Four legs good, two legs bad

SCIENTISTS can only be months away from inventing a dog-mounted GPS tracking device – and when they do, I’ve got just the candidate.
Milli (age: three years, 10 months – or 26 in dog years) is today running rings around us. Literally.
The plan is to run Leg 2 from Dunmail Raise to Scafell Pike and back. Estimated distance somewhere in the region of 23 miles.
It’s raining when Jarv, I and Milli (wearing a flourescent jacket for warmth) start the climb up Steel Fell. It’s raining when we return to the car about eight hours later. The bit in between is slightly better. Apart from the sleet, hail, gales and low cloud.
From the off, Milli’s up the fellside like she’s been fired out of a bazooka – and then down again to give us the canine ‘Come on! ‘ treatment. Then back up again. Then back to us. Hmm, pacing themselves is not what dogs do best.
Over to Calf Crag and we meet a couple of runners from London doing a Bob Graham recce. No time to stop for a long chat – Milli’s on the move.
Near to Sergeant Man, she dives into a hole. Out pops a large vole. It doesn’t look happy. l try to keep the two apart. The vole shouts ‘squeak’. It really did. And dives into another hole. Milli gives me a look which roughly translates as: ‘that would have been elevenses.’ I hope she doesn’t hold a grudge. Feed her a Jaffa Cake just in case.
Over the Langdale Pikes, around that boring bit in the middle, and up to Bow Fell, where we then pick off the summits of Esk Pike, Great End (except I couldn’t be bothered with that one), Ill Crag, Broad Crag, and finally Scafell Pike. It starts to sleet on the summit. There’s a Christmassy feel to it all. The intense cold gives me hypothermia-related hallucinations. I even begin to think there’s a Christmassy feel to it all.
Turn about and back across the rock-littered summits. Milli’s paws seem to be holding up well on the stones, so a visit to the extreme dog-walking website http://www.snowpawstore.com/ for Vibram-soled booties (I’m not making this up) may not be necessary.
Down Esk Hause and on to Angle Tarn, then straight up and over to Sergeant Man. Another heavy rain shower and then Milli falls in a bog. Spinning her four legs just seems to get her in deeper. I haul her out. I think we’re friends again. I can’t be certain as I’ve eaten all the remaining Jaffa Cakes.
Not one of my best routes off Steel Fell brings us back to the car and a quick conversation with the support crew of an anti-clockwise Bob Graham attempt. I bet they wish they’d chosen to do the attempt during the summer.
Distance for Jarv and I: 23 miles. For Milli: 84 miles.

Photo of Jarv, Milli and I taken somewhere completely different, in different weather conditions, and at a completely different time of year (ie April).

