The Fellsman is a strenuous ultra-distance challenge set within the beautiful Yorkshire Dales National Park. It starts in Ingleton and finishes some 61 miles later in the village of Threshfield. It is organised by the Keighley Scout Service Network though originally the brainchild of a chap named Don Thompson of the Brighouse District Rover Crew, who brought it to life as a hike way back in 1962. Participants take on over 3350m (11,000ft) of ascent spread over ten peaks starting with the two highest of the infamous Yorkshire Three Peaks: Ingleborough and Whernside. To put that into context, that’s like climbing to the top of the Shard, the UK’s tallest building, almost eleven times!
It has since become popular with ultrarunners, though it still attracts hikers, and you will most likely be referred to as a hiker by the checkpoint staff as in: ‘I’ve just punched the first hiker’. No, the marshals are not (normally) prone to violent outbursts, but they will need to punch your tally on the way past. The Fellsman attracts its fair share of big names in the ultrarunning community, such as Jez Bragg (the overall record holder with a finish time of 10 hours 6 minutes, set in 2011), Jasmin Paris (the women’s record holder with a finish time of 11 hours 9 minutes, set in 2015), Nicky Spinks, Sabrina Verjee, and Damian Hall to name but a few.
A lot of the route is off the beaten track which should appeal to those who fancy a spot of fell running, but if bog snorkelling is not your cup of tea you can take comfort in that there are some waymarked footpaths, hard-packed bridleways, and a few small sections of road. It’s basically got a little bit of something for everyone. For those of you who still ponder the distinction between trail running and fell running, this event will leave you in no doubt as to the difference between the two disciplines.
Although GPS devices are permitted, like most other distance events a map and compass are compulsory, and I would strongly advise you to familiarise yourself with good old-fashioned navigation.
The Fellsman has an old school quirky charm about it. There are no big inflatable arches at the start or finish; everyone just mills about aimlessly in the cricket club playing field at the back of the community centre in the picturesque, touristy village of Ingleton until someone with a megaphone tells you ‘Right. Off you go then!’.
This year, a minute’s silence was held to mark the recent passing of a longstanding volunteer, and it is then that you get a feel for what makes this particular event unique. It’s about something that words alone cannot define, but it’s there in the atmosphere and it touches you. It’s humbling.
I’m with four others. We’ve entered as a group and called ourselves Cavers with a Running Problem. I will not insult your intelligence by dissecting the name! Here we are, looking all race-ready and raring to go:
I have my sticks out from the get-go because I know that initial climb up Ingleborough is a bit of a beast, especially on cold legs. We set off on a gentle run across the playing field until we hit the short section of road out of the village. I drop to a walk. I’m in it for the long game. Easy does it. I know from experience that I can make up time on the downhill sections. I do love me a good descent.
Now the beauty of the Fellsman is that the checkpoints are not few and far between. The first one is on the summit of Ingleborough, which is only some 5km into the race. The next one is at the foot of the descent on the road head. The road head checkpoints all serve refreshments, and most have some hot, substantial offerings and well as biscuits, crisps and fruit. I’m gutted to discover that the first refreshment stop does not have any plant milk so I cannot have a cup of tea, which was all I really wanted at that point. Never mind. Onwards and upwards. It’s a beautiful day. What I would term ‘Goldilocks’ weather: not too hot, not too cold. Just right. There’s nary a breeze to be had which is a pleasant surprise as I am used to it blowing a proper old hoolie on these summits.
Next up: Whernside. It’s an awful climb. Whernside is popular with tourists, some of which are aiming to complete the Three Peaks walk so it’s extremely busy with foot traffic, with a fair few walkers not willing to relinquish any of the path. This continuous circumnavigation of leisurely bimbling walkers makes the ascent even more energy zapping. To add to the congested feel of the climb, the annual Three Peaks fell race happens to be on. I spot Johnny from Upper Wharfedale Fell Rescue Association, and his trainee Search and Rescue dog, Storm, at the side of the path so I stop briefly for a natter and a quick whinge (I’m not a fan of crowds at the best of times) before pressing onwards and upwards. The ridge is awash with marshals from both events, and I’m hoping I don’t inadvertently find myself switching allegiance and competing in the wrong event! I am relieved to get my tally punched so I can pick up the route off the ridge and away from the melee. Now for some proper fell fun! The drop into Kingsdale. The line is easy as the trods are quite distinct and offer a fast descent. Up until you reach the network of gills that feed into Kingsdale Beck at the bottom. This is one of our dogsbodying sites: where you help handlers train search dogs by hiding; so I know how ankle-wrenchingly tricky this terrain can be.
