4/5th July
Nathane Dangerfield

Liz and I managed to get some babysitting organised (thanks to the Grandparents) so decided that the best way we could spend the time, wasn’t relaxing in a spa, or having a lie in and lazy day at home, but by running around the Hellvellyn range trying to find little orange and white flags. So we entered the Saunders Lakeland Mountain Marathon.

We chose to do the Wansfell course, which is the easiest of the linear courses. After the country had been baking in heatwave the weather decided to bless us with 40mph winds, rain and low cloud cover for the weekend, thats the Lake District for you.

We got to the start line just in time, got given our map and then… immediately stopped to plot our route, we did this quicker than we normally do and set off up a hill and into the clag. After some steep hills, bog hopping and contouring we we’re going well, happy that we were finding each checkpoint relatively easily even in the rough conditions. A couple hours into the day the weather improved and we could see where we were going, even enjoying some sun. Eventually we hit the last checkpoints of the day and dropped into the overnight campsite in Dockray just before midday.

As the day went on and more people arrived at camp we were surprised to find ourselves 8th overall and very geekily chuffed that our route was pretty much what the route setters highlighted as being the optimum one. We also bumped into two other Totlies who had braved the conditions on the Fairfield score course.

Day 2 started with more rain but thankfully less wind. We quickly entered the clag again and found a couple of the checkpoints were a bit harder to find than the previous day but we trusted the compass, found them in the end and we were able to crack on to the finish line and the complimentary chilli. Later we found out that we had held onto 8th place overall which which was way better than we though we would do.

Its a great weekend in the hills and you will see all sorts of people doing it, Mum’s and Daughters, racing whippets and people just out for a nice walk. We’ll be back next year, hopefully we’ll see you there.