Deliverance

It's a truism that people form relationships with landscape in very different ways. The north of England is a stark reminder of this. From the almost cute landscapes of the Lake District valleys to the impossibly stark and empty lands farther north-east, it's a clear case of voting with one's feet. Non-challenging versus challenging. One, a multi-million pound tourist attraction and parking nightmare, the other, a multi-million pound rocket test site.

I am, of course, talking about a recent mountain-bike ride round Spadeadam, on the south-west corner of the large and uncompromisingly bleak moorland of Kielder Forest. Yes, it reminded us of the film, Deliverance. Miles of empty heath and evergreen forest, stamped now and then with farms, hidden, reclusive houses that only Google Earth could illuminate. And then, in a clearing, a car containing a few shifty looking men. You know, not the sort that are easy on the eye, squinting, big nosed. Dare I say it, hicks. It is no surprise that this place was chosen to be a rocket test site in the 50's. A twin location to Woomera in outback Australia, it too is an outcast. Nobody goes here: that'll do nicely.

But strangely, the comely Lake District vales had less pull than this place. The more we became enveloped in this simple landscape, the more I felt at home. This raw place had something different to say. What it was, I couldn't put my finger on, but it wasn't about humans or their history. It was about a time before man. I shall (hopefully) return.

The Element of Surprise

Perhaps we're a little weird, a little unconventional. But to us, it's just as likely to be the accidental meetings, happenings, eddies in the current, that make our days. Yes, we climb, we go sea kayaking, biking or fell running. We are lucky enough to get to some fantastic places, in a way that makes us happy. But it's often the things that happen by chance that leave us smirking.
Last weekend, we found ourselves camping in a field of alpacas. They had a canny ability to display "formation curiosity". All in a line, each with a palpably questioning look on their hairy little faces.We had gone to the Peak District to sneak some climbing in under autumn's door. As it turned out, a layer of frost on the ground early on Saturday alerted us that we may have cut it a bit fine...In the end, a walk over the gritstone edges was the best option. There was an extraordinary quality to the light in the Peak. It was as faint and golden as I'd experienced. Sunday saw us heaving desperately on Curbar's unforgiving cliffs. Definitely a hard man's crag, that, and perhaps not the most appropriate for our needs, soft and crusty as we were. It's been an atrocious year for climbing, and it's sad to think that our climbing year might already be over. Dreams of hot rock (and dare I say it, bolts) are haunting us, though, and we may yet make that Easyjet booking.
And so, it may not have been the climbing that captured our attention this weekend, but the things we saw along the way.

Hill of Slaughter

Dunmallard Hill, Pooley Bridge, the site of an Iron Age fort, and the scene of something grisly.

I do a lot of running up here, above Ullswater. This thermal inversion slowly evaporated as I ran.

An Ode To A Fell Shoe

The New Balance RX, Montrail Highlander, Inov-8 Flyroc, and an old pair of Salomons (L to R).

If there's one thing that's guaranteed to ignite the fellrunning populace into an uncharacteristically animated discussion, it's shoes. The eponymous Mrs Marcos would be proud of the attention we give to these things. Indeed, we, as fellrunners, share the same level of obsession as the dear Imelda did.

But perhaps it's more complicated than Imelda's compulsion: if she didn't like a pair, she would just buy something else. Fellrunners are between a rock and a hard place with shoes. We're caught in a Goldilocks-porridge situation of nothing "being quite right" and if, on the rare occasion it is, then the company usually stops making it.

Take my little collection. The New Balance RX Terrain is the perfect fell shoe. As comfortable as a Marks and Spencer's furry leopardskin mule, yet as robust as a tank. And cheap. Thirty Pounds. Then there's the Montrail Highlander, the perfect mountain marathon shoe: more support than the RX, and contours better for those long outings. And still cheap due to an over-ambitious stock management issue at a now defunct adventure gear outlet (alas, Planet Fear is no more). And then there's the Inov-8. Looks good enough to eat, but plagued with strange, technical faults and issues of robustness that saw me writing an uncharacteristically irate letter to the managing director, Wayne Edy. These Flyrocs cost 65 pounds. Twice my RXs. And just for comparison, a pair of well-abused Salomon trail shoes bought in a sale for 40 pounds.

