The Old Ways - Navigating without tech
Challenges for 2021
Oh gosh where to start. The running year in 2020 was full of difference, and the "home life" year was just FULL. So no time to blog. Minipixie's school is open for all again, so the balance (of sorts) is returning to the household. There is some kind of light at the end of some kind of tunnel, hopefully in the early Summer, so along with most of the fellrunning community, I am planning some Big, Fun Days Out this year. At the start of 2020 I took part in a fun "chat and learn" event which my club Glossopdale Harriers organised. I spoke about my Bob Graham Round experience, and did my best to give some useful tips and answer questions for aspirant contenders. I made "being in the Lakes as much as possible and supporting some of these lovely people on their attempts" my goal for 2020. Then...well, you know what happened next.
Ambitions , for many , were put on ice. I managed to get to the Lakes a few times in 2020 during the "free times" in the summer/autumn.
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| Showing Ian and Lance Leg 5 of the Bob Graham in August |
My own ambition has grown quietly over the past 12 months, ignited mainly by a day trip in August to support a clubmates last-minute Paddy Buckley Round. I won't embellish with details yet, as much is unclear for 2021 but in the main, my ambition is the same as 2020, which is to tread on the routes of the UK Big Rounds as often as possible.
Not to mention, take the Small Boy up some Larger Fells
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| Some "tough" weather conditions at Latrigg Summit in October. Fox's first Lakeland fell at age 4 |
A Grand, Local Day Out - Reccying for the Kinder Dozen
Spin on to March 2021. A lot of running of Kinder and Bleaklow has been done over the last 12 months and it's been wonderful to extend my knowledge of my local hills. I still have a lot to learn. It's been a year of being cautious, not pushing my luck with my general wellness, staying reasonably close to my comfort zone whilst building fitness and experience. I think quite a few runners I know, may identify with the "cautiously pushing the boundaries" mode of training, running and exploring during pandemic times.
Each weekend in winter I tried to run a long route, with the permitted "Covid safe exercise buddy". A couple of weeks before Easter , I fancied a recce of the North -Eastern corner of the Kinder Dozen route. Freedom beckons and it's time to commit to a challenge , both to test fitness and push the boundaries, both geographical and figurative.
I asked some good friends for advice on the route, obtained a list of "checkpoints" and grid references, a gpx trace and some useful commentary. I don't use anything which can read a gpx trace and so , with familiar but comforting nerves, I pulled out a map and began to mark the points out. For those who haven't competed in some of the "old school" Mountain Marathons, your first challenge at such events
was to mark the control points onto your map. So this is what I did. I knew that whoever came running with me that weekend would likely use Viewranger, a Garmin watch or other such "instant route finding" tech but I wanted to go back to basics. I was fortunate to get the company of Wiola, who is something of a Map and Compass Jedi.
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| Compass Buddies! |
We had a brilliant morning out from Snake Inn layby. We deftly skipped out of the clag as we drove over Snake Summit - always a good sign for a recce day. Wiola had marked up a map with the line taken by Ian C (more about him later!) though we agreed that as this was a recce, we'd decide on our own lines based on the bearings and the visible options on the ground. We were pleased to make a good first descent down to Blackden Brook, almost accidentally picking up a fence-line to handrail us into the stream/wall junction we were looking for. On the climb up to the edge below Kinder East trig , I was once again pleased to see Wiola relying on the bearings she'd taken on the trig to guide us up a rough-ish climb - we popped out on the edge, to a little trod bringing us straight to our destination. The day progressed in much the same manner, with my confidence in my own decisions backed-up by the fact that Wiola was proposing much the same ones, each time we had to pick our method of finding the next "control". I made one daft error, wrongly identifying a barn as a farm and dragging her down a rough, shin - shredding descent about 200m east of a wonderfully wide and grassy trod.
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| Realising the sweet trod I had completely overlooked |
For a couple of the "low point" checkpoints, we did rely on some technology - the OS Locate app. WE wanted to check that we were hitting the correct points described on the route as eg "stream/fence" so we opened the app to ensure that we were standing where we should have been. As for finding the "summit" of Nether Moor, we deployed both the OS Locate app, and my fancy new altimeter.
Our return route was one we'd decided to make deliberately a bit challenging. We climbed directly back up to the plateau from Nether Moor to the East Trig and then took a due-West bearing to tread a little of the line taken by Ian C's "Kinder Bastard" route. Ian spent the summer of 2020 and beyond, hoovering up the Dark Peak challenge routes like the 15 Trigs, the Kinder Dozen, Kinder Killer. Not content with these tortures, he devised a new challenge for Kinder-lovers , both devious and simple. So we decided to see what kind of an experience it might be, by taking a roughly straight line West from the trig, for around a kilometre, before finding a route back towards Seal Stones where we'd been earlier that day, to then return to the start.
We trod dry-ish ground for a few minutes after leaving the trig on our bearing, but soon came to the deep groughs the plateau is famed for and began traversing them whilst trying to assess whether any of the high-lines would keep us going in the right direction. Around the third or fourth grough-edge, I spied a runner coming towards us. Who could be so lost, or as plateau-obsessed as us on a day like this? Into the next "valley" we plunged, only to meet Sue Richmond of Pennine fellrunners, a fine navigator and much-missed adversary in fell races. "What are you doing over here then Sue" "Ahh, just bimbling about" - an exchange which warmed me to my toes. We chatted about our lockdown experiences, tipped her off about the Bastard route and went our ways into the peat. A magic "meeting of fellrunners" moment, that.
After this, both Wiola and I began to tire of the grough-strewn maze, never mind the goodly amount of ascent and descent we'd already run, so pulled off to the Edge path again to get down and home. One day I shall try that Bastard line. I've recce-d a little of its Western aspect which has a similarly maddening lack of places to run in any kind of direct manner, so I shall definitely need to pack my sense of humour as well as the grough-hopping legs.
This day out really got me fired up to have a go at the Dozen Route, even though I hadn't recced every section. I would lose a little time, checking bearings and ensuring the right points were reached however this recce day gave me confidence that I'd hopefully not mess it up by going on map/compass and mainly Navigating Without Tech
