After I’d showered and dressed I went looking for food. The overriding principle of the Spine Race is that everything must be done for everyone or for no-one. This means there can be no favouritism. This meant I couldn’t have a bacon sandwich because there wasn’t enough bacon for everyone to have one. This was fair enough so I settled for scrambled egg on toast with the by now inevitable sweet coffee.
I wasn’t exactly looking forward to today’s leg but I think few people do. Damian Hall describes the navigation as ‘fiddly’ and I think I would agree with him. I made numerous small errors in the first few miles. Most of them probably weren’t visible to anyone dot watching but I left CP4 at ten to seven in the morning and it took a while for my brain to wake up. I got away with my biggest error, where I inexplicably turned off the Pennine Way and followed another path and hence failed to cross a stream at the correct point. Fortunately there was another crossing a few hundred metres further on where I realised my mistake, and I was able to re-join the correct route without a lengthy backtrack. The issue with ‘small’ errors is that if you rely on your watch to tell you you are off course it can take a while before it does. It’s possible to be less than 20m away from the path but on the wrong side of a stream or wall. As far as your navigation device is concerned all is well as you are not significantly of the route – especially when you take into account the fact that the route is approximated to a series of straight lines in the GPX file. It’s possible to go quite some distance before being the wrong side of something suddenly becomes a big problem.
Anyway that’s enough excuses for my poor navigation. After a couple of hours the sun rose and whilst the ground was frequently an ankle twisting mass of frozen animal hoof imprints, at least it all started to look pretty.
On my first ill-fated Summer spine attempt I met the Angel of Slaggyford, who gave me pizza, bourbon biscuits and coffee. On my successful Summer Spine attempt I went through Slaggyford at about 5am so not surprisingly she wasn’t there. This time I was in Slaggyford at about 9:15am so I was hopeful. As it was, Natasha (the original Angel) was nowhere to be seen but another lovely lady was slightly further up the road with a flask of coffee and a tin of home-made cake. Apparently the cake was pistachio and courgette, which sounded odd but tasted great!
After sliding on ice and hitting a gate hard enough to set of the ‘incident alert’ on my watch I’d put my last set of ice spikes on, not Yaktrax but a set of micro-crampons. After several miles without ice, as these were my last pair, I stopped at a stile, sat down and took them off. I climbed the stile looked ahead and…. sheet ice, as far as the eye could see. Rather than put my crampons back on I ran alongside the sheet ice until it finally gave up. At some point I took off my waterproof trousers and OMM fleece. A short while later I saw the shadow of something flapping from my pack – the sleeve of my fleece. One of the differences (apart from the obvious one, 10 litres) between the Fastpack 20 and Fastpack 30 is the position of the full length zip to access the main compartment. In order (I think) to put an extra pocket on the Fastpack 30, the zip swaps sides and moves to the very back of the compartment. This is not an improvement. It means that the double ended zips can work open if left in certain positions – which is what had happened. Anyway I didn’t loose my fleece and from that point on I made sure I left the zips at one end of their travel and all was well.
I made my ‘traditional’ navigational error and had to double back to the stile at the northern end of Hartleyburn Common South Side. I’m not entirely sure why I bothered, its only a short run along the road if you just go straight and the path you cross onto only half exists but anyway it was the right way so I went that way – even if I did have to imagine the last 100m of path.
At the road crossing there was a large plastic box of chocolate bars and crisps for Spine racers. It was there at Summer too and I’ve never know if it is official or if its another example of the fabulous public support this race gets. Anyway I had two Kit-Kats and a pack of Mini-Cheddars.
I was hoping Rastaman Ralph would have his barbeque out at Greenriggs but there was no sign of either, just a lot of chickens, so I carried on across Hartleyburn Common North Side towards Blenkinsopp Common.
I’ve said much about Blenkinsopp Common before, none of it good, so I won’t repeat it here. In its defence it was no worse than I expected, I didn’t get lost, and didn’t go on for too long. After Blenkinsopp it’s a careful crossing of the A69 and across the golf course towards Hadrian’s Wall, in my opinion the best part of this leg of the race (Horneystead Farm excepted) although I know many don’t like it.
Before starting on the Wall proper you pass through Walltown. In Summer I’d got ice cream there. Technically the café isn’t open in Winter but it was open for Spine racers and so I was able to get coffee and a biscuit before continuing.
Terry had messaged me to say he would be at Greenhead and he’d see me there. He then sent me various messages indicating he was being redeployed further along the route faster than I could catch up with him. I was expecting him to be in Kirk Yetholm by the end of the day at the rate he seemed to be moving.
As I said, a lot of people don’t like the section along Hadrian’s Wall. Given that I appear to hate most of the Pennine Way it might surprise you to know I do. It isn’t anything to do with the quality of the route or the ease or difficulty of running it. It’s because, well, it’s Hadrian’s Wall isn’t it? One of the most obvious, largest and significant bit of Roman Britain there is. I’m not going to pretend I felt anything spiritual or a connection with the ancient Centurions – and I certainly didn’t see any ghosts – but it is still something amazing to see.
By the time I finally caught up with Terry he had finished his shift, however he waited around for me to appear and took some photos and a short video so the watching world could see I wasn’t dead yet. Actually I was feeling OK but keen to get off the Wall and get the last bits over with.
I’ll be honest, I didn’t really notice Sycamore Gap, I think it was dark and there’s a bit of a diversion away from it, possibly, or I’m just really unobservant. Anyway Terry had seen it earlier so the pictures are his.
Finally I turned away from Hadrian’s Wall and downhill towards Wark Forest. Normal service is resumed as I don’t like this bit of the Pennine Way. However as it was dark I didn’t see much of it so it was kind of OK.
I was debating whether or not to stop at Horneystead Farm as its only 5 miles from the checkpoint. However the temperature was dropping and I needed to put my waterproof trousers and fleece back on. It was only a mile to the farm so I decided to hang on and do it there in relative comfort rather than on the trail.
I was glad I did stop. Helen is lovely and loves to chat to all the runners – she also makes very good soup!
Apart from having to slide across a frozen stream and occasionally selecting the ‘daylight’ setting on my head torch to find the path, nothing of real note occurred between Horneystead and Checkpoint Five.
At the checkpoint I was just in time to catch Mick Browne before he went off shift. He was very apologetic that he hadn’t been the one to meet me at the gate but apparently I was doing significantly better than the tracker had predicted in terms of my ETA at CP5. I was just happy that I had at least seen him and said hello.
Checkpoint Five is indoors but it is at a campsite which closes for winter. All the pipes to the main building were frozen so it was a trip across the yard to the toilet. Despite the problems I was still able to have a couple of portions of sausage casserole and banana and cake with custard. I asked the medics if I was leaning yet. The answer was that I was but barely noticeably and if I hadn’t asked they wouldn’t have noticed.
Only one more leg to go, I’m in reasonably good shape and feeling like I’m going to make it. The plan for tomorrow was go sensibly, look after my back and get to Kirk Yetholm…
The Only Way Is Pennine... 