#fell runner

On a planning and fettling day*, ready for a couple of weeks in Keswick, and daydreaming. I’m hoping for easy still summer weather like the first image, atop Graystones with perhaps the most obvious handrail feature around for the descent. Looking at the long range forecast though, more likely is the compass and care winter is coming weather I got on Skiddaw five days later. Higher up, there was well under 100m visibility and sleet in that mist.

Both are fun though, if you know what you’re doing.

Apparently engagement can be driven by photos of yourself* in posts. So, here I am atop Hindscarth a couple of days ago. Though I’m just a shadow of my former self after some pretty unpleasant health issues. Though I have been gifted an awesome abdominal scar**.

Decent test of my current fitness levels, properly fit I’d expect to get from Little Town car park to the top of Hindscarth in around 60 minutes***. Took me 90 by my watch; probably actually only about 80 given a nav cock-up in the valley, letting a very nervously descending group past on the scrambly bit group and stopping for photos. Diabetes behaved itself too, which recently is a surprise. I’ll take that given the first quarter of the year.

*not sure myself; I’ve a voice for mime and visually am best suited for radio …

**which a very inked friend suggests I have a little graffiti added to leave it looking like a snake - I’m a three score years old Jew, but very tempted.

Monday, 31 July 2023 It’s been three full weeks since I last had a drop of alcohol, and the benefits are beginning to appear. My mind is clear, and I can think much better, all my senses are more alert, and the world just seems a different place, so much more to it than when the cloak of alcohol disguises everything. This morning is grey, overcast and damp with the odd break revealing sunshine…

Thursday, 27 July 2023 I suppose today was a day I should have stayed at home, rested, and done some uni work. I didn’t though. I knew today would be my last chance to get a recce in of the Crow Hill Reverse fell race, tomorrow I need to go to the club and catch up with friends and at the weekend I don’t really go anywhere so it was today or never. I parked halfway up the route on Heights Road…

Early May. Climbing to High Seat from Ashness Bridge. On an icy wind, bearing with it memories of winters bite, storm clouds build over the high fells of the Skiddaw massif.

A photo from the other year on a morning out fell running. I’d taken the first launch from Keswick, to run back over the fells.

I wish I could have made this image on my large format kit, rather than my digital compact. But … it’s a bit lumpy to carry in a fellrunning pack, and in that wind a tad tricky to keep stable. Still like the image though. This is worked up on my iPad from the in camera jpg.

On the running side, one hour from Ashness landing to the top of High Seat, after a chronic illness flare* two days earlier; I was happy with that. Happier too the only rests were to check my blood glucose levels(they were okay). That storm stayed away until late evening too; which was nice. That lazy wind was nithering** though.

*chronic illness which saw me spend most of this February in hospital preparing for, and surviving, major surgery; grim but so glad we still have the NHS