The next ascent is the one I’ve been dreading: Gragareth. The climb up past Yordas woods is your run-o-the-mill leg-busting ascent that you come to expect in the Dales. It’s that last push up to the ridge that is the killer. You basically handrail a drystone wall almost vertically! I kid you not. It’s an all-fours type of climb. It is the very definition of brutal. I’ve never attempted this ascent with anyone behind me before. It’s usually just me, myself and I, and no pressure. There was no opportunity to sprawl over a rock whilst the lactate dissipates, and I had to just dig in and press on. I believe US Marines refer to this as embracing the suck. Okay, maybe I’m overexaggerating a little. Maybe.
The trot to the trig is a boggy one but I manage to muster something akin to a run. My legs are still jelly but they haven’t fallen foul of the convoluted ground just yet. That comes next where the suck quite literally embraces me! The next leg up to Great Coum turns this event into something that resembles a very mucky swimrun event. I manage, with expert precision, to find each and every deep section of bog along the route. I’ll admit, the tea-coloured bog water is a refreshing respite from the heat radiating from my burning muscles, though I wouldn’t choose to linger in it for too long. The bog, on the other hand, had other ideas. It seemed to like my company and with each dousing, its grip on me tightened. It took me a fair bit of effort to wriggle myself free of its peaty clutches during the final hip-height dunking. I made the hilltop checkpoint with one of my party, Paul, in good time, where we were punched and whizzed and sent on our way.
Upon registration you are given what is dubbed your iconic Fellsman tally: a disc with all the checkpoints named and numbered around its edge. You get your first punch at the start and collect them on your way round the route. You also receive a returnable wristband with an electronic device in it. You present this to a FellTracker box, and if successfully read it makes an extremely satisfying ‘wheeee’ noise. I never tired of it. It gave me the chuckles every single time. I can only liken it to the sheer delight I used to experience when popping the seal on a new coffee jar with my finger. Unfortunately, those seals are no longer made with foil-backed paper which renders the experience somewhat lacklustre. I have been robbed of one of the more obscure sensory pleasures in my life so you can only imagine my joy at discovering something else that triggered my inner squee! You also get a tracker, which is a relatively new addition to the race. It means you can introduce friends and family to the extremely exciting thrills-a-go-go spectator sport of dot-watching. If you think I’m being facetious, well I’m not. Had you watched Damian Hall and Jack Scott battle it out for first place on the winter Spine Race earlier this year, you’d know exactly what I’m talking about.
Another decent downhill section brings me nicely into Dent and a welcome feed stop at the checkpoint. The sphagnum moss from my earlier encounters with the bog had dried, all caught up in my body hair, insulating my legs from a non-existent breeze. I now looked like I had some hideous skin condition. Every time I moved, clouds of flaky dried moss erupted from my limbs. However, this was the least of my worries. One could regard Dent as the place where the wheels started to show signs of loosening. After replenishing my fluids, I set off down the road, distracted by the discomfort of a hastily reassembled running pack. An unexpected kit-check saw me removing everything and not quite getting it just-so when repacking it. This was enough to irk me. The temperature had dropped a little by now, and it had started to spit so that was a good enough excuse to stop and remove my pack to pop my windshirt on. I fettled the pack before trussing up again, and my pack woes dissipated. Now, at some point, the chap behind me passed by. I’m not sure whether this was after I’d missed the turning or not! I blindly followed, as a brief verbal exchange established that he’d done this race before, and I therefore assumed he must know where he was going. There’s a lesson right there! For starters, never assume. I’m reminded of a saying my grandmother used to have: to assume makes an ass out of u and me. For the sake of five minutes I could have stopped again and consulted the map as I did err at that turning. Doing this instead of being lazy and following the guy in front would have saved me an hour. That wasted hour would prove pivotal later on.
