If...

Ian Charters' 55 peaks at 55



On 13th June, Ian made his third and final attempt to complete an extended round of 55 Lake District peaks in under 24 hours. Having completed 51 of them in September last year, it was a fair bet that if conditions were perfect, he could make it.

Ian was on bang on target coming into Wasdale as I stood in delighted disbelief at once again being in the company of Jos Naylor. He had arrived in David Powell-Thompson's Subaru, perhaps more mobile office than means of transport. It was stacked, layer upon layer with first paint spattered tools, then dog-eared and yellow books on the history of the Duddon Valley.


Jos, David, Ian, Alistair and my arm. Photo by Pauline Charters

As the time came for Ian, Colin, Alistair and myself to leave Wasdale for Dunmail Raise, Jos fixed Ian with his timeless, raven-like stare. 'Now don't give up, lad... however hard it is...' he said, gravely, and you knew Jos had been there, lived those long hours of pain. A salvation through suffering that Ian would relive again, one more time.

In the shattered landscape of the Scafell massif, the light flicked on and off through fast moving veils of low cloud. The rocks turned intermittently gold and grey as the sun went down, and the atmosphere was electric.



The sun eventually disappeared, and the wind dropped. This was a heady, charged silence to be running through in the dot-light of a head torch. Hour after hour of black silence and mountain, and then the single melodic warble of a skylark.

Ever so slowly, time had been trickling away as each black peak came and went. Ian had been feeling sick, and wasn't able to eat enough. And the gut wrenching moment came when he called it a day, after something like 18 hours on the run.

Looking in on the sidelines of these long distance attempts, it is hard to really understand what it is like, how much you really have to put in, and what it takes out of you. Being part of a support team, you invest a little bit of yourself, and add your hopes to the heap. So we all felt for Ian when he made this tough decision.


It would be easy to see only disappointment after this, but that would be just half the story. So few people dare to contemplate such extended rounds, let alone in their most unforgiving and committing original versions. So few are prepared to give what it takes to try.

It was not the outcome that defined the level of Ian's achievement, but what he chose to measure himself by in the first place. And for the experience of running through mountains with Ian and his friends? I think we are all the richer for it.

A Party in the Forest

Beside a perfectly built Celtic Roundhouse, the band played another impeccably executed tune. Without a word, a fire thrower moved into a space between trees.



A day to remember in a beautiful space, and a wonderful way to celebrate Pen and Al's future life together.

Blencathra and the Summit Shelter of Doom

Ricky Lightfoot sets a new course record - 58 mins 13

Racing up to the top of Blencathra to marshal on the summit, Andy, Ron and I felt the immense chill of a cold, clear night setting in. The wind belted around the summit like a jet stream, and clothes that seemed excessive at the car park were now painfully thin.

'Indiana' Sharples being eaten by a killer storm shelter

Andy quickly unfurled the summit shelter, an oversized burkha which had to be tethered with summit stones, feet rucksacs and hands. It didn't take long for the first runner to romp over the hummocky grass, and it was Ricky Lightfoot, closely followed by James Bulman and Jim Davies.

Steve Birkinshaw nearing the summit

Heading down the mountain after the last runners had gone through, I joined the other marshals who'd swept the course. It's always a crashingly fast descent, racing each other in our own quiet ways.



The hunt for the Terry's chocolate orange..

The Blencathra fell race is beginning to feel like a milestone in the year- everything is different, yet all is the same. Last year I hobbled up Blencathra, grappling with new orthotics, pain at every step to a summit steeped in rose petals and ashes. Someone had been carefully placed there, while a fell race went on around them.

This year the race was also lodged in the calm before the LAMM. Taking it easy, but afterwards crashing down the mountain regardless. From the ice cold summit to the warm fug of the car park, it was another good race to watch, another good time to have been part of.

On Running and the Weaving of Tiny Baskets

photo by Duncan Richards

Sometimes its easy to take running in beautiful places for granted, but today, I had to pinch myself. In a wild mix of weather that spanned all four seasons at once, I was running over the Langdale Pikes and the Scafell Massif into Wasdale, then on to Honister Pass with Duncan and Karl.

