Hardmoors White Horse 2019

My fifth time at this event and Melanie's second time. I do love this route the scenery is lovely, but it is far from easy with some big hills to climb up.

The start is at the Sutton Bank Visitor Centre and after registration we listen to Jon's briefing.

The event basically starts with a descent down off the escarpment, a loop of Gormire Lake followed a big climb back to the top of the escarpment and once at the top there are some wonderful views. The weather was pretty good, a mixture of sun and cloud with a cooling breeze.

Past the Sports Sunday photographer, we need to work on our timing...

and on to lovely views across the moors from Steeple Cross

and on to the descent into the lovely Thorodale

On to Hawnby and up to Hawnby Hill. This is a tough climb and I felt it more than I should have done

A bit of a steep descent off the north end of the hill.

On to Bilsdale West Moor (another climb)

Down the other side, back into the south end of Hawnby, before a long road climb - the hill on the left is Hawnby Hill which was earlier.

There is a path around this ford, but maybe getting our feet wet might have been a good idea, it was getting warm.

Heading towards Rievaulx Abbey

We stopped at the Visitor Centre and bought some ice cream, which was lovely and refreshing. Now just five miles or so to go and most of it is a drag uphill. There are still some lovely spots, here we are at Grass Keld.

Got back to Sutton Bank in about 6hr 50min and that was fine. I struggled a bit more than I expected as we haven't done much distance recently, but work has been very busy and that may have contributed.

The marshalls, the volunteers and Jon and Shirley were all wonderfully supportive 😃

2018 blog

Ingleborough Challenge marathon 2019

This was a new event for Melanie and I, I cannot recall how we came across it. I was holding out a slight hope that it might circumnavigate Ingleborough rather than go up it but that was not to be. We have been up Ingleborough on a marathon before - the Settle Saunter (which has since been re-routed to be less than a marathon). We enjoyed that one so I wasn't too disappointed that we were going to the summit. My hope for circumnavigation was to do with having done two marathons in the last two weeks, the second one being particularly hilly, I was wondering what state would my legs be in for more climbing. As it turned out climbing wasn't going to be too much of a problem.....

The event started at Clapham and was being organised by the Cave Rescue Organisation. They had a good system for checking that everybody who checked in to get their number actually started the event. They had marshalls and/or signs at most tricky navigation spots.

The race starts uphill and goes through a couple of tunnels that we had encountered at the Settle Saunter.

After this it just continues mostly upwards all the way to the summit of Ingleborough, about six miles into the route. Thanks to Melanie for some of these photos

The summit is the hill to the left of centre on this photo

We made it to the summit in about 90 minutes which we were very happy with.

There had been one bit where you would not want have wanted to go off the path to the right, there was a big drop. I haven't got the best head for heights but it wasn't too bad on the way up. We had to double back down that way and I took it nice and easy.

It then got a bit easier, we had now separated from the way we had come up and were heading in the direction of Chapel-le-Dale

but this was a false dawn as we came to a section which was extremely steep. I could have managed this fine going up, but down I found very, very challenging going down. I was quite scared. The poles helped a bit but sometimes got in the way. Melanie estimated we did about a mile and half in an hour and this was nothing to do with her. These photographs do not convey the steepness !

Finally it flattened out and I caught up with Melanie who would have had time to eat a two course meal in the time she had to wait for me. We started to speed up a bit, we were the last of the marathon runners at this point although we had passed a couple of marathon walkers (who had set off an hour ahead of us)

Ingleborough and 'that descent' behind Melanie

Checkpoints were just water stations on this event and at the next one we left behind the crowds who were doing the three peaks. Gradually we started to overtake other runners.

We had not expected to see this Ribblehead Viaduct so this was a nice surprise.

The route was now across fields, moors, under railway lines, across bridges, along the Pennine Bridleway and the Pennine Way. Undulating but nothing challenging

We came down the Pennine Way into Horton in Ribbledale, over the railway line and up again

Then a lovely gentle descent on a path with bluebells

A few more climbs (and a couple of minor navigation errors as we now getting tired) before we made it back to the tunnels and into Clapham - back in about 6hr 45min and we were happy with that. This was followed by tea and cake in the Cave Rescue building 😀