It’s back into familiar territory crossing Blea Moor so I get a respectable clip on as I hit the track at the bottom of the fell, pass through the scrubby area and reach the dreaded yard bird territory. I’d been trying to shove this to the back of my mind as me and the yard birds, despite the sign on the farm gate stating their harmlessness, don’t see eye-to-eye. At least that’s what I recall from my previous encounter with these murderous aves. These birds cannot read. The sign is rendered nowt more than an obfuscation best ignored. As soon as they hear the gate creak open, they turn en masse from the far end of the yard and start to waddle towards me, wings braced, like some grounded squadron of possessed, honking zombies. I find myself in the oxymoronic situation of plumbing the very depths of my Atheist heart, trying to find some semblance of Godliness so I have somewhere to focus my desperate pleas for survival. My saviour appears in the form of a dog! A barking dog from the other side of a closed gate back at the far end of the farm. The birds turn as one cohesive unit and march their beak-wall towards the unphased pooch. This leaves me free to run the gauntlet across the yard towards the other gate at the far end. Phew! Mission accomplished. Canine intervention. Thank you, dog.
I am starting to flag now, and to make matters worse, the clag is thickening. It gets harder to recall the finer details of this portion of the adventure as it’s all clag, hags and shakeholes from this point onwards. My knee had been paining me for the first 15km of the challenge. I had taped it up prior to the start using kinesiology tape and the knowledge gleaned from watching hours of online videos on the subject. Professor Google diagnosed me with Runner’s Knee, though I could do with a second opinion from an actual professional! The supportive taping job worked well up until a point. As I was clambering down from a ridiculously proportioned wooden step-stile on the ascent up to Gragareth (think Little Britain’s Dennis Waterman sketch), my knee squealed, and it didn’t let up until later on. I also developed lower back and hip pain, both on the opposite side to my knee. Yup. Definitely need to engage more with some strength and conditioning in order to iron out those imbalances in the kinetic chain. Bizarrely enough, and in opposition to what I expected, my knee stopped paining me. I honestly thought it would get progressively worse throughout the course of the event, but instead the pain dissipated with only the occasional twinge accompanying the odd, overzealous foot placement.
At the Redshaw checkpoint, I practically inhaled a vegan hotdog. Then I spotted the vegan cheese sarnies. I inhaled a couple of those too. Ultrarunning’s a funny thing. It goes against everything you were led to believe in your formative years: never exercise on a full stomach. It increases your risk of a heart attack. I have no idea whether this is true or not or even who was responsible for planting that nugget of dubious information in my developing brain, and, for the most part, I avoid meals, per se, when I’m training. Instead I opt for specialist drinks, sugary snacks, gels and bars (if I’m going to be out on the fells for the most part of the day). Perhaps my inner child still has the ear of my brain, whispering disinformation, unchallenged. During an ultra, that inner child is far too distracted with the myriad of stimuli to misguide me in my dietary choices at the feed stations. The hotdog and cheese sarnies are akin to throwing tindersticks into a furnace. With a quick burst of heat, the flames lick up the sides and I’m off, bouncing out of the checkpoint like Tigger on crack, and steaming straight towards the next big hill. Unfortunately, like a tightly vented burner, that fuel is far too quickly spent, and I soon find myself having to once again haul my heavy body up and over the convoluted ground.
A lethal cocktail of tiredness, darkness and clag stymies my progress as I try to handrail a wall that I cannot see. I pass the gate I should have gone through, and I stumble over tussocks and rocks until I reach another wall. Knowing I’ve gone awry I retrace my footsteps, get the map out and then attempt to reassure myself by cross referencing my location using the OS Maps app. I refresh the screen and the map zooms out and then back in to show my position as being in… bloody Windermere! I know my navigation has gone a bit south (forgive the pun), but to find myself in a different national park in a different county? Well, that must have been one hell of a wrong turn! I go through the gate and continue to handrail an invisible wall until I reach another gate. It’s identical to the last one. In fact, the whole area looks identical. Have I not moved? Perhaps I’ve just had one of my ADHD moments where I act out a scenario in my head whilst rooted to the spot. I check the map. I check my phone. I am none the wiser. I do know I’m not in Windermere, though, so I go through the gate and lo! And behold! I’m on the road. Finally I can navigate with a degree of certainty again. I see the dim glare of a vehicle’s rear lights breaking through the fog and then a stern voice yells:
‘Pickering! Is that you?’