Sometimes runs like this are relatively effortless, flashing by in a blur of measured ascents and crashing descents. At other times, every breath is an alveolar knife-fight where it’s up to the brain to keep it all together. Lately, runs have been tinged with the latter, and although they’re tougher to deal with, they can bring you to perhaps more interesting conclusions.

Why I was reminded of Ray Hudson’s gem of a book I’ll never know, but Moments Rightly Placed is more than just a memoir of life in the Aleutian Islands. Settling into the small community at Unalaska, Ray slowly becomes aware of the ancient Aleutian traditions of weaving very tiny baskets from swathes of grass.

These baskets are a blend of high art and devilish discipline, woven over thousands of years by Aleut women in a constant, ever changing evolution. From the highly exacting ways of harvesting and drying the grass to the intricate and extraordinarily laborious weaving, the process is almost unimaginable in its complexity. A finished basket of only three inches in diameter can contain over 15,000 stitches. There are now only four women in the world who know how to make an Aleut basket.


The tiniest of baskets made by Nina Kiiaikina

In the book, Ray’s mission to learn how to weave a basket becomes intertwined with the culture, people and an overwhelming sense of place into a remarkable impression of how these ancient arts can invisibly transform.

---

From Bowfell to Great End and beyond to Scafell is a dreamlike landscape of grey slabs of stone. Hopping from tinkling stone to clanking boulder is not running as many people know it, but the landscape lends an impossibly dramatic edge to it. A somber, spiritual place to run through swirling mists. Was it an impossible leap of synaptic misfiring to compare this kind of fell running to those little tiny baskets, slowly weft over months, and years? I don’t really think so. For all of us, out there, it is not just the run, right now, right there. It is an amalgamation of all of our runs, the snakes and ladders of our running highs and time spent facing injuries. It is the painstaking years of disciplined attention to our art. And when running over mountains is not effortless, maybe these things become easier to see.

I think it took Ray about a year to create a first basket which he describes as a worn-looking, uneven specimen with bulging stitches.

Anfesia, his formidable teacher, says nothing but “now start again”.


There are inevitably as many reasons for running as there are runners, but to me, on this day, it seemed to be as precious, as delicate, and as disciplined an art as learning to make a very small basket.

The Storm Gathering

The 3rd Ravenglass Seaquest- kayak orienteering in a Force 5 gale



...What is he doing...? How can he possibly take so long to punch a checkpoint??

I am on the Ravenglass estuary, and what I thought was going to be a fun kayak event has turned into a battle for survival with Mr. Beaufort's friends. As I acquaint myself with no. 5, gusts of no. 7 muscle in, uninvited, it has to be said.

Unable to stay in one place in the raging wind, I mouth the international symbol for 'I can't stay here, I'll meet you beyond the bridge..' but somehow, I don't think Stu has got the message.

I subsequently learn that Stu was not punching a checkpoint, but emptying his boat after a poorly timed dismount.

Beyond the bridge, I have a chance to collect myself after the frenzied race start. The first gusts have ripped the course map off my deck. The camera, optimistically wedged under a bungee, is deluged in water and isn't going to be recording the event for posterity as I'd hoped.

As Stu wades through the windy glue towards me, I see the next checkpoint in the distance. One half of a double kayak pair has got out onto a grassy bank, but then disappears completely down a hole on the other side. It's a fascinating aspect of estuary orienteering that the checkpoints might be on land one minute, seaborne the next.

Trying to turn the kayak in these conditions requires skill and strength (both of which are lacking) and I stove the bow of my boat into a muddy bank. Stu and I are doing well, speedwise, after our trip to the Aeolian islands. But I'm breathing as hard as I would in a fell race.

The calm before the storm: paddlers large and small

As the estuary opens back out towards its mouth, the wind's fetch is allowed a free rein, and I just can't keep on course. The boat weathercocks wildly and no amount of heaving on my part will make a jot of difference. I resign myself to being shunted unceremoniously several hundred yards to the opposite bank. It's gusting Force 7 now, I subsequently learn.

The gale is picking up steadily, and a spirited pair in a banana yellow double sit-on-top kayak pass by, oblivious to the raging storm.

Back at the village over a well earned pint of Timothy Taylor's Landlord, the pub is crowded with bright red, salt-encrusted, beaming kayakers. We've come second in the mixed pairs, behind the couple in the banana yellow sit on top. An event to remember, to savour for all it's hardships and tribulations.

