So I left checkpoint three in a positive frame of mind. The sun was shining, the next part of the route was fairly undemanding and very pretty, what could go wrong? Well, quite a lot actually. Firstly I had a bit of a panic when I left the checkpoint and couldn’t get my GPS to display the next part of the route. I’d turned off the CP3 to CP4 section to make it easier to find CP3 and it wouldn’t display again, despite claiming it was. Fortunately the traditional method of fixing things by forcing an unscheduled hardware reset (turn it off and on again) soon had the track on my display. I was also having a few pains in the top of my left foot which lead to me spending some time fiddling with my laces again. I’d been told before I started by a couple of previous finishers ‘don’t faff about in checkpoints’. I’d managed to follow this advice so far but is suspect that in reality it included ‘don’t faff about in the first hundred metres after leaving a checkpoint’ as well.
Anyway Low Force and High Force were both very popular with tourists so I wasn’t at all lonely or struggling to find the route for some distance out of Checkpoint Three.
The number of tourists decreased as I progressed along the river. The path was mainly quite easy with just one or two boulder strewn sections to make life more interesting.
Eventually Cauldron Snout came into view. Hugely impressive, I knew I had to scramble up the rocks beside it to continue. To be fair the scramble was some distance from the waterfall (I guess it may be nearer in winter when there is more water falling) and my vague plan of ‘keep going up and see what happens’ successfully saw me negotiate the climb to the top and onto a very obvious track.
The path across Dufton Fell was mainly easy to follow – I did have to convince myself that it was highly unlikely that the Pennine Way would be down a massive scree slope at one point (it wasn’t) but generally navigation was OK and I met the Safety Team in Dufton. My big mistake here was not taking advantage of the fact they were at a pub and going in for a drink.
So far this part of my journey reads a bit like a cross between a tourist information brochure and a seven year old child’s ‘What I did on my holidays’ essay. However that was all about to change most abruptly…
One of the more sensible things I did during my excessively short stay at Checkpoint Three was change into running tights and a long sleeved top. Cross Fell is the coldest place in England and inevitably I would be crossing it in the dark.
The climb was long, hard and didn’t reward me with any views. Hallucinations were starting to set in a bit but after giving myself a bit of a talking to and stopping myself slamming my poles into the ground on every step and making myself walk like a normal(ish) human being instead, I slowly climbed up to Knock Fell. Navigating to Great Dun Fell and it’s strange giant golf ball radio installations was OK and I continued to Little Dun Fell.
At this point things started to fall apart. There was a wind shelter, which was nice. There was a second wind shelter, which may have been a figment of my imagination, and there was a large amount of loose rock, which my GPS track had me going straight through.
I didn’t want to leave the comfort of the wind shelter, I didn’t want to cross the loose rocks in case that wasn’t the right way and the hallucinations were now quite bad – I’m fairly sure there were not several dozen people having picnics on Little Dun Fell that night….
Fortunately two other runners appeared who seemed to know what they were doing so I followed them. I had to move quite quickly to keep up but I was desperate not to lose them so I followed them over the Fell (through the loose rocks) along some limestone paving and eventually to Greg’s Hut. I felt I would be OK from here and so I slowed down and let them go on. My feet were now very sore but at least I knew where I was right?
Now begins one of my darkest moments on the race. I have very little idea what happened to me for several hours after reaching the hut. In my head I kept getting messages telling me where the checkpoint was and I kept running down various tracks looking for it. At one point someone told me which track to take, but I don’t think he existed. If he did I didn’t understand what he told me and kept running in circles. I think. My watch died before all this. I might be able to recover something from my GPS but the bottom line is that I have no real idea what happened or where I went. I know that what went on in my head wasn’t real but I have no idea what reality was at that point.
At some point the very small section of my brain that was still functioning attracted my attention. It pointed out I was actually doing the Spine Race, not living in some kind of bizarre fantasy that most people would need a significant quantity of illegal drugs to achieve, and could we please get on with getting to Checkpoint Four or it would all be over.
I was on a quite clear track towards Garrigill and, after exchanging a few words with quite a bewildered passer-by, was met by one of the Spine Team. By now I was in the real world and fairly lucid so he was happy for me to continue and directed me to Garrigill. From here it was quite straightforward to take a signposted path along the river to Alston.
Except for me it wasn’t. I had misunderstood the directions and was expecting to find the checkpoint on the river, which it basically was but the path didn’t follow every turn of the river and so I had to leave its banks. This lead to me walking backwards and forward along part of the river and phoning Spine HQ to ask where they had hidden the checkpoint. Eventually a very patient man gave me some directions which sunk into my addled brain and I finally struck out in the right direction. Garrigill to Alston is less than four miles along a well walked path but it had taken an age for me to work in out. I arrived at Checkpoint Four with my feet in bits, having lost several hours of time (and my life). I was fairly certain my race would end here. I was tired, in pain, and moving too slowly to have a hope of finishing in the time available, things did not look good…
The Only Way Is Pennine... 