The Winter Spine Race 2024 – it’s cold outside…(Final part)

I attempted to get some sleep at the checkpoint but it didn’t work too well. Ironically the only place I was cold all week was in the sleeping area of CP5. I got up, got dressed and ate copious amounts of rice pudding with jam for breakfast. I was offered porridge but I felt rice pudding was easier to eat quickly and digest.

Before leaving every checkpoint there is a kit check. This is usually just a few items to ensure people are still carrying the kit and generally includes items which might be considered particularly necessary for the next leg. At Checkpoint Five the check is slightly more extensive as the final leg is the most remote and therefore things like sleeping kit, warm layers and GPS become even more important.

Soon I was ready to set off on the last leg of my epic journey. Strangely although this was probably the most challenging leg of the race – certainly after the previous 220+ miles – I was less worried about it than the previous ones. Why? Well firstly, on all the other legs I had to complete the leg I was on and try and finish in a state where I would be able to do the next leg. This was the last leg, it didn’t really matter if I couldn’t move for a month after I kissed the wall in Kirk Yetholm.

The second reason was that this was what I was there for. When we were all standing in the field in Edale I can’t imagine that anyone was thinking ‘I just want to get over Cross Fell’. If anyone was thinking ‘I just want to run along the Cam High Road’ then that person should get help, seriously, if that was you, get help. I would imagine that every person in that field had at some point visualised themselves kissing the wall of the border Hotel at the finish. There was still 42 miles between me and the wall, the last 26 of which were some of the toughest and most inhospitable on the entire Pennine Way but I hadn’t come this far to only come this far.

My plan for the day was to try and take it steady and look after my back. It would be nice to arrive in Kirk Yetholm upright for a change. I thought I could have a good stretch at Byrness and maybe at the huts and all would be well.

The first mile and a half involves navigating one’s way out of Bellingham. I got this mostly right and managed to leave Bellingham on the correct road until the turn off onto the farm track towards Blakelaw.

I mentioned previously that the GPS track was slightly approximated to a series of straight lines. This was one of those times when I perhaps should have looked at a map rather than just the GPS track but it was about twenty to seven in the morning, it was dark and I was tired. The Pennine Way simply follows the farm track. I’m fairly sure I knew that from the Summer race but the GPS track ‘cut the corner’ a bit and appeared to head into a field. It was unfortunate that at exactly the point it did this there was an open gate into a field. I did think I would have expected more evidence of a trail across the field than there seemed to be but I carried on anyway.

Fortunately at the opposite side of the field there was another open gate and I was able to make a left turn and re-join the track. Had there not been I could have had slightly frustrating return journey across the field. I don’t blame the GPS track, it was made very clear that these are a guide when we were given them. I blame me for only looking at my watch and not getting my Etrex GPS out. The watch does have a map on it and it almost certainly showed the track I should have followed but the handheld has a bigger screen and is easier to zoom in and out. If I’d looked at it when I headed off through the gate I would have seen the farm track re-join the GPS track and realised I didn’t need to turn off. As it was no harm was done but it was another wake-up call, as it were, regarding tired navigation.

After leaving Blakelaw I was fairly easily able to follow the rut that constituted the Pennine Way. I saw a safety team at one of the road crossing and they commented I looked strong. They didn’t mention a lean so I assumed I was still fairly upright.

As I was approaching Kielder Forest I was passed by Sauw-Yuh, a runner from the Netherlands I had spoken to a few times on the trail. My running pace is dictated entirely by how I feel at any given moment. I might run a 100 metres and the stop and walk or I might carry on running. As a result I tend to avoid running with people on big races. It’s not that I’m anti-social (much), it’s just that I have to do my own thing. I’m also quite comfortable being alone on the trail, I have imaginary conversations in my head with all kinds of random people about all kinds of random subjects, it passes the time anyway. Sauw-Yuh mentioned I was starting to lean. I wasn’t totally surprised, I’d had another ice induced fall and now one of my poles had a kind of s-bend in it, and whilst the trail wasn’t anywhere near as hard as it would become, it had its tricky moments.

The last five miles or so to Byrness are along a very, very dull grey forestry road. Although Sauw-Yuh and I weren’t running together we stayed together for most of this section to alleviate the boredom and pull each other along to Byrness.