The Very Hungry Chatter-Killer

Billy Connolly tells a joke where a circus lion-tamer places his head in the lion’s mouth to gasps from the audience.
Showing even more derring-do, he places his.. (I’ll clean up the joke – so let’s say his arm…though you and I know different because, after all, this is Billy Connolly telling it, not me)… his arm in the lion’s mouth. “Oooh!” says the audience.
“Now is there anyone in the audience brave enough to have a go?” says the lion-tamer. Silence. “Anyone willing to have a go for £100?”
“I’ll do it!” says a drunken voice from the back row. Down he comes to the centre of the big top.
“Are you sure about this?” says the lion-tamer. “Absolutely!” replies the man.
“No doubts at all?” says the lion-tamer. “Well, only one niggly-naggly doubt,” says the man. “I don’t think I can open my mouth that wide.”
And that is my problem today. A third of the way through the Old County Tops Fell Race - 37 miles, 10,000 feet of climbing to the summits of Helvellyn (Westmorland), Scafell Pike (Cumberland) and Coniston Old Man (Furness) - and my mouth simply isn’t big enough to cram in all the food that I need to keep my body fuelled. There’s simply no time to talk – if talking means less eating time.
Making up a team of two with Ray, we’ve reached the summit of Helvellyn from Great Langdale in two hours, one minute. Already, I’ve had one chocolate bar while climbing Ray’s excellently-found short-cut around the left side of Seat Sandal (which gained us a few places up the leader board), but the feeding frenzy needs to begin soon if I don’t grind to a halt.
In truth, this is the bit of training that I’ve struggled with the most – knowing what to eat and how often. If I was The Very Hungry Caterpillar, this is how it would appear in print:
· At Wythburn Church (refreshment point) I ate one jam sandwich and four slices of malt loaf
· Near Green Coomb I ate one chocolate bar
· At Stake Pass I ate one banana and a piece of Kendal Mint Cake
· Approaching Rossett Pike, Ray gave me six jelly babies. I start at them sitting cutely in my hand for a minute. Then eat them.
· At Esk Hause I ate six (or perhaps seven) mini Jaffa Cakes
· At Scafell Pike (5 hours, 12 minutes from the start) I ate another bit of chocolate
· At the top of Mosedale Beck I ate the other banana. But didn’t eat the skin. Though I was tempted.
· At Cockley Beck (refreshment point), I ate three egg sandwiches and four bits of fruit cake.
· At Brim fell I fantasised about eating the rain-soaked egg sandwich Ray, rather inexplicably in my view, had been carrying all the way from Cockley Beck
· At Coniston Old Man (7 hours, 55 minutes), I ate four mini Jaffa Cakes and a piece of chocolate brownie handed out by a race marshal (this I believe was one of Sarah’s brownies – see below. Thanks Sarah). Ray’s egg sandwich fell apart due to structural subsidence caused by damp – what a waste!
· At Wrynose Pass, I ate what I think were five Jaffa Cakes. The sponge base had absorbed the rain, turning them into a soggy, disgusting-looking mess. I still ate them.
· At the finish at the New Dungeon Ghyll, I had two lentil soups, two egg sandwiches, and four bits of fruitcake.
After sitting cocooned in the finish area tent against the rain for 10 minutes, I then turned into a butterfly.
And if by butterfly you’re thinking something which feels delicate, has its face in the flowers and will expire by the end of the summer…. you’d be pretty damn right!
Thanks to Ray for coaxing me around the course, so we finished in nine hours and 25 minutes. Well done to the other Dallam teams, and to Helen, Dawn and Sarah who climbed to the top of Coniston Old Man (with brownies and beer) to meet us, sat in driving rain and gale force winds, and did the sensible thing – climbed back down before we got there.
Calories burned: 6,756. Words spoken to Ray during race: 23.

Rock n’ Col

Any youthful ambitions I had to become a rock star finally bit the dust this weekend.

For most rock stars when faced with a piano which requires trashing would push it out of a window or set about it with a sledgehammer.

I’m instead armed with wire cutters, a tenon saw, crowbar and screwdriver. I have to protect the décor, obviously.

This was Helen’s idea. To dismantle a piano which only cost her £50 12 years ago and which has half the notes missing (the useful ones such as F sharp, for example) seemed such a good idea at the time. It’s better than the other option, which to quote Verdi (and hence a bit of Italian) would have involved taking the piano (the instrument) from the secondo piano (1^st floor) to the primo piano (ground floor) with great piano (care) and very piano (slowly). Glad that’s cleared that up.

Why do I tell you all this? Well it provides three paragraphs of text on a weekend where I did very little training. And it made my arms hurt after taking about four hours to render it to its component pieces (which seems to involve more wood than you would have imagined). This winter we may be burning piano on the open fire – the economy must be looking up.

So to Sunday, where Helen, I and Dawn Gill are at Threlkeld. We look up at Blencathra (it’s raining), we look at the car (it’s warm and dry), we look crestfallen. But there’s no stopping us. We climb the steep lower slopes of Gategill Fell (aka ‘Smithy’s Route’ – copyright to follow), and then up the screes through strong winds, cold and rain onto the col south west of the summit. Doc Martin, Leechy and Ray have come down the ‘parachute route’ to complete Leg 1, but of course we missed them in the mist.

