Three Days, One River

Wednesday night: Eden Runners club run

Round the back of Mosedale, the River Caldew slices through the bog and bracken on its way to the flatlands to the north, draining Skiddaw in the process. In spate, it is fast-running and broad. During the dry spells, it is flat, glittery and littered with stones like the true Highland rivers of the north.

Anticipating a gentle shuffle up along the path to Skiddaw House, I got swept along on a rather more purposeful journey: to find The Broxap Boulder. Known to a select few (or perhaps everyone but me..), Andy Sharples offered to point out the whereabouts of a boulder that allowed you to cross the Caldew 'without getting your feet wet', a secret imparted to Andy by Jon Broxap.

This stepping stone on Leg 1 of the Bob Graham Round took a bit of finding. Launching into tussock, then whipping heather stalks, we aimed roughly at the river. After some slewing back and forth, and with, it has to be said, dripping feet, we found the boulders. We bounced back and forth across them to prove, rather forlornly, that we could cross the river without getting our feet wet, then trudged back out along the little swathe through the heather carved by the feet of the few.

Back at the cars, I threw myself into a roaring plunge pool in the River Caldew.

Thursday morning: a recce of Leg 1 of the Bob Graham Round

The first leg of the Bob Graham Round, for those who don't know, takes a U-shaped course over first Skiddaw, then Great Calva and up the great broad back of Blencathra. These three immense climbs make up the 5 or 6000 foot or so of ascent on this leg.

The July monsoon season had started again. Thick blankets of cloud held Skiddaw’s grey top as the first rains thundered in on the wind. I scooted down the back side of Skiddaw into the cloud and got out the compass. There is a wonderful mathematical simplicity about moving on a compass bearing. A complex life form being guided by a few spinning atoms of iron. Distance, speed and time in a white darkness of clouds.

Moving up Great Calva's vast flank, a poem by Rumi on the iPod made me jump:

"...Keep walking
Till there is no place to get to.
Don't try to see through the distances
That is not for human beings.

Move within,
But don't move the way fear makes you move.
Move within..."

With these longish runs, you can slowly prise back the tightly bound leaves of what the brain thinks the body can withstand. It's a good thing to do.


Friday night: light support of Cathy Gill's Bob Graham Round



At the age of 17, Cathy Gill was attempting to be the youngest woman to complete the Bob Graham Round. I'd offered to help by running into the notch between Skiddaw and Great Calva with some soup with her mum and sister, Dawn and Jane.

Only things weren't quite as they should have been. First and foremost, the weather was unbelievably bad. So bad that nobody really knew whether it was sensible to even start. And Dawn was so ill with the 'flu that she should really have been in bed, not standing in the middle of Keswick in the thundering rain.

Cathy Gill and Stuart Hurst on Leg 1

Dawn was wearing the accumulated anxiety of a mother about to watch her daughter set out on a 70 mile run across the mountains along with a bout of flu in the time of an epidemic. She handed me an enormous tub of soup, then a few bottles of water.

We set off, not quite sure whether we'd get there in time.

'I wonder if we'll make it in time' Dawn whispered, in concerned tones. A little later, she suggested that we start running while she walked behind...

Janey bounced off, unencumbered by the burdens of either age or soup. I thought about mentioning that I couldn't run with this much weight, but started shuffling anyway. It seemed to work, so I kept going. Soon, I was running with eyeballs out, stupidly trying to catch up with Jane. The path had become a river, and plodging through it, I remembered that I had gulped down too much tea in the anxious moments before Cathy's start, and now needed to go to the loo. Still, there was no time for that if the soup was to arrive.

We did indeed get to the crossing point just in time. Cathy, Adam and their pacers were as wet and slick as seals, while the rest of us sherpas just looked drowned. After a few gulps of soup, they were off into the mist, and we traced our steps back over the Caldew, one more time.

The pacers taking a breather

Running back to the car, the Glenderaterra River was spewing for its entire length at angry fire hydrant strength. The Caldew would be an immense, brown torrent by now, and even the Broxap Boulder would be engulfed.

_________________

In the conditions, Cathy and Adam did amazingly well. Cathy had to retire at Dunmail as the wind and rain on the Helvellyn range had worn them down. Adam continued on to Leg 3 but also had to give in to the weather eventually. Cathy has already started planning another attempt in August.