And you know what? As we sit there in the pub, the wind drops away to nothing. The sea is blue again, and not battleship-coloured. Isn't that just always the way...?

Must be the wreckage of a previous Seaquest...

The Big Blue

Kayaking off Milos, Greece

Ramming speed: Stu and Henrik face- on to the wind

As the plane flew out of Athens there was a sensation of flying through an infinite blueness. Blue sea, blue sky. We were headed to Milos for some kayaking with Aussie geologist-turned kayaking supremo, Rod Feldtmann.

It's dark in there..photo: Rod

As we landed, we could see it was quite windy. White tops whipped across the bay as the taxi sped us to the hill-side village of Triovassalas. A few hours later, we met Rod and the sea kayakers already salty and wind blown from the days' paddling. They'd spent the day in a Force 5, and they looked very alive.

Milos boathouses

Not knowing what to expect, it was a pleasant surprise to find that we were enthusiastically hauled into this group of amazing people from the word go. About as different from each other as you could get, but united in this love of getting close up and personal with the sea in these funny little blobs of plastic. It just worked.



Each day, taking off with a trailer load of plastics, we clambered into the sea to paddle. Each day, a different coastline, and each day a different set of skills. By night, a rapture of food at tavernas hidden in white back streets and Metaxa-fueled discussions about Kayaks, the Universe, and Everything.

"I believe in the elements..." one of our number said, staring into his glass.

Indeed it does



Having had a wet winter, the whole island was knee deep in flowers

Cormorant-filled skerries

Dave admiring the seascapes to rival Fingal's Cave

Stu rockhopping



Looking back on this trip, it's hard to know where the horizon lines are. The boundaries of my paddling experience and skills have been well and truly pushed. I've spent time upside down in the big blue, and upright on the surface, and learnt to enjoy it whichever way up I am. We've looked at amazing rocks with a skilled geologist, and pieced together a volcano in our minds. And I've had my faith in human nature re-plumped, and had a good laugh all the way.


Heavy clapotis, anyone? Photo: Rod



As the plane flew out of Milos, we flew through that intense blue again. Blue sea, blue sky.

A Perfect Day

Ian Charters' Joss Naylor Lakeland Challenge, 20th April


Joss Naylor at Sty Head: inseparable from the landscape

There's something thoroughly unique about long distance mountain running. I can't quite put my finger on what it is, but I think everyone who's a part of it, in some way, feels a profound sense of this without being able to express it.

At the last minute, I took up an offer to help support Ian on his Joss Naylor attempt (77 km, 5100 m of ascent, 30 lakeland summits in around 14 hours). Duncan, Karl and myself were the leg 3 pacers from Dunmail Raise to Sty Head, and the weather was just perfect.



All up, this was, as Ian put it, fell running at its best. From Dunmail Raise we slowly crept up the steep side of Steel Fell and on for another four or so hours till we ran into the huddle of new supporters at Sty Head. I scoured the group just in case Joss had come up from Wasdale as he often does on these attempts. I didn't spot him immediately: he was standing silently at the back, a remote yet intense figure.

Joss Naylor (for those not in the know) is a towering legend in the world of fell running. Dominating the record books for decades, no one could get near him in terms of speed, stamina or mental tenacity. Joss has, over the years, become almost a myth, with a childhood dominated by constant pain from a back condition that left him immobile, to running through injuries that would have literally felled mere mortals.

Joss has come to personify the spirit of fell running not just for these extraordinary facts spilling over into myths. There is an intensity and an alertness that is striking. Talking to him at Sty Head, first about the weather (well, what else..?), it was clear he was not so much observing the landscape as an integral part of it. He had grown into this place as much as the rocks and grass.

But there is also a poignant sense of nostalgia. Modern fell runners, in contrast to many other sports, are just able to grasp the fingertips of the glory days of Lakeland fell running's past. It is a hugely important tradition that we still (just) retain. And Joss is at the heart of this.

Ian made it round in 14 hours and 14 minutes, and you can read a full account of the day on Ian's blog.

I'm no closer to the elusive understanding of why we run up mountains, or what it is that makes it so magical, so rewarding. Even so, I think everyone in Ian's support team that day felt something of it, and this shone out at every turn. And for those of us who got to talk to the great man himself? Well, it was even more special.

