Adventures
Ultra Trail Métropole Nice Côte d’Azur – 100M race report For a good few hours on Friday night, I though it was on. I felt invincible, blinded by adrenaline, pushing myself back up through the field. It’d been a rotten start. I felt fatigued and under the weather from the get go. I decided to start near the back and take things easy, knowing I should be able to make up places later on. The first section is a short climb on a fire road followed by a trail with switchbacks to get you down into Saint-Étienne-de-Tinée, where local school children formed a scream tunnel of outstretched arms that echoed, “allez, allez, allez”. From there it’s straight into a 1400m climb up to Refuge de Rabuons. The early afternoon heat was oppressive and the climb seemed to go on for days. I took a good long stop at the aid... View Article
There’s a scene in Air, the movie about the birth of the Air Jordan brand, where Matt Damon, thinking he’s failed, phones his friend. “Thank you for believing in me,” he says. Both Miguel de Montaigne and C.S Lewis have written more eloquently than I could on friendship but neither of them, to my knowledge, ever attempted the Bob Graham Round. I’d venture, therefore, that those of us who have may have something to add. I’m sure Miguel would’ve had some flare on the alpine trails and Clive would’ve been a menace around Oxford uni’s cinder track, but the Bob wasn’t on their list and that’s a shame because they missed out on the selfless fellowship it provides. Perhaps the most moving part of attempting the Bob Graham Round is descending on Keswick with a small army of supporters, knowing that for the next 24 hours each one will do... View Article
December 22, 2021,
by Pete
The best adventures are almost always spontaneous. Going from the thought of an average few days ahead to adrenaline, dopamine and challenge in the blinking of an eye. No time to dwell, anticipate or expect, just go and get it. I’d planned to do a winter tea round last January, start as I meant to go on. Unfortunately it was illegal to travel alone to the hills, and I didn’t have enough cheese and wine to pass it off as a business meeting. The hills remained a dream until the end of March and the winter tea round was forgotten. Forgotten, that is, until I indulged my Thursday tradition of checking the mountain weather. Warm on the tops, it said, with a cloud inversion thrown in for good measure. The kind of forecast you’d happily take any time of year, let alone three days before the equinox. If ever there... View Article
Totally sensible and not at all insane ultra marathons with strangers… It started, as all good stories should, on the side of a Munro. With three days of thunder storms expected to start at noon, the only sensible thing to do was to try and get a couple of summits under the belt before then. Having tagged Stob Coire Raineach, I started across the ridge to Stob Dubh only to find someone else had the same idea. We got chatting and our individual short runs became a six hour day of mountains and valleys. Every step seemed to give a new vista, a breathtaking highlights reel of what Scotland can offer. Camping in the same spot, we made plans to sit out the bad weather and do our normal day jobs in a pub the next day. Of course, laptops open, the occasional chat may* have happened about what to... View Article
It was wet. I remember that much. Rain thumping on the canvas like a regiment of drummers beating a heady tattoo. North of the tent lay the brooding mass of Liathach. I sat, crouched over my phone, watching YouTube videos of the traverse. It’s hard to know where to start describing Liathach. It’s the kind of mountain legends are made from and, from the road it towers over, it looks impregnable. It rises at what seems an impossible angle, more fortress than hill. Songs have been written about her and the An Fasarinen pinnacles are infamous in their own right. I never did get to climb her that first trip to Torridon. I’d ran Beinn Alligin on arrival. It’s a steep monster in its own right, home to the wonderfully named Eag Dhubh nah-Eigheachd – ‘the black gash of the wailing’. After that the weather closed in. Liathach’s pinnacles look... View Article
It’s been a long winter. On January 16th, Nirmal Purja claimed the first winter assent of K2. Meanwhile, we’ve all been under a stay at home order for the best part of four months. Now, I’m not saying that without the lockdown I’d have summited K2 this winter, but I had some good winter climbs planned. Instead, without mountains on the doorstep, we had to sit and watch perfect winter conditions come and go. Last week, with the stay at home order finally lifted and after a four month absence, it was time to return to the Lakes. I checked MWIS, set my slack status to ‘Der Berg Ruft‘ and headed for the hills. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the dream of doing the Bob Graham round and this seemed like a perfect opportunity to reconnoitre part of the route. I’d planned an out and back covering... View Article
September 16, 2020,
by Pete
The first thing I noticed, parked up at Wooler war memorial, was the three OMM stickers on the car in front. Whoever was in there was obviously the real deal. People who do the OMM are a different breed. Nothing like starting a big day with a slice of humble pie. I was there because the ever changing landscape of quarantine and corona has seen me miss out on two ultras this year; I’d decided to make use of my training. The Cheviots are my local hills. They’re home to the Chevy Chase, possibly my favourite race, and the High Fells of Hedgehope, which featured the most hostile weather I’ve ran in. They’re also home to The McWilliams Round, which comes in three flavours. The short, clocking in at 32 miles (yes, that’s the short one!), the long, at 43 miles, and the ultra which is both of them back... View Article
It’s 5:40am and I’ve already been awake for some time. I give up on waiting for the alarm and pick up my phone to check the MWIS forecast. Rain with a side order of cloudy summits. Quelle surprise. The question is; go or no go? The answer was never in doubt. I tumble out of bed and get ready, making a bowl of porridge and chatting to my housemate about the route. He wants to know if I don’t come home which hill I’ll have fallen off. He also wants to know where my life insurance forms are. Unrelated, I assume. A couple of hours later and I’m standing outside the doors of George Fisher, ready to go. After a disastrous day in the fells last July, I have some business to finish with the Abraham’s Tea Round today. The conditions are perfect running out of Keswick, through Portinscale, to Cat Bells. It doesn’t... View Article
One of the things I miss most about lockdown is getting out onto trails and mountains. As an introvert I’m wired pretty well to cope with the lack of socialising but lack of mountains? That’s cruel and unusual punishment. I crave the sense of wonder found driving along winding roads, carved like glaciers through the majesty of tree lined slopes. The first sight of Sharp Edge, hovering over the shoulder of Blencathra on the drive to Keswick. The anticipation you get looking at the way the arête sweeps upwards, beckoning you to attempt it. I miss the first few hurried paces up a fell, before settling into a slower and more sustainable rhythm. The moment you spot the cairn and surge towards it with a sense of achievement. The feeling when the rays of the sun break through the cloud to bathe some corner of a valley in their light.... View Article
December 4, 2019,
by Pete
They were definitely naked. Sin ropa. Starkers. I couldn’t say for certain whether they were doing yoga or tai-chi but it involved stretching. A surprising start to the morning, but apparently La Caleta is a hippy commune as well as a beach. I’d arrived at just the wrong moment. I was staying in the village of Maro, lured by the towering Pico del Cielo rising 1,508 metre above the white washed Andalusian houses. I could well have started at my apartment, but there’s a special attraction to going from sea to summit. Plus, where better to calibrate an altimeter than with your feet in the waves? So I headed the kilometre down to the beach in the morning sun. It was obvious I was out of place. I wasn’t the only one in clothes, but I suspect I was the only one who didn’t live there and the residents looked... View Article
