all of it finishing in 10 hours 16 minutes, which I think equates to 30th place. I think we were both happy with that. It was a hard run in a fantastic location and the place or time didn't matter. The challenging conditions made achieving the cut-off time and the tee shirt even more worthwhile.

Highlander Mountain Marathon

The highlander mountain marathon took place earlier in the month over towards Gairloch. This is a fantastic event which is much more chilled out than either the LAMM or the OMM. Unfortunately the only year I have competed in it coincided with the worst weather they had experienced. It took months for my feet to thaw out so I have never been back to race. Rather than taking part I had the task of marshalling at one of the checkpoints on the first day at Poca Buidhe bothy.

I biked in using the track from the Gairloch road, with only a couple of irritatingly locked gates, and in about an hour I reached the the start of the loch, where I ditched the bike to bag the easternmost Corbett on the way to the bothy checkpoint. The bothy has one open end and despite the amount of mice droppings looked in pretty good nick. I was glad to be sunning myself and enjoyed fantastic views to the back of Liatach and Beinn Alligin. The checkpoint was busier than expected and everyone was having a great time, including those who seemed to be massively late.

As the last team went through I headed west to grab in the other Corbett, involving a rather scary traverse line as I tried to avoid some height gain, before biking back to the car. The track back was tough on my fully rigid rather retro Cannondale, but I cleaned it all despite having a touch of double vision and knackered arms by the end of it.

The same day we headed down to Wales for a week long marilyn bagging trip and a couple of days in North Wales checking out some more sections of Paddy Buckley. I had one long day running the leg from Capel Curig to Aberglaslyn in unseasonably hot weather. Despite the heat I was running it well within schedule and enjoyed it for the most part. I was shattered at the end of the run though, but still had energy to check out the start of the next leg - sorting out a route finding issue I had had last time I was there.

After a chilly night in the car I did part of the Snowdon leg, through Llanberis and then up through the quarries to Eildir Fawr. I ballsed up the slate mines badly and spent a good bit of time wandering around the inclines. The end result was I missed the schedule time by a good 10 minutes and lost motivation to go on to the Glyders. Probably a good thing in hindsight as my legs were burnt enough as it was. All in all another successful reccy and I just need to get a few more long runs under my belt and get down to Wales again to check out the Glyders and Carneddau sections. Paddy Buckley's Round seems to be a hybrid of Ramsay's and Bob Graham's Round - a superb mixture of rough ground like Ramsay's but also with long sections of really fun undulating ridges like the Bob. I am really looking forward to giving it a go.

Tower Ridge

Tower Ridge is meant to be one of the the classic mountaineering days out in the British Isles, and the photographs say it all really. Even on Monday it was busy and despite a fairly early start at 8.00am from the car park we were pretty much last on the ridge. Everything would have been fine apart from a rather inexperienced party in front who struggled on anything remotely technical and seemed to want to pitch it in 20m rope lengths. As to the grade, under the conditions we climbed it in it was a straight forward grade III with the technical crux being the avoidable chimney at Douglas Gap

I had never done the ridge before so it was fantastic to do it on such a good day. After the first chimney it was quite a distance of grade I/II ground to the base of the little tower.

After about an hour and half wait in the sun we climbed the Little Tower in two long pitches with a 60m rope - all on ice. Another short flat section followed before another long wait for the Eastern Traverse to clear of other climbers.

The drop was awesome - very similar to No 3 Gully Buttress and the rest of the climbing to the Great Tower was pretty much banked out and everything was coated in a nice thick layer of ice. Mark dropped into Tower Gap and skirted round it on the left from where it we moved together for the last hundred-odd meters.

Just as we were finishing the route the clouds started to gather and we walked down in a light snow shower past halfway lochan and back to Allt A'Mhuillin. The sunset was spectacular as behind us the Ben gathered the clouds into the corries.

Carn Sleamhuin

My foot is still a bit tender after the Hobble so myself and Becky went for a walk with Owen over Carn Sleamhuin and Carn na Guaille from Dalnahaltnach. There were pretty deep remants of snow in the tracks and it was very blowy, with some vicious showers, once we got on to the more exposed sections. A lovely place for a walk/run when the higher tops would just be grim. Carrbridge has a good cafe too with a good selection of cakes.

Haworth Hobble the recovery

Haworth makes even Drumnadrochit seem understated when it comes to cashing in on the tourists. I mean there must be at least one B and B in the Highland town which hasn't got a name linked to Nessie, but I think you would be pushed to find an establishment in Haworth that isn't in some way linked to the bl@@dy Bronte sisters. Even our room, in the otherwise excellent B and B, had a copy of Wuthering Heights - it probably replaces the Gideon in these parts.

After one of the most chilled out race registrations and a lovely breakfast, the race started outside The Fleece at 8am. We walked the first hill then settled into a long distance shuffle at the back of the pack. The weather was chilly, but sunny and it was only misty for a few miles.


Even the race route couldn't avoid the influence of that evil triad of scribblers as we had to cross Br@@te Bridge, shortly after which we ploughed into the back of the pack which was held up at one of the stile crossings. Everyone was very polite and no-one dared jump the fence.

On the first moorland section the headwind was bitter and really made it's presence known near Widdop. After that the route seemed to be much less exposed, but I still wore gloves for most of the day. The ground was frozen in parts, paved in others and very pleasant to run along. For the most part we ran in small, friendly groups leaving the nav to people who had done it before. Pleasingly we both managed a constant pace throughout and so gradually made our way through the field and Lisa kept smiling.

Aside from a very sore right foot, probably due to the hard ground and a lack of runs of over 7 miles in length, I managed to survive the Hobble in remarkably good shape. My running partner Lisa, a friend from Uni days, was hoping just to get round and we had a target time of 10 hours. Suitably fortified with the previous evening's traditional Yorkshire Biryani and an awesome fry up that morning, we did considerably better finishing in 7 hours 24 minutes. Tired, but not unduly so.


In fact I enjoyed myself, which is sometimes a pretty difficult for me to do, probably partly as I was able to leave my 'race face' at home. The course was varied moorland tracks with just the right amount of tedious tarmac for me to be grumpy about. Although there weren't any big hills I can't remember any flat bits either - just nicely undulating. My greatest ambition for the race was to get to the hot dog stand at mile 15. Lisa's face was a picture as she watched me washing down the frankfurter with a steaming mug of tea, whilst she struggled to digest some Jelly babies.


The event reminded me of a kind of Fellsman-lite and was much more enjoyable and interesting than the likes of the Three Peaks. Perhaps not great specific training for the Paddy Buckley, but I got some miles in the legs, a superb motivation boost and perhaps a good kick start to some distance run training. All I have to hope is that all the snow and ice melts as at the moment temptation is too great and I always end up climbing instead.

My next trip to Wales is in late April and I can't wait...