From Blencathra summit we took the Doddick Fell route off and back to the car. Some days it’s just best to cut your losses.

So instead, here’s the support crew so far for my BG attempt:

Leg 1 – Ray Gill, John Hooson (Ambleside)

Leg 2 – Mark Bell, Mike McKenna, Martin Benson, Ben Beachell (Eryri) 

Leg 3 – Baz, Stuart Hurst

Leg 4 – Dave Deason, John Leech, Mick Pearcy

Leg 5 – Helen Smith, Dawn Gill, John Hodgson, Helen Deason and Julie Pearcy, Dawn W (Harrogate)


Click on the painting and then click on it again to full size it.

Hail and Hearty

Some days you just have to curl up in a ball and hope things go away.
Today is one of those days.
The analysts of human behaviour who coined the term ‘fight or flight’ when describing how man (and woman) would react to danger, never thought there might be a third option. They’d obviously never been in a hailstorm of this magnitude.
And this hailstorm is on Brandreth, a fairly nondescript pimple toward the end of Leg 4, where I’m desperately trying to avoid my legs being given an exfoliation treatment of the sort that you’d pay good money for in a spa (not that I ever have, mind).
Nearby are Jarv and Dawn, a runner from Harrogate who has joined us for the day. I know they are nearby despite having my head between my knees, because I can clearly hear ‘ow’, ‘ow’, ‘OW!’. Yep, these hailstones are the biggest I’ve seen – about the size of marrowfat peas, and with a cunning, armour-piercing icy point designed to stab you through all but triple-layer Gore Tex.
Today’s route started just south of Rosthwaite and began with a steep climb up to Glaramara. I was feeling pretty fit despite a club recce of the Old County Tops race route the day before, which saw me run from Great Langdale to the summit of Helvellyn and back, while Jarv had gone on further, as far as Angle Tarn (yes, the right Angle Tarn – keep up), and Dawn had taken part in a 20-odd mile Long Distance Walkers’ Association event in the Yorkshire Dales. Therefore, much ribbing of me for shirking the hard stuff the day before.
From Glaramara, it was onto Esk Hause to pick up Leg 3 of the Bob Graham route. A turn towards Broad Crag brought heavy rain, low cloud and strong winds, so arrival at Scafell Pike saw caution dictating dropping straight down to Wasdale. Here we passed members of Wasdale Mountain Rescue Team looking for five lost walkers who’d set off without a map – but had a mobile phone! This meant they could phone for help when they inevitably got lost – although they couldn’t say where ‘lost’ was, or probably ‘found’ for that matter. Wishing them luck, and suspecting that the team rarely gets called out when good weather makes for an enjoyable walk/rescue, we pushed onwards and downwards.
The wooded car park at Wasdale provided some scant shelter from the rain for lunch, and then it was onto leg 4 with the climb up Yewbarrow. Sorry, but this year’s bilberry crop isn’t going to be particularly good as I flattened several bushes trying to find the right line.
We missed out Scoat Fell and Steeple due to low cloud, but Jarv, improvisingly freely, managed to explain what it looked like with just a rock and a piece of moss. Impressive. Except I don’t think Dawn thought so.

The summit of Steeple as recreated by Jarv. Note: not actual size.

On Pillar the cloud lifted and out came the sun, so the climbs onto Kirk Fell and then Great Gable were rewarded with some stunning views.

Dawn climbing ‘red’ gully on Kirk Fell.

I’d arranged with Helen (who’d been out running in Borrowdale with Helen Whitehouse) to pick us up at Honister so, once the hail had cleared, a brilliant rainbow came out on the last summit of Grey Knotts. We’d had just about every weather condition so far today – except a shower of frogs – so what more could happen just hundreds of metres from the car?
A clap of thunder so loud I nearly leapt out of my shoes. Oh great, that’s just typical…
Distance: 20 miles, 10,646 feet of climbing. Dawn’s food tip of the day: six or seven bananas (seven?) put in a blender and eaten the night before a race. Now that’s a hearty appetite.