Running around the base of Napes Needle to catch the others up, I watched Joss running down the fell into Wasdale. Now in his 70's, he still runs down a mountainside like water in a stream.

Spirit of Place

Sea kayaking off Mull and Iona

There's a thread of a belief that runs through many eastern religions and indigenous cultures which I often wonder about. It's perhaps best expressed as the idea of the hidden valley (or beyul) of Tibetan Buddhism, and is used to describe a place which is often hidden (well, obviously) and hard to find, but imbued with unusual spiritual powers. A place where people can go at times of political upheaval to find refuge.

A maze of skerries, Erraid

In a way, Scotland is, by virtue of its turbulent history, littered with the faint traces of hidden valleys. But in this case, they are often islands where a church was built, or an abandoned crofting township of black houses, hidden completely from view of the sea and its marauding boatmen.

Iona is perhaps an obvious example of this, but so too are the lonely isles of Inch Kenneth, and Erraid (the home to the quietly inspiring Findhorn Foundation).

Perhaps the smudging out of time's inevitable course that often happens with kayaking helps to make you aware of these weird things. The tourist magnet of Iona was certainly the centre of the action for most, but paddling off to the remoter skerries and roiling seas was a journey to hidden valleys and into natural cathedrals of breathtaking beauty and melancholy.

Gravestone, Iona Abbey

Once again, the ruined black houses were places we sought out. Miles from anywhere (across acres of torrid bogs), tucked onto hidden slopes and out of prevailing winds, these tiny abandoned communities were captivating, yet very sad places to be.



Beautiful stonework, ruined black house, Breachadach, Ross of Mull

We were all too quickly sucked back to the 21st century: past Loch Lomond's golf course with its manicured, kidney-shaped sand pits. Trees budding shocking green shoots. Mazes of built-up housing.

Feeling a little culture shocked, we're back in the real world now, but the hidden valleys of Mull will occupy a very special place.

Friday Night on the Rocks

It's hard to know where we are with Lakeland climbing these days. Endless routes on crisp, grey Mediterranean limestone have lead to a slight feeling of...well...anti-climax on the local cliffs. In between bolt-clipping holidays, we've slunk away from many a Lakeland beauty spot with little more than an abseil off a tree trunk to show for it.

Determined to break the spell, we'd decided, from the comfort of a sofa, that maybe a season of climbing nothing more than classic Lakeland V Diffs was a good plan. As well as being spoilt on bolts, I had had a run-in with a Hard Severe a while back which did nothing for my confidence. And then there was the business of Walthwaite, or Yosemite Crack. Climbing up the ever-increasing off-width, yawning crack, I mentioned to Stu that this yawning pillar was moments away from a major rockfall. He casually dismissed my concerns, although 100 tonnes of rock did crash to the ground a month or two later.

So as the blue hues of interleaved hills faded into the distance, I stood holding the ropes under a hanging garden of Babylon at Quayfoot Buttress on Friday, hopeful for a clean pass at a route. Balls of moss were rolling down under Stu's footfalls, and the Borrowdale-brown, blotchy rock looked a little soapy. The first pitch was moist, then increasingly damp, then frictionless, but undeterred, we carried on. It was a stroke of bad luck that the route we'd chosen then wove onto a side face of the crag, where the rock went from patchy dryness to torrential rivulet.

I started looking for a tree.

We set up the abseil in silence. The tree was quite a bouncy one, and my imagination had already lept to conclusions about its weight-bearing capacity.

"Well, you'd better b******r off then.." Stu intoned in his dry Geordie way.

I collapsed into a fit of laughter, which Stu took as a spirited attempt to diffuse the situation. It was really the ridiculous and over-melodramatic thought that these could be the last words we spoke to each other.

As our climbing degenerates into part-farce, part hilarious pastime with ever-decreasing goals, it is hard to know where we go from here.

But we do know with some certainty that the only way is up....

Decisive Moments...

"...the decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recognition,
in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event
as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event
its proper expression..."

Henri Cartier-Bresson

It's probably very passe to talk rather pretentiously about the decisive moment. It's a much-abused photographic paradigm these days, it's true.

