Spine Challenger training/recce weekend 3

Hello chaps

Well this is my last opportunity to race test everything in one go, while cementing the last bit of the route in my mind. I have made a few kit changes to avoid annoyances, and to iron out problems, the  main ones some new front bottles, and a new waterproof jacket, thanks to The Climbers Shop for their continuing support.
So here was the plan. Me, Jeff, and Cathy to meet up in Gargrave and cover the last 35 miles of the route to the finish, setting off at 7pm to cover a large chunk in darkness to also fine tune the navigation, as the first half of this bit is notoriously difficult.
As the weekend approached Jeff (who has never covered anything like this distance in one go) mysteriously got sent to Manilla for 7 days - which conveniently included "our" weekend. So one down, just Me and Cathy left. Then 10 days before "our" weekend, Cathy announced "I fell & busted my shoulder" half way into her last 20 mile training run. As you can imagine we were most displeased with the situation. Cathy spent some quality time with her husband Paul in A&E to get things checked out, luckily her shoulder was not broken or dislocated, just bruised (her shoulder and her ego).
Anyway, 10 days later with her taking things easy/gradually building it back up, and me sending telepathic healing thoughts her way, her shoulder had recovered enough for her to take the plunge and tackle the full 35 miles (rather than only covering part of it which was our back-up plan).
So on a cold crisp November evening I was stood at Gargrave railway station waiting for Cathy's train to arrive. In true Chris fashion of not wanting to be late, I had been at Gargrave for 2 hours already, having sorted out a place to park for the night, found where the path left the village, and where it entered the village, and the chip shop, and the public toilet, so all was ready.
Cathy's train arrived and I drove her to the car park. It was free parking for 23 hours, so unless anything went drastically wrong on our trip we should have plenty of time parked here.
We fuelled up at the chippy, geared up, and set off from the car at 7:10pm ready for our night assault.

Me and Cathy at the start in Gargrave.

Setting off from Gargrave, (and avid followers of my blog will have read this), I was acutely aware that I had missed the path not long after leaving the village on my last recce. Chatting away as we walked up the road, we nearly missed it again, only spotting the faded sign hidden in the shrubbery at the last minute, so off we set across the soggy fields.

The path crossing soggy fields.

This first bit was navigationally challenging, crossing fields, hitting the field boundaries at the correct places to find the gate or stile, but all went swimmingly. It was soon evident that this area had had plenty of rain over the last few days because any small hollow was extra soggy, and the ground under foot was constantly wet and squelchy, but our footwear coped admirably, shedding the water and mud with ease.

After crossing a few miles of fields we hit the river Aire. This was to be our handrail until we arrived at the village of Malham. Checking the map frequently to check our route and our progress as this section was supposed to be challenging, I ended up each time putting the map back and saying to myself "keep the river to the left". That was it, it seemed fairly straight forward. "Navigationally challenging"? Pah! it was simple...
Following the river for a few miles it was again evident that a lot of water had been here before us, with obvious flood tidemarks. If the water was this high during the event it could make for some interesting wading sections...
Apart from the missing 'horse-in-this-field' (that I had mentally marked on my map from my last visit), nothing else of significance happened in this section, and we arrived at Malham village at about 9:50pm.

Walking through Malham in full kit, with mud plastered on our lower legs, while "normal" people were milling around the pubs, was a little weird, (these would turn out to be the last people we saw for the next 12 hours) but we soon left civilisation and headed upwards towards the splendour of Malham Cove.

Malham cove in the daylight.

Malham cove as we saw it

Walking up the steps beside the cove it was soon apparent how slippery the limestone was underfoot in this damp night. And once we reached the top it was positively treacherous walking across the limestone pavement at the top. The rock was very greasy and the huge gaping ankle breaking gaps in between meant for very slow progress.

Above Malham cove on the (slippery) limestone pavement.

We negotiated our way to more grippy ground and then set off at a fair old pace up the hanging valley. Cows! Not the usual place to meet cows I know, but there they were in the gloom (or their eyes anyway) and we heard them scrambling up the scree slopes to get out of our way.

Looking back from whence we came, the lights of the valleys glittered in the dark, and the stars and full moon were out in their splendour. I pointed out a few constellations to Cathy and we marvelled at the brightness of the moon (this was the night before the November "super moon" so it was rather bright). At one point we carried on walking without our head torches on and we could see clearly enough without.

Carrying on, we skirted the shore of Malham Tarn, heading to the activity centre which would be the second checkpoint of the race. It is a National Trust place and as luck would have it they had left one of their discovery rooms open, so it would have been rude not to take advantage and grab a bite to eat in the relative warmth and dryness of it.

Setting off again, we headed out and upwards to the two high points of the weekend. Fountains fell followed by Pen-Y-Ghent (PYG). As stated in my last blog, the ascent up Fountains Fell was a long boring slog, but fortunately it was shortened somewhat by the darkness and not being able to see the path disappearing over the horizon. We descended off Fountains fell and started the climb up PYG, eventually summiting at 3.30am after an uneventful climb.

Selfie at the summit of PYG

The decent was another long and boring slog, not helped by the fact that it was gone 4am and we hadn't slept for ages. I was nodding as I walked, not good.
We arrived at Horton in Ribblesdale at about 5:30am and promptly found the public loos. We topped up our water and then I was invited into the ladies loo by Cathy. Having never ventured into a ladies loo before, I entered with some trepidation. Actually it was quite nice, it certainly smelt better than the men's loo, so we plonked ourselves down and lit our stoves for a hot breakfast. Cathy obviously wasn't too happy with her first pot of water, so she threw it across the floor in disgust (she said it was an accident but I don't believe her) and promptly started heating another pot.

In the ladies loo.

Suitably refreshed we set off on the last leg. About 12 miles to go, mostly uphill apart from the final descent. The path steadily climbed, heading up to an old packhorse road. Cathy got a bit worried at one point in the dark, wondering if we had taken a wrong turning, but I checked the map and pointed to where we were on the map to reassure her. To be 100% safe I dug out my GPS and fired it up - it confirmed I was spot on so she was happy with this and off we set.
As morning approached the temperature plummeted and we slipped a layer on, and I covered up terrorist style with my black hat and buff.:

Not long afterwards the sun started to light up the sky as morning began to break. We were treated with a fantastic sunrise over PYG:

Sunrise over Pen-Y-Ghent

The path kept rising, but now we were able to see where we had to go, it looked ages, and it was. We were back up in the hills again, completely alone, gorgeous scenery, weather, and it just made the morning so lovely despite the long slog up the cam road.
Before too long we started the final descent into Hawes, what would be the finish of January's race. The final bit twiddling about on fields and things, could make the last bit of navigation interesting.

We finally arrived at Cathy's car at mid day, and promptly drove to the train station to drop me off so I could get the train back to Gargrave - a whole new adventure for me as I am not the most seasoned train traveller in the world, but even I know that looking out of the window while travelling on a train as it goes over the Ribble head viaduct was something special, so I sat there, all muddy and sweaty with a lovely glow of satisfaction. 35 miles of walking in lovely weather (cold and dry) with a great companion.

The next time I will see this scenery I would be racing. Even if the weather is half as nice as this weekend, it will be awesome. Roll on January 14th... 😊