The issue is bizarre, and complex. Consumerism has swept it's hand over unlikely activities such as climbing, and now fell-running like a blunt instrument: you can't shoe-horn the things we need into a mass market scenario. We don't need something to look like a street shoe, because when it's covered in mud (i.e. after the first 5 mins of use) it doesn't matter a hoot. We don't need the things to spontaneously combust after 6 months so's we can buy something flashier. We want continuity.

Some people rave about the Inov-8s. But I just can't bring myself to buy something that I fear I'll have to send back to be replaced, or that will only last 200 miles. Or worse still, cause strange heel blisters that wouldn't look out of place on the Marathon des Sables. Admittedly, I haven't stepped into a Walsh since 1994. But even Walsh, that bastion of all that was good in the fell shoe world are plagued with issues about changing the shape of the last, and quality problems...and even they are making flash suede "street" Walshes in taupe now.

Where is an honest fell runner to look for inspiration? New Balance have discontinued the RX, their most successful fell shoe, in favour of the new RX, a heavy weight monstrosity, clamped tight with ribs of shiny plastic, too much cushioning, and blatantly not a fell shoe any more. Salomon seem to produce shoes that are at least robust, but yet again, they've discontinued the Speedcross, their fell-ish model.

I guess we're a sport in transition. And since there are only about 15 000 of us buying shoes (and we're probably quite stingy), perhaps we are destined to be unhappy customers in the modern world. Gone are the days of seeing a row of Walshes tied onto rusty, six-inch nails above the door to Joss Naylor's Lakeland farm...sadly, it's a different world out there now.

Happy birthday, Rumi

Eight hundred years ago, the Sufi poet and mystic Rumi was born...This is an extract of a translation by Coleman Bark.

The Ian Hodgson Mountain Relay

Steve Hartley and Paul Flynn on the final leg

One of the last fell racing events of the year is also one of the biggest. With some 300 runners covering a 25 mile course, the Ian Hodgson Mountain Relay is a veritable classic. More than this, it's one of the most mellow, sociable events in the calendar. Penny and I took over the baton from fellow Eden Runners Sally and Gill, who had taken on the heavy responsibility of Leg 1 over Red Screes, a mighty descent now littered with skin.
It all went well, given mild, windless conditions, with a heavy mist on top of High Street. A magnificent run over, we retired to the refreshment tent, abundantly festooned with high calorie comestibles from the hands of Patterdale's finest cakemongers. A fine event, and one I will look forward to participating in next year.

The Mountain Marathon Bug

It isn't always a good thing that in this internet age, we can achieve some things at the click of a button... That was all it took to find myself at the start line of the Rab Mountain Marathon with a lot of flimsy gear and running partner, Penny. Preparation had been OK, but not stunning, and Penny had popped an ankle a few weeks previously, so we decided to pace ourselves. Not only that, but this was a completely different animal: a point-scoring course. Where strategy can win out over speed... where the brain...oxygen-deprived though it is...has as much to do with it as lung capacity.

With an air of finality, we chose the day's route. It wasn't a bad choice in the end, although from the comfort of an armchair, there were many other creative paths through the maze. All in all, we had a good, solid day and didn't feel too tired at the end. We were somehow in second place in our class.

It was all to play for, then, as I awoke the next morning to the awful realisation that I wasn't at all well. Three spoons of something related to oats went down, but that was it. This wasn't good. We decided to start the second day, at any rate, but having to rest on a rock while choosing a route wasn't a promising start. After only a few metres of climbing I was way behind Penny, and was retching behind a wall.

We turned back, and the race organisers drove us round to Coniston.
The journey home was a long one.

A Theory of Relativity

Sometimes, it seems as if kayaking is a window on another dimension, as if it allows a casual disregard for the usual inexorable passing of time in our carefully-measured world. Moving along Ravenglass estuary at a rate of knots with the incoming tide, we should have been only too aware of time's passing, measured as it was by a whopping six foot range between high and low tide. Instead, we entered a small eddy in the time-space continuum. All around us, land changed to water in a matter of moments, but somehow internal clocks changed little, and if anything, slowed.

Herons flocked to feed in the minutes of low water. Odd, bill-hook silhouettes of curlews screamed off in our wake. The kayaks lodged onto gritty banks and we zig-zagged from one flank to the other as the ducks did overhead. In the hissing of rushes we got out on a sand bank only to find that it disappeared beneath incoming water in seconds.