But it is a fascinating thing that the best photographers seem to know when the moment is right. Perhaps it stems from a primaeval hunting instinct. In my case, I prefer to think of photographic skill using the old principle that if you throw enough mud at a wall, some of it will stick.

Back on the north Yorkshire coast the other weekend, the tides appeared right to spend a pleasant afternoon combing the beach for some Jurassic fossil wood fragments. Hmm, not everyone's cup of tea, for sure, but perhaps it's what they represent rather than what they are now that is captivating. Well, to me, anyhow...

These wood chunks left the Jurassic coast 170 million years ago, floating out onto an azure sea. Various life forms latched onto these floating rafts and carried on the journey. Bivalve shells, crinoids. That sort of thing. Once the wood became waterlogged, these babies would sink like submarines onto the dense gloop of the sea floor, and there, covered over with more gloop, would be entombed. Walking over the shore and discovering these little life rafts seems like the unveiling of a 170 million year decisive moment, a dot in the ocean of time.

Today, all I was to find were some beautiful wood fragments, preserved in shiny pyrite. No tentacles. And that's why I ended up following a wetsuit clad surfer to a distant part of the beach, where I took some photos. It just happened that the surf was in at Staithes. The tides were right, the wind had picked up, and there were a number of black bodies in the water. Turns out that they were picking their decisive moments on one of the best surf beaches in the world.

Click on this one to make it bigger...

Complete chance or a moment of decisive knowing? Probably mostly chance. But for once, it felt like I was in the right place, at the right time.

Zen and the Art of Extreme White Water

Personally, I'm not much of a white water kayaker. Bobbling down French rivers with a bottle of wine and a slightly damp baguette is about as far as it goes for me.

So as you might imagine, it was all a bit of a surprise to find myself at a lecture by white water kayaker Doug Ammons the other day. I assumed it would be an adrenaline junkie's wet dream, just something to while away a pleasant hour or so. How wrong could I be?

We piled into the lecture theatre, a group of folk neatly split into two halves: the young adrenaline junkies and the older ones with beards, wearing fleeces with a history. As Doug started to speak, it became immediately obvious that this was going to be a very rare gem of a talk, and about as far removed from my expectations as his kayaking experience was to mine.

It's difficult to know where to start describing what Doug's talk was about. Sure, we watched as Doug and his friends kayaked the steepest, most committing Grade VI rivers in the world. Sure, he had pushed the boundaries of his sport in a way very few are privileged to know or understand. But this was only a part of it. What came across was a sense of knowing what it was about on a much deeper level. How the ultimate achievement couldn't be counted with grades, or with first descents. What mattered was being at one with the greater forces of nature, and that this outward journey made possible an inner journey with an unparalleled opportunity for change. Down this deep, there were similarities between these ideas and many other forms of spirituality, eastern philosophies, martial arts.

After the talk finished, I felt like a hand grenade had gone off in my head. In a good way.

But it all left me with a raft of questions. Had anyone else sensed such incredible clarity and depth of of thought, inspiration? I've since asked everyone I know who also saw Doug speak, and very few seemed to be willing to talk about it. I looked on the kayakers' discussion group on the net. There were a few comments about the lecture theatre's sound system, the quality of the photographs, the general facilities, the seats. But nothing about the ideas.

In a copy of his book, Whitewater Philosophy, Doug wrote:

Rhiannon
I hope you find these ideas as interesting as me and keep developing your own.
Doug

Footprints

Old Barn, Hartsop

It feels like the days since the Haweswater race have been dark. Somehow, the outside world has been playing along with a sympathetic fallacy, and my running has been a stark reminder of this mood. Bleak snowy runs in brooding Lakeland valleys. Runs along the steepening, dark Edwardian streets of Penrith, muffed up against the biting wind.

Alone, even when in company.

Maybe it is, as a friend summarised it, 'coming down off the ceiling' after Haweswater. Whatever that means. It seems apt enough though.

I followed the little dragging hoofprints of Herdwick sheep into the immense scoop of Threshthwaite Combe and out over the back onto High Street. There were no human prints up here. For the first time in a long while, I stopped and thought about the perversity of where I was, what I was doing. Was I running from something, to feel the need to run up here, of all places? Or what? The crashing sound of ice falling off overhanging rock faces in the combe didn't help in this arid place of the snows.