You can lead a Norse to water (as long as it’s frozen)

Celebrity status doesn’t always travel well.
Today Helen had to swerve to avoid bumping into Paula Ratcliffe, while Sir Chris Hoy walked past me on the railway platform.
Except that didn’t really happen. As they say at the end of film credits, all the circumstances are correct, but some of the names have been changed.
Instead, the people we did come across were Therese Johaug and Marit Bjørgen. If you’re not a fan of cross-country skiing, you’ll say ‘who?’ If you live in Norway – for which this pair have garnered a clutch of gold medals – you’ll say ‘wøw!’
And we are in Norway. To be precise, we’re stood on a frozen lake, more than 4,000 feet above sea level, and we’re about to start a 38km ski race from Finse (where they filmed the opening scenes of The Empire Strikes Back) to Ustaoset.
There’s a few thousand doing this race – including the above mentioned skiing stars - and to all intents and purposes, it’s the final event of the European cross-country ski race season. So much so, in fact, that with soaring temperatures at lower altitudes (people were sunbathing in Oslo’s parks the day before), it’s a wonder there’s any snow left.
To get to Finse meant catching the 5.30am train from Oslo, skiing the race route, and then catching the return train to get back to Oslo at 9.45pm. A long day.

Womens Start

Is this valid Bob Graham Round training? Well, it begins with a lung-busting 800 feet climb in the first 2km, and pretty much fits the category of fell-race-on-skis. It also meant we missed the Dallam Dash – sorry.
From the top, it’s an undulating course through some spectacular, non-stop snowy scenery, with a few more stiff climbs thrown in. And it’s hot. So hot that the snow has turned mushy and slow, and Helen’s arms have gone a wonderfully tanned stripey colour where she’s rolled up her sleeves – they look a bit like Neapolitan ice cream from the elbows to the wrists.

Helen on one of the many climbs

With a ‘touring class’ of about 10,000 skiers setting off at intervals before the main race, there’s a lot of threading my way through them to be done, but a steep and fast descent on some fast-melting snow (with bits of heather poking out – a bit like a good ski season in Scotland) brings me to the finish in four hours, 30 minutes. Calories expended: 3,600.

Me at the race finish

We’re soon back on the train for the return trip to Oslo – with some very drunk Norwegians. The train conductor announces that as there are no toilets on board, we’ll be stopping at the town of Ål. Where there are toilets I suppose? Er....no. Several carriages worth disembark and relieve themselves up against buildings, trees, hedges, passing dogs, etc. Everyone then gets back on board and we leave the town smelling of wee for quite some time to come. I bet you sporting celebrities don’t behave like this.... except Paula Radcliffe, of course.

Ginger Tops

Temperature inversions are rarely experienced when I seem to be on the fells – but today’s is a real, albeit brief, cracker.
Helen, I and Jarv (sans Milli due to sore paws) are approaching Fairfield summit from the south when the clouds lift, the sun beats down, and a bank of mist sweeping up from the right curls its way over the lip of the ridge.

Approaching Fairfield from Great Rigg

Down below us everything is bathed in… well…. gloom. We’re soon back in that very same cloud as we clamber down Fairfield towards Grisedale Tarn, Grasmere and the A591.
We’re doing the Long Distance Walkers Association’s ‘Fells, Tarns and Gingerbread’ route – a 21-mile circuit of Grasmere – so the refreshment stop at Ghyll Foot will have the usual supply of cake – in addition to the Grasmere gingerbread given at the end of the event. Greeted by young cheerleaders at the stop: ‘L-D-W-A, now you’re here, that’s the way’ - or something like that. It’s a nice touch.
On along the Greenburn valley, and it’s onto the ridge to Helm Crag. Reversing course back to the north, a sharp descent to the left takes us down to Far Easedale and then around Easedale Tarn.
A steep pull to the south of the tarn brings us onto Blea Rigg and then along on a twisting descent to High Close Youth Hostel. Here in the grounds you can just see the remains of the terraces where ginger was cultivated in the mid 19th Century.
Brought to Grasmere from China by The Rev F.G. Rogers in 1846, wild root ginger – well suited to the damp climate - was grown for several years as a cure for digestive complaints among the Lake District poets and other literary folk. But it was only with the assistance of a Mr A Stayre, of Red Bank, that the breadcrumb mixture was developed in January 1859, which, when combined with the ginger, allowed it to be easily transportable and gain a wider following outside of Westmorland. Root ginger cultivation ceased in 1878 due to the availability of cheaper imports, but production of gingerbread in Grasmere continues to this day. You won’t find any of this in the guidebooks… for a very good reason.
From the youth hostel, we take a steep final climb to the top of Loughrigg Fell (Helen says this bit put paid to her legs), which is followed by an equally steep descent, and then back along the road to Grasmere.
Time taken: seven hours. Gingerbread eaten: 12 pieces.