The tide changed, and we returned to Ravenglass. The estuary now full, it was as if we were paddling in an entirely different place. Somehow, we had glimpsed another world, where time had relaxed its incessant grip on reality. For a time at least, it was a wonderful place to be.

Skye reflections...

A few more photos of Skye...



Paddling towards the Cuillin...well, towards the Old Inn at Carbost if the truth be known...


Smashing wee moo, aye.



Wooo, spooky manor house again.


A rather interesting feature of the old mill at Pootiel Bay...



This place put the wind up us a bit...the atmospheric Eilean Munde graveyard, home to those massacred at Glencoe in 1692, and their clan chief, MacIain. Ironically, the short paddle out to the island provided us with some of the strongest down-draughts we'd experienced. We couldn't get off the island quick enough. It felt like an odd place.

Between Sea and Skye

The Isle of Rona

I think with hindsight, the two weeks spent on Skye will feel like a monumental experience that sealed our fate as sea kayakers-in-the-making.

Perhaps it was naïve to expect settled enough conditions to do multi-day camping trips, and in the event, we did none….but gained experience in a way which was probably far more condensed, and far more valuable.

Armed with just a little bit more equipment than a Honda Civic can carry, we set up a Control Room that James Bond would be proud of. Each and every trip out on the water had its own challenges, and none, from the shortest of several hundred metres, to the longest of day trips, were easy or uneventful. It was an incredible forging of experience.

So here we go. Join me on a journey through the seascapes of Skye. With the odd cycle ride and run thrown in for good measure.

The Grizzly Isles: Dunvegan to Stein

Our first trip had to be the well-worn beginners’ classic from Dunvegan to Stein. Past seal colonies, coral beaches, isles with a less than placid past, it’s a must-do kayaking trip. Oh, and the cracking, shoreline pub at the end had something to do with it as well...



It was with trepidation that we made the short crossing to Isay. To say that this unassuming Isle had an interesting past is an understatement. A dip into Hamish Haswell-Smith's excellent treatise on the Scottish islands reveals that the 16th century manor house at the southern end of the island was the site of the gruesome, and it has to be said, spectacularly ill-thought out murder of two entire families in a single sitting. Roderick MacLeod took it upon himself to wipe out everyone closer in line to the inheritance of Raasay than his own grandson by inviting them to a banquet, then stabbing them one by one, in sequence. Hmm...I hope he didn't skimp on the canapes...


The Manor House on Isay...

Looking back to Isay and Stein after some very nice beers

The Day that Will Hereafter Be Known as the Uig Experience...

It started off much like any other day. The same woefully inadequate text message forecast for Inshore Waters, the same web forecast for Force 4, freshening to 5 or 6...We had already become accustomed to the blustery Skye weather systems which had burst into life as soon as we arrived. We had though, concocted a series of devilishly cunning plans to avoid the worst of the winds by sheltering in the lee of one or other of Skye's great northern peninsulas. Today it was the turn of Trotternish's western shore, at Uig. Our plan was to paddle west and then south into the sheltered waters of Loch Snizort before the "freshening to 5 or 6" took hold. Things started off very calmly, sheltered as we were in the perfect cove of Uig. In retrospect, what was remarkable about unfolding events was the seamless and inexorable progression from calm to interesting to strange to scary to "arrgghhh". As we crossed the mouth of Camas Beag, the waves were definitely scary. And it was only going to get worse. So we took the only course of action and dived into the imagined haven of Camas Beag. Trouble was, here, the waves were in direct line with the screaming wind gusting Force 5 or 6 from the Atlantic, with only the flimsy filigree of the Outer Hebrides landmass to question its path. So we were by no means out of the water, as it were.

Not sure whether we were going to have to perform a surf landing either, tensions were running a little high for my tastes. Through thick layers of neoprene, goretex laminate and buoyancy aid, my heart rate had soared to about 200. It seemed as if the nightmare would never end, as wave after wave sideswiped the kayak, somehow managing to remain on top of it, yet unsure of when it would all come to a crashing and predictable end. Yet of course, it did. And we survived. Pushing the bows of the kayaks onto the rocky shores of Camas Beag with the eagerness of those who think they've probably cheated death, or at least the coastguard call, we assessed our situation.