A squall smudged out the hills farther south in pencil grey, but I climbed on, popping through the snowy crust now and again. In a few moments, the grey smudge was all around me.

In this monochrome world, the surroundings seemed to capture and reflect how I was inside. Maybe this, on a weird level, is what mountain running is all about. A validation of what you feel. A connection between you and this place. A coincidence between worlds, one flesh, one stone.

Running away from something, or running towards it? Who knows. But to be part of this mad chase feels right. Whatever the mood.

The Haweswater Half Marathon...

The agony of Michael Pluckrose in second place

"In the splendid surroundings of the Lake District, any race could be a success without too much effort." 2008 race report for the Haweswater Half Marathon, Runners World

This might have a grain of truth to it, but certainly over the last 4 months or so, there seems to have been a lot of organising to be done. Admittedly, on a good day, with a following wind, the race does just happen. But this year, a series of perfect storms have conspired to make it feel like organising through treacle.

With a slight combination of naivety and arrogance, I blundered into the role of race organiser. After all, how hard could it be? It's true, the race is organised by a team of Eden Runners. But as race organiser, you get to carry the can. Take the flack. Do the worrying.

The first whiff of trouble came when we sleep-walked past a brewing race-number crisis. Of course we needed the race numbers quite early to start sending them off. But we couldn't have predicted how hard it would be to get a print run of numbers done, when we relied on the goodwill of sponsors to provide them.

Then the vagaries of Cumbrian road running in remote locations took over. A matter of weeks before the race, the route had become 13.1 miles of sheet ice and landslides. And not any old landslide, but a really, really big one. Four foot deep. Massive. A 'ready for anything' bunch of Eden Runners had set to with spades (and in one notable case, a hastily grabbed coal shovel), to remove it last year. But this year, it was way too big for that. In the end, the Red Adare of Eden Runners, Andy Walker, managed to pursuade United Utilities to return our race route to its former glory. And thankfully, they did.

There were other laughable hurdles, but the race did, somehow, just happen. Over the years, it's grown from strength to strength, happily existing for most of its life with 300 or so runners. This year, with its pivotal position in the race calendar, 600 runners entered, and more were turned away. In a tiny hamlet like Bampton, this is quite a logistical feat.

It's been a tiring few months, but seeing the runners having had a good race in stunning scenery has got to be worth it.

The Act of Observation

Geordie lads, Saltburn Pier

It's an often overlooked pastime, just observing. But over the last few years, it's one that I've grown quite fond of. As most of Tyneside's population enjoyed living out life on Saltburn beach, we spent a pleasant hour just watching. While shafts of sunlight came and went across the beach, it was a wonderful way to spend time.

Wait for me...

Along the cliff top walk of the Cleveland Way, the tiny beachside steel village of Skinningrove had paired houses and allotments. Fascinating ghettos of battered wood and corrugated iron for retreating to when it was best to be out of the house.

Shed, Skinningrove

There are always surprises on these trips to noodle about on old allotments, to sidle between fishing boats on lonely beaches. A strangely enriching form of beach-combing, in a way.

The Book of the North

Alright then, I'll say it. I've entered a bit of a blank patch with blogging. It feels like I've sailed into the Bermuda Triangle without quite knowing how I got there, or what I do to get out again.

It's not like there's nothing going on though. Quietly bringing up the rear at the Kendal Winter League races. Quietly rueing the ease with which I entered the Helvellyn triathlon without as much as a thought to the practicalities of the training required, or the monumental effort it'll take for someone like me to finish before teatime. Quietly learning to swim properly in what feels like the dead of a Thursday night.

It's all about the quiet gestation of plans, a sea change in thinking, some sort of re-evaluation.

Some of the most enduring memories of last year came from wild camping on shorelines with the distant memories of crofters' lives drifting about us like sea mist. These places shouldn't have felt like home, but they did. And this year, we'd like to do more.

A book that leads us on these journeys is none other than Hamish Haswell-Smith's The Scottish Islands. It's a guide book like no other. It's more a mythology that winds Scotland's past with it's present. An examination and an explanation of why landing on a bare, uninhabited island feels more than it should. Extraordinary stories, Norse invasions, amazing communities and cultures, improbable island owners. It's all there.

With this compass to the past permanently out, pages spreadeagled, perhaps a bit of quiet planning a good thing..