Byrness is Checkpoint 5.5. As an official ‘-.5’ checkpoint it has a maximum stay of 30 minutes. Unlike any other ‘-.5’ checkpoints it provides hot food. Mince and tatties were provided. I attempted two bowls but only had time for one and three quarters. I also had my obligatory coffee. I did manage a few back stretches and gained two important pieces of information. Oliver Hague – the proprietor of CP5.5 or ‘Forest view Inn’ as it is known the rest of the year – had just successfully completed the Spine Challenger North. He warned us there was a lot of sheet ice around Chew Green, a section of the Cheviots before Hut 1, and strongly recommended we used our ice spikes. The second piece of information was more worrying, 80 mile per hour winds and rain were forecast to hit the Cheviots. No one seemed to know exactly when but the suggestion was to get over them ASAP. This was part of the on the job training, what do you do when bad weather is forecast? Try and be somewhere else.

I left CP5.5 and headed for Byrness Hill. As I was in a hurry, turning left and going the wrong way until my watch buzzed probably wasn’t a terribly smart move but I did it anyway. I was expecting the Hill to be slippery and hard to climb but it wasn’t, just a tiny amount of scrambling required on the rocky bits.

The wind was already fairly intense and I was now very sure I didn’t want to be up there when it got worse. As soon as I reached a sheltered spot I stopped to put my micro-crampons on. This took a while. It’s easy to ‘practice’ with kit at home and I could put my micro-crampons on quite easily when fresh and wearing indoor clothes. After 240+ miles and in my outdoor winter gear I don’t bend quite as easily!

At Chew Green there was, in the past, a Roman fort, a roman road and the medieval village of Kemylpethe. I did notice a sign telling me I was at an archaeological site and I did see some signs for the Roman road but my general feeling was that this wasn’t somewhere anyone would choose to live. I imagined the conversation between the Romans that had been stationed there and the Emperor: “Yes Caesar, I know conquest and occupation is our thing but have you tried living in the Cheviots? Even the sheep are too smart to stay up here.” I wasn’t hallucinating but my mind was definitely starting to go out to play on its own.

I achieved my aim of getting to Hut 1 in daylight and ate plenty of my snacks along with the provided coffee. I had 9 miles to go to Hut 2 and then 7 miles to Kirk Yetholm. However it was getting dark and, it seemed, windier.

Perception is a strange thing. Coming down from Greg’s Hut, I would say I was flying. My GPS log says something different. Similarly I would say I raced away from Hut 1 but Strava says I got up to about three miles an hour tops – and some of that was with quite a strong wind behind me (weather, not caused by the mince and tatties). Whatever the reality was I thought I was making fast progress. I was a little surprised by how easily some of the others that left Hut 1 just after me overtook me at the time but seeing how fast I was really going explains it I guess.

After a while I could no longer see the lights of anyone in front of me and started to flag a bit. The caffeine and sugar fix from Hut 1 was wearing off and I was climbing the last part of the ridge – the highest point on this leg – before the drop to Hut 2. I just gritted my teeth and put one foot in front of the other and slowly climbed upwards. I was looking forward to descending as the strength of some of the gusts of wind had been quite worrying. I hadn’t been knocked of my feet but I had been made to stagger a few times and at one point I was very relieved the wind was blowing me into the hill and not off it. Ironically Windy Gyle had been one of the calmer places on the route – although I still got the navigation wrong somewhere and had to climb the border fence back into England – fortunately that isn’t very hard to do.

Finally I reached the left turn off the ridge and before long started to descend. There were a few flags and tape marking the route down, I think to stop people falling down into the Hen Hole. It’s a small climb back up to Hut 2 but soon I was being welcomed inside and supplied with a hot beverage. I’d carried an extra cup on the outside of my pack as in Summer I had to use my own cup for a hot drink at any intermediate point. This was the first time I’d used my own cup since the first leg on the Winter race. At least it made carrying it 268 miles seem worthwhile.

By now I was definitely leaning. I didn’t care, the impending weather meant all bets were off as far as taking it easy and looking after my back was concerned. There was a medic at the hut. I carefully rehearsed a short justification as to why I would like some pain relief but was still fine to carry on. “Could I have some codeine?”. “Yes”. No need for the speech although I was able to reassure her that I had had codeine before and I would be OK with it. She gave me the tablet and suggested I take a couple of my paracetamol too. I could probably have made it to Kirk Yetholm without any pain relief but apart from my back, my feet were sore, my knees were sore and I was prepared to take any help I could get within the rules of the race at this point.

It wasn’t exactly a party atmosphere in the Hut but there were about six of us in there and I was given cashew nuts, chocolate and Jammy Dodgers as people emptied out some of the treats they’d been carrying with them.