I tried to remind myself of passages of Laurence Gonzales' book, Deep Survival, knowing that all it took to turn a situation like this into a survival situation was a mere wrong decision, a whim. We had two choices. To go back out in "that" and head for Uig, or to abandon ship and somehow lug the kayaks out to the road a kilometre away. Well, we really only had the one option and so we set about carrying bags and kayaks out up very steep, hairpinned paths for the afternoon. In the event, the physical hardship was a mere pecadillo in comparison to the alternative option.

A salutary kayaking day, and one which in reality was probably not that serious, but had tested us enough for us to know more about our limitations. A good thing on all counts.

Cycling on Vertical Tarmac: the Tour of Raasay

A tactical withdrawal from kayaking was called for at this stage, and so by way of relaxation, we decided, perhaps a little misguidedly, to cycle the length of Raasay. Perhaps we should have looked a little closer at the writhing bunches of contours, and the fact that the road crosses up and over the spiney little isle not once, but twice. In any case, the road started off nicely, through fields and glades, but quickly started racking upwards across open moorland. As we passed through the cloud base, it started to get a little more daunting. Still, we raced downhill, until we came to the second of the island crossings. At this point, we change from Highways Agency road building to Calum MacLeod's spectacular piece of engineering doggedness. In the face of the local council refusing to cut a road to the isolated Arnish community, and all his neighbours threatening to leave as a result, he spent 10 remarkable, persistent years digging out a road with handtools. 2 miles of this is extraordinary enough, but seeing the terrain in the flesh leaves you prickly with the thought of carving anything out of this incredibly hard, 5 Billion year old Lewisian gneiss. It would be churlish of me to say that I wished he hadn't bothered as every atom of my being was under tension trying to ride a bike up these vertical tarmac shutes. It was the closest thing I've experienced to a roller coaster ride. The bitter sweet footnote to Calum's labour was that by the time it was finished, all the other inhabitants had left.

By the time we retraced our double ascents of Raasay's peaks back to the ferry, I think I know how Calum must have felt.

Running Amongst the Needles

Maybe it was the kilometre hike with 2 kayaks, or the entire body strain involved in heaving bikes up vertical Lewisian gneiss, but it was clear that we might peak too soon, so an easy day was called for. I went for a run in the Quirang through thick mist. An incredible environment to run in.

Leave No Stone Unturned

It is a rare thing indeed to find yourself bowled over by something funny, touching and beautiful all at once. It is even rarer to find that this state has been achieved not by Nature alone, but by man's place in it.



Rounding Neist Point Lighthouse on another heinous, hilly bike ride, there it was. Out where the land meets the sea, a jagged, rocky, tilting line of stones. Was it a particularly badly-made drystone wall or what? As we got nearer, it became clear. These strangely wobbly pyramids had been built by people visiting the point.

Someone had obviously started it, and things had snowballed from there... All of humanity seemed to be here in some form or other - some stone piles funny, others poignant. Some had the acrobatic grace of an Andy Goldsworthy sculpture, others the sturdiness of Fred Dibnah's art. This perfectly scaled down Stonehenge was a favourite. We built our own little monument of our visit- built on a foundation of solid engineering principles, capped by a topstone ripped through with quartz veins.

Steel Fell Race

Doesn't look much, does it? This is the back of Steel Fell, site of one of the shortest fell races of the season. It also happens to be one of the steepest, which explains it's curious attraction. At only 2.5 miles by my watch, it's a wee beastie, but has 1100 feet of ascent, which makes for a breathtaking run.

Having not done many such short, steep races in a while, it was a bit of a pull. The atmosphere at the start was good though, despite the race being held at a farm, 80 or so people milling around on the land. With a sense that the winds of change could be upon us with the Foot and Mouth outbreak farther south, someone at the start shouted "there's no one here from Surrey is there?"....

Looking around at the assembled throng, the chances of that looked extremely slim....

At last...

Stu paddles off into the sunset...

I'm falling behind in the blogging of kayak trips, so expect to see something about them soon. But something more momentous happened recently: Stu took charge of the Tiderace X-cite that he'd been patiently waiting for.