X + Y = Zzzzz

Maths was never my strong point at school,I make my living from words,Helen is the one who earns hers from numbers.
But training for BG brings you into the world of arithmetic. There’s algebra for example: “If Y is the amount of calories a Bob Graham runner needs to consume, mark on the map with an X where he is desperate enough to eat the mouldy flapjack that’s been lying at the bottom of his rucsac for the past three months.”
There is also probability: “What is the likelihood, expressed as a ratio, of a runner being sick after eating mouldy flapjack?”
And of course there’s fractions – the stuff that slows you down when descending. Though that may actually be friction.

Nevertheless, this weekend was one full of geometry. Armed with map and compass (the magnetic variety, not the circle-drawing, pointy type – see blog posting of 20 March for going around in circles), Helen and I set off to do part of Leg 1 and crucially find some easier routes off 1) Great Calva and 2) Blencathra.
Leaving Threlkeld, we passed exactly 20 parascenders (see, a bit of counting there) floating above Blease Fell in a clear blue sky.  Now from a distance this looks hugely serene as they float on the thermals; but when you’re up on the summits and they’re metres above your head, the image is shattered as all can you hear is “Aaaargh, look out, f**k, f**k, f**k!”
Back on the path, we followed the track around to Skiddaw House youth hostel, across the bridge, and started climbing Great Calva from the usual descent side. The aim was to find a direct line through shorter heather. We found what looked like a good one – but whether we’ll find it again I’m not so sure.
Across the stream (ankle deep – not like Martin’s chest deep excursions of the week before – though I’m actually taller than him), and up to Mungrisdale Common. Somebody had thankfully replaced the cairn after removing it on 20 March (see previous blog), so in good visibility we hacked up to Blencathra.

Helen above the Gategill Fell route from Blencathra

The usual choice is down Hall’s Fell Ridge – not my favourite, or expressed as an equation:  r + d – t = cd, where r equals rain, d equals distance, t equals time, and cd means certain death.
I’ve also seen, but not tried, the ‘Parachute Route,’ but I wanted this time to have a go at Gategill Fell. The top part is pretty straight-forward, but the end of the ridge needs a bit of brain-disengaging descent. I think it’s worth a go though with a bit more work on finding the right line. Helen opted for Blease Fell and met me back at the car.

Sunday was a shorter day. Accumulated tiredness and an impending day out with Helen’s family meant I had a two-hour window to join the others as they traversed the Grasmere skyline. Assembled at Rydal at 8am were Stuart, Mike M, and Jarv. Not forgetting Milli. A climb along the western arm of the Fairfield Horseshoe took us to the summit of Fairfield.
Brilliant weather meant I couldn’t miss the drop down to Grizedale Tarn with the others – so my two hour window had been left slightly ajar to become a three-hour window (with an excuse to Helen that I’m sure I hadn’t already used).

Stu, Jarv and Milli on the descent from Fairfield to Grisedale Tarn

Before being a square and leaving my circle of friends to make my way back to Rydal, there was one last chance for a look around. “What’s that tarn over near High Street?” “Angle Tarn.” “And the name of the one near Rossett Pike.” “Also Angle Tarn.” “Ah, but which one’s the right Angle Tarn?”