Fearing I was in trouble (for what, I do not know, as to the best of my knowledge I hadn’t committed any infraction) I replied with something along the lines of ‘it might be’. Then another voice bit through the clag; this time a softer voice with a very distinct accent.
Oh my God, it was Steph and Mike!
What a totally unexpected and hugely welcome surprise? For those of you that don’t know, Steph and Mike are no strangers to the Fellsman. They are front-of-the-pack runners and have earned themselves podium spots on other races too, including their epic win of the recent winter Mountain Rescue Team Spine Challenger. They are also my friends, and, like the other members of our Fellsman team, it is our fondness for the subterranean environment that initially brought us together. We’re all Cavers with a Running Problem. I get the low-down on how the others are doing, receive encouraging words and off I go into the foggy darkness with a grin considerably wider than my field of vision.
It’s plain sailing after Dodd Fell. There’s a fair old whack of road to be had, and I’m not a fan of road running at the best of times but I briefly enjoy the novelty of not tripping over tussocks and sinking into squelchy bogs which quickly zap energy from sore, conservative legs. I drop into a nice rhythm, the clickety-click of my poles on the tarmac serving as a metronome of sorts. I can finally throw some consideration towards my gait. Nice and upright. Feel that string at the top of your skull being pulled taught. Shoulders relaxed. Pull the arms backwards and allow them to swing forwards. Do the same with the legs. Nice and tall. Nice and tall. Clickety-click. Like a Newton’s cradle.
Soon I was forced to drop out of my trance-like pace as I started to doubt myself. This next section should start to look familiar as I’d recced it previously but I didn’t recognise any of it. There was a party of three or four behind me and I allowed them to catch up and pass me. I voiced my concerns but they seemed pretty confident so I tagged along. Yockenthwaite was when the wheels well-and-truly came off. The gate with the beacon on was locked, I was informed. We clambered over another gate and headed out into what I knew was all bog and shakeholes. Not the best in good visibility. The worst in thick clag and darkness. Torches are pretty useless in the dark when there’s fog. The water droplets in the air bounce the light right back at you and you can’t see a thing. The best you can hope for is a view of the ground right in front of your feet. It can make following a distinct, waymarked path challenging enough so imagine trying to find a decent sheep trod that takes you in the general direction you want to be, all the while trying not to tumble down a shakehole or snap an ankle between concealed lumps of limestone rock. I eventually lost sight of the group, their torchlights fading into the distance like the Marie Celeste disappearing into the eerie brackish mist, leaving me once again alone. Adrift. My legs were leaden. I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was lay down and sleep, and the fell was lulling me with its sweet siren song, inviting me to nestle my head betwixt its soft, tussocky bosom and be cradled into a deep, satisfying slumber.
Ahh, no Tim! It’s a bog. It’s cold, wet and it reeks of sheep pee.
My own, familiar inner voice reprimanded me:
C’mon. Dig in, lad!
I clambered over a gate into a fenced-off area that had recently been planted with saplings. Disappointed, I climbed back over and continued to follow the fence line, unsure as to where I was headed. Then suddenly, beacons! It was the up-until-now elusive Chapel Moor checkpoint. A hand appeared out of the tent, and I was clipped and whizzed and sent on my way. Hell Gap was easy enough to find. So long as I kept the wall on my right in sight (and didn’t lose it in the fog) it should lead me right there. I hopped over the stile and found a chap in a four-by-four. I had to bend down and retrieve his radio for him, as he’d dropped it opening the door. I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get back up again. I imagined this was what being elderly would feel like. My wrong side of middle-aged brain reminded my playful youth brain that I wouldn’t have to wait too much longer to find out. My nihilistic brain interrupted the two by pointing out that I might not even reach my dotage if I carried on with these ridiculous shenanigans. It can get quite crowded inside my head.
I blamed my brain for my current state of exhaustion. Perhaps if it didn’t spend so much time arguing with itself, it might not need to keep raiding the old glycogen stores and actually leave some easy-to-tap-into energy for my poor, overworked and underappreciated muscles.
I forced myself into a run (if you can call it that) knowing that the next checkpoint had food. I got to Cray and enjoyed a cup of cold soup. The lad that gave it me said it might not be hot enough, in which case he’d warm it up for me. The truth was, it was clap cold, but I was in dire need of substantial food and desperate not to linger as I knew I was now chasing chop times, so I didn’t feel the need to keep him apprised of any variance in soup temperature.