You have to hand it to the Tiderace team. A company forged out of the ashes of a previous kayak-building partnership, they've faced more than their share of teething problems. A hasty re-branding exercise only months into the business venture to steer clear of offending native peoples, and an unfortunate incident involving a trailer load of 15 brand new kayaks, a layby and a bad French lorry driver are just two of the storms Aled and Dave have had to weather.

These boats are deservedly attracting a good deal of attention in the kayaking world. A comprehensive review will have to wait for those who can really compare it with its step-brother, Rockpool's Alaw Bach. It is a gutsy boat for those who (a) have enough mass to keep the built-in skeg in the water, and (b) the ability to edge it quite confidently. The overall finish actually seemed better than on an earlier demo version of the boat: the gelcoat colour more saturated, the grey underbelly more subdued.

At this stage, the overall impression is good, but I suspect that it will take 6 months to a year to iron out some quality control issues. This doesn't detract from the design and build of a kayak that is clearly at the cutting edge of this salty sport. It's clear that Aled and Dave are putting everything into these boats, and there's no doubt that Tiderace will be a formidable force in the coming years.

Climbing, Suiseki and little vegetable worlds

Climbing has been a bit of a washout this season. Two months of unsettled and unsettling weather has meant that climbing is generally restricted to a strategic stab between showers, somewhere that you can get to, and from, easily. No long weekends camping high to make the most of inaccessible Lakeland gems, no languid days on hot rock with dips into plunge pools afterwards. Just damage-limitation climbing, at best.
Last weekend, planting ourselves optimistically in a place where climbing was in theory possible (weather permitting), the rain clouds once again put pay to our plans. Instead, a walk along some limestone edges. Inadvertently, this took us to some incredible little vegetable worlds. These micro-climate havens were smushed into tiny spaces between grikes (or are they clints?), where a little pocket of soil and moisture allows ferns to bask in the windless, damp conditions. There was a striking, minimalist beauty to these worlds, pretty much invisible unless you are standing above them.

In some ways, they are reminiscent of the ancient Japanese art of Suiseki, stones which, though only inches high, have the appearance of mountains, lakes, and other large landscape features. Microcosmic worlds intended to bring the spiritual uplift of mountain scenery into one’s every day world.

Anyway, I digress. A lovely way to spend a day, in a Suiseki sort of way. And climbing? The rain has got to stop sometime…

Coming Down from a Jelly Baby High

The day had finally dawned. Just another day in the Lakes, you might think. The road along Ullswater was gearing up for a day of slow weekend traffic and the Steamers were docked, soon to be up to the plimsoll line with passengers. Our destination was a field at Patterdale, the start of the Saunders Mountain Marathon. The anticipation was palpable, and the queue for the toilets was deepening.

So this was it. We solemnly made our way up the muddy track to the start and funnelled ourselves through the taped channels. Surely this couldn’t be the start line? It was on a slope only marginally less than vertical… And to my sleep-deprived brain, it looked like it was being policed by the Grim Reaper: the starting marshall was indeed carrying a large scythe… What were we letting ourselves in for here..?

We got slowly closer to a little box that was making blipping noises, a sort of electronic tagging system for those without criminal convictions (although insanity was clearly an asset in this instance). It was the first of many checkpoints that would record our slow progress around the fells with a cheery “blip”. We were off, and the first thing we did was find a quiet spot in the bracken to fix the positions of the checkpoints onto the map. Then we headed up the hill, deciding to take a different path than the other racers to the next checkpoint. This was a good move, as was getting Penny to digest Wainwright’s entire volume on the Eastern Fells in the lead up to the race. She was displaying an uncanny knowledge of these hills right from the start.
"Well, I thought you'd packed the compass"...the start line of the race

The exhilaration of hitting the first real checkpoint buoyed us on to the next. It was a like a kind of giant Easter egg hunt without the tasty prize. The intermittent showers came and went, but didn’t really matter. Hours passed in a flurry of uphill slogs, crashing downhills and squashed Powerbars. The biggest threat to our progress up till now appeared to be the danger of inhaling jelly babies rather than swallowing them. If you’ve ever tried eating anything small whilst breathing heavily, you’ll know what I mean. I followed the jelly babies with one of those Haribo fizzy jobs that make kids hyperactive. "You'll be as high as a kite if you eat any more of those", Penny warned.

