High Cup Nick Fell Race

High Cup Nick in better weather

With a tongue of low cloud dipping into the extraordinary rock scoop of High Cup Nick, Morgan Donnelly's rough diamond of a fell race began yesterday.

In a way, it is unlike any other. It is only after 4 miles of uphill running that you get to the steep boulder choke of High Cup Nick, where hands and feet are needed to scramble up the face of the Whin Sill. In wild and woolly conditions, a full-on tail wind blew straight into the scoop, making a sound like a helicopter landing on your head. As we gained the head of the Nick, the waterfall was blowing vertically upwards, and the wind got increasingly more violent. Popping out onto the flat top, the wind in our faces, it was hard to breathe, and hard to stand up. We must have looked like penguins popping out of the water to the frozen marshall on the summit.

The last 5 miles downhill should have been a breeze. They weren't. Energy just left me standing with a ghost-like emptiness. All that was left was a relict synapse that said 'carry on'.

The pain stopped, eventually, on the village green of the idyllic Dufton. After normal consciousness had slowly drip-fed back in, there was one thing I was sure of: I knew that I was alive...