Next stop: Buckden Pike. I was pointed off in the right direction with instructions to hug the wall all the way to the summit. I was so broken by this point that I could not work out which wall I was meant to be hugging. It didn’t help that I couldn’t see the summit. Or the wall for that matter! I was so bored of the clag. It was getting light, but it didn’t help much. In the end, I stuck with the line I’d drawn on the map, which I’d taken from Steph’s Strava data from the previous year. All was going grand until I reached the wall I was meant to hop over, only to find that a fence had been erected behind it! It was a new fence. The wooden posts were straw coloured, with no evidence of weathering. So I followed the wall across and picked up the waymarked path. It took all my strength to get up to that summit. As far as I was concerned, I was still in the game, chasing the final cut-off time at Park Rash. This was not the final checkpoint. There were another three between that and the finish, but it was the last one with a chop time. If I could make Park Rash, I was home dry. I could dawdle over Great Whernside. Saunter into Threshfield. So I pushed it, got whizzed and bopped and then tried to run down the flagstoned path to the Polish war memorial. I was done in but determined to make that chop time.
Oh, but the descent from the memorial! The worst hags I had ever come across. Again, I’d recced this section but again, it was in full daylight with no clag and reasonably fresh legs. A hag is the term given to exposed areas of peat created by gullies. They can also occur where fires have dried out the peat and the wind has blown great clefts through it (a risk with ‘managing’ moorland for grouse shooting). They were almost a metre deep in places and I couldn’t jump down them like I had before. I felt an attempt to do so might see my legs concertina on impact like some Loony Toons cartoon character. I clambered down them and scrambled up them until I eventually settled upon wading through the gully, figuring this method, although messy, would require the least amount of energy. After what seemed like an eternity, the ground levelled out and I found a path or trod or some thoroughfare that took me into familiar, easy territory and I followed it until I reach a wide path with a gate in the distance. As I approached the gate, I saw a tent. It was unremarkable. I stood and stared at it a while, trying to determine whether it was anything to do with the event before dismissing it as a wild camper. I went through the gate and picked up a stone path. I could hear voices, or so I thought. I turned around and saw nothing but clag, which was still persisting in pockets. I glanced at my watch and to my dismay, the time read 08:33. I still had a mile to go to reach Park Rash. I had missed the chop-time by three minutes already. Gutted!
It was game over. There was no point in even trying so I slowed to plod. My feet hurt. My legs ached. My heart felt heavy with disappointment. Not for a second had I had any doubts that I wouldn’t finish it. I had felt that elation at being able to stop as I crossed the finish line with a full compliment of punched-out holes on my tally. I’d felt the grin spread across my face, and the disbelief that I’d undertaken such a thing to start with. I’d already tasted that sense of pride welling up as I’d recount my experience with friends, family and colleagues. As I plodded along, I eventually met with the sweep team, who asked me if I’d seen anyone else. Eh? I wasn’t the last? A miracle! I informed them that I hadn’t seen anyone apart from the wild camper’s tent. It turned I was the last, and there had been some confusion as to how many had come through the last couple of checkpoints. Or something like that. Oh, and the wild camper was a checkpoint! I walked back with the sweep team to get popped and whizzed. It seemed to take ages. The lady at the checkpoint informed me that she had heard the gate go at which point she’d emerged and attempted to shout me back. So the voices I thought I could hear behind me turned out to be an actual, real voice and not an auditory hallucination, which I’d originally thought.
Right. Time to plod on again towards Park Rash. Park Rash marks the 50-and-a-halfth mile of the Fellsman. A mere ten-and-a-half miles from the finish. I had done about 55 miles in total, accounting for all the minor nav errors. If you take away the nav errors, and reimburse me the hour I wasted after Dent, and the energy used, I would have made the finish line. The bus ride to Threshfield was silent and shameful. I sat, dejected, in the entrance to the school at the finish, not quite knowing how I was going to get home but just wanting to eat, ensconce myself in my duvet and cuddle my cat. I was well and truly throwing a pity party for one. As I was sat there, a finisher approached me and extended his hand. I went to shake it but then he said ‘well done’ which saw me instinctively whip my hand back and proffer a ‘no. I didn’t finish’ by way of explanation. I do hope he didn’t think me rude. In that very moment, I felt it would be disingenuous to allow him to shake my hand, as that would have been accepting praise for something I hadn’t done.