We were now in serious country- the long ridge of High Street and its attendant centurion peaks. There were some long stretches between checkpoints, and on the horizon loomed a big slog up the leviathan of Branstree. But quite curiously as we plodded up, I felt a lightness as if I’d broken through a pain barrier. Yes, there was no pain…this was fantastic…hello, rocks, hello, grass, hello clouds..Was this the effect of the Haribo sweet, or endorphins kicking in? Whichever, I could see by the look of Penny that she hadn’t been so fortunate...

There is always a down side to chemically-induced states of euphoria, and over the next couple of hours, I found that out the hard way. It was difficult to eat enough squashed energy bars to keep going, but Penny was by now storming along, so there was only one thing to do. Keep going.

Home that night was a surprisingly dry and welcoming field at the head of Haweswater. In reflective mood with the flimsy tent hoisted, drinking half a cup of tepid tea from an old baked bean tin, it was clear that the day had gone really well. No major fluff-ups, no major injuries, and we were still talking to each other. We spent the next few hours eating and drinking our way through a variety of dehydrated and powdered substances in little ziplock freezer bags, lightly garnished with Ibuprofen. Mmm...

With thoughts of sleep came the need to blow up the balloons. Yes, it’s amazing what people will dream up, but I did indeed have a bed made by slotting large red modelling balloons into a series of nylon sleeves, like a lilo for minimalists. Being cushioned from the ground with so much air, it proved to be a surprisingly comfortable bed. The sound of exactly seven balloons popping in someone else’s tent brought it home that it’s a bit of a gamble, but it was worth it… And so the sun set on a sea of very little tents. By 10 O'clock, the field was as silent as a nylon grave, give or take the odd snore.

The next morning, the camp awoke to a cacophony of popping balloons, and with a belly-full of powdered products inside us, we took to the fells again, but this time with slightly less enthusiasm. But the day had a very different flavour- the weather was great, and we just needed to keep it together for another four hours. This was no mean feat though, as it was probably equivalent to doing two marathons on roads back to back.
Stunning views across Haweswater

Mentally tired, we made a couple of navigational boo-boos, but thankfully small enough to cost maybe ten minutes at most. The course had been carefully designed to cut across the grain of the land, so there were several gruelling ups and downs before we finally made it into the marquee.

It’s hard to believe that it’s actually over. This was the culmination of six months of fairly dogged preparation. We are left with a legacy of bracken-scratched legs, bank balances denuded by the insatiable need for ever-lighter gear, and a clinical dependency on jelly babies, but it was worth it. Our finishing time was a little under 8 hours for the two days, we finished in the top third of the field in the Harter class, but more importantly, were in third position in the ladies team event.
We couldn’t have been more delighted.

Strange behaviour

Locals turn out to watch mountain marathon through Martindale

The other day, I found myself weighing a pair of leggings on the kitchen scales. Early-onset Alzheimer's, you might think...but not quite. It's only two and a bit weeks until running partner Penny and I undertake perhaps our most stupid challenge yet. To take part in the Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon.

This two day event sees pairs of runners complete a 10-ish mile off-piste course around a number of cunningly hidden checkpoints to a squelchy, mozzie-ridden camp with 1000s of other tired, wet and possibly happy runners. There they have to feed and shelter themselves with only the things in their hopelessly flimsy rucksacks before packing up and doing it all again the next day. Sounds fun, doesn't it? They do provide milk and beer at the overnight camp, apparently...won't need to pack the cocktail shaker then...

Aside from heavy training on the fells (see below), preparation for this great event has engendered a whole new raft of strange behavioural traits, from weighing incongruous objects to eyeing up bin bags and bits of tin foil with peculiar relish. And who would have thought that bubble wrap and modelling balloons could be this year's must-have outdoor accessories?

Still, this has been the real focus of the last 6 months, and of late, Penny and I have been ramping up the training considerably to meet our challenge... this has, unfortunately, coincided with a particularly wet spell on the fells, and so we've had two weeks of extraordinarily disgusting runs of a wintery nature. What with the kayaking rescue techniques that Stu and I have been...err..practising.. as well, I can't say I've ever been closer to Trench Foot than now.

All good training, though, one might say.