Soon it was time to leave and a marshal escorted us out past Red Cribs and told us to keep the fence on our left all the way over the Schil and to make sure we turned left on the low path after going over it. Again I set off fairly quickly and pulled ahead of the others I’d left the hut with. There were three reasons for this, 1 – the impending weather, I was off the high ground but still didn’t want to get rained on if I could avoid it. 2 – I wanted ‘my’ moment at the finish. I wasn’t bothered about beating anyone else as such, that would be very petty after 268 miles, but I did want solo finish photos. 3 – I’d sent out a message at Hut 2 that I’d be finishing around midnight, to make the last seven miles a little more interesting I set myself the target of a Friday finish.

It was on my way up the Schil I realised I’d wrecked yet another set of spikes. I think this time it was to do with my difficulties fitting them. The wires securing them should have gone between the lugs of my shoes. As I couldn’t see what I was doing I think some of them ended up such that they were on the lugs and being abraded by rocks. I kept them on as the back spikes still seemed to be in place and I couldn’t be bothered to stop by now anyway, I just wanted to finish.

The route down from the Shil goes from path to track to road. I was having to be careful as there was still a lot of ice around and my spikes had gone from being crampons to some kind of strange jingling collections of wire and metal, a bit like part of a Steampunk Morris Dancing outfit.

I kept checking my watch, the Friday finish was on! About a mile from the finish I passed John Boothman. He had a really bad lean to the right, I was leaning to the left, we must have looked a very strange sight as I passed him. I felt for him as I had been pretty much the same (but a mirror image) on the Summer spine Race. however there was nothing I could do for him, apart from wish him well.

I climbed the last small hill and got my first glimpse of the finish line. Of course nothing is entirely straightforward on the Spine Race, the finish line then disappears out of sight until you’ve gone downhill and turn to run straight towards it.

On the Summer Spine I collapsed dramatically and in pain under the arch and had to get up and drag myself to the wall of the Border Hotel. This time I was focussed and had a little celebration as I went under the arch but kept moving and ran over to kiss the Wall. I’d finished the 2024 Winter Spine Race – on Friday!

After the photos I was taken inside, fed, given a certificate and a t-shirt and reunited with my drop bag. After a short while I was ready to leave. A lovely marshal picked up my drop bag and carried out to the car for me. I was delighted with Sharon’s choice of parking spot as it was directly opposite ‘my’ finish line.

So how does it feel to be a Winter spine Race finisher? Mostly amazing, I had a bit of a plan as to how I’d like the race to go and it more or less worked. I’m not sure I could have done much better with my finish time and apart from a lean on the last leg my body held up well. I only had one blister, on my left heel, which I kept taped up and never became a major source of discomfort.

So why only mostly amazing? I suffer quite a lot from Imposter Syndrome. I feel I kind of got away with it from a weather perspective. Yes, it was very, very cold at times but I didn’t have (much) water or bogginess to contend with and I only got exposed to precipitation for one day of the event. Jack Scott took ten hours of the course record so conditions must have been pretty good. However 164 people started and 91 finished, a success rate of 55.5%, which I think is around average for the Winter Spine. If conditions had been that easy I would have expected that figure to be higher so perhaps I did OK after all.

The last word of my race reports is always reserved for the thank yous. The Spine Race is an incredibly well organised and run operation. However this is not at the expense of compassion and friendliness. Obviously I felt particularly close to the marshals and volunteers I know and have name-checked throughout this report but every single person I interacted with was supportive, friendly and made me fee like I was the most important thing in their life at that moment. I never intended to do the Winter spine Race. Objectively I would say I couldn’t do the Winter Spine Race but here I am, with a medal, a t-shirt and a certificate. I entered because the Spine Family made me want to and I finished because they supported me and got me to Kirk Yetholm. Thanks everyone.

I also need to say thank you to everyone that messaged me during the race or followed my dot or gave me any advice or words of encouragement anywhere on my journey. I couldn’t reply too much during the race but it was great to read the messages, they really gave me a lift during the race. I felt a bit emotional in Hut 2 when I read some messages for the last time before heading to Kirk Yetholm.

The very last word has to be reserved for Sharon. She delivered me to the start, lost sleep watching my dot, had to be ready to collect me at a moments notice during the week and had to drive several hundred miles to be there when I got to Kirk Yetholm. She’s also put up with endless Spine talk and a house littered with Spine kit for months. I don’t know if I’m the luckiest man in the world because I don’t know every man in the world but I do know I couldn’t want for a more supportive, tolerant and caring wife than the one I’ve got. I love you Sharon.

So is this the end of the blog? Well the next Pennine adventure is The Southern Challenger with Sharon, her first 100+ mile race and over twice as far as she’s ever been before, I think that might warrant a bit of a write up. I might also compare my Summer and Winter experiences and talk a bit more about my kit and what worked and what didn’t. however until then, the only way is still Pennine!