The Take-away.
The hardest emotion for me to process was the pang of resentment I harboured for all those who had crossed the finish line. It’s a horrible thing to admit, especially when your friends are included within that group. I genuinely wanted to share in the joy of their collective success and experience their individual victories vicariously, but I just could not find it in me to celebrate their achievements. A good night’s sleep changed all of that, and I was greatly relieved to wake up to the absence of those intolerable feelings. I could finally congratulate my friends in all sincerity.
I hadn’t even contemplated failure as an option. I have a terrible fear of failure and thus tend to avoid situations where failure might be a very real possibility. As you can imagine, this becomes very life-limiting. I like to do things to the very best of my abilities and if the best I can muster is mediocrity, I’d rather not bother. Advancing age fancies itself as a therapist and peddles its own dysfunctional brand of exposure therapy. Failure in its various guises becomes unavoidable and the ensuing, inevitable self-deprecation smacks hard.
This time it’s very different. This is a whole other brand of failure. It’s a… well, it’s a good thing! Aside from the initial unsettling feelings that sleep-deprivation cultivated, my inner deconstruction of what lead to me not finishing has on the whole been massively positive. There’s a noticeable absence: self-deprecation’s bedfellow, regret. I don’t regret following that chap after Dent. I just won’t repeat that behaviour next time. I don’t regret not spending more time practicing navigation in poor visibility. I’ll get out there in the clag and/or dark more often between now and next time. Strength and conditioning? I don’t regret my lackadaisical attitude to it but I will stop reading about it and start incorporating it into a training regimen. Yes, training! Let’s get that resting heart rate down by prioritising longer, slower days in the hills. Maximise your time, Tim.
Yes. I like this type of failure. It has left me with a feeling of excitement; a certain giddy effervescence. I’m going to make good things happen. To steal a grammatically irksome Tory catchphrase and use it in a far more apt context: I’m going to build back better.
60th Fellsman. I’m coming for you!
Why you should do the Fellsman.
- It’s a delightful event, and it’ll give you a little tasty slice of that timeless Yorkshire Dales life, oft portrayed in the media through the likes of Last of the Summer Wine, Calendar Girls, All Creatures Great and Small, etc., whetting your appetite and leaving you coming back for seconds.
- It’s organised by the Scouts. What’s not to love about that?
- It’s a great opportunity to face your fear of nav. A lot of folk are put off by the fact that only some of the course is waymarked with the rest being pretty much point-to-point self-navigation. You can use an electronic navigational device, but like pretty much all ultras that I know of, a map and compass are mandatory kit. Navigation is not a difficult skill to acquire if you allow yourself to practice it. Use your Garmin as a back-up and your map and compass as your go-to.
- You’ll get a feel for fell running. There’s something quite liberating about leaping over tussocks and using vegetation to determine your best route. You’ll soon learn what type of flora hides bog! It can be fun spotting trods and finding your lines without losing pace as you switch from one to another. And you get mucky! Sooner or later you will face-plant in soft, squishy bog. It’s a given. It’s like being a kid all over.
- The food. The food! Hotdogs, sausage rolls, stew, soup, butties, pasta etc, as well as the usual offerings of crisps and fruit. They had melon this year.
- The views. When it’s not thick clag. On a clear day from the summits you can see the mountains of the Lake District, the Forest of Bowland, Morecambe Bay, and when visibility is great you might even catch a glimpse of the Isle of Man!
- The volunteers! The marshals are super friendly and encouraging. The checkpoint volunteers will lift your spirits and go out of their way to accommodate you. If you get your soup from a tin man, or a cowardly lion asks if you want tea, you’re not hallucinating. They like to dress up.
- Enjoy it while it’s still a reasonably small event.
- You can enter as a team. You don’t have to run together. The group time is the average taken from the first three across the line and you could win a trophy.
- It’s like a school sports day. There are loads of trophies, cups and shields up for grabs, and of course, the much coveted Fellsman Axe.
- Oh, and you get a lovely Buff.
To find out more about the Fellsman, check out their website here. To register, follow the link on the website to the SiEntries portal.