LADFROMTAD.COM

RIP Joss

Good morning folks

I trust you are well.
Here is the latest ladfromtad.com blog

Bits and bobs.

Summer finally came (and went as quick as it came).

The Nipper had her first ever ballet show 🙂
(All a bit lost and very new to me, but she loves it).

Had our first ever family trip to the Flicks!

The Nipper had her first experience on a climbing wall.
(Auto belay device, I wasn’t holding the rope whilst taking photos!)

One Sunday I got chatting to the owners (two elderly twins) of this amazing campervan, as they passed through Taddy, what a beauty!

I read this awesome book (thanks to Baz for the lend).

and creakily started my fellrunning season proper…

All of which leads on to a fairly fellrunningcentric blog, with a snippet of Rugby League, if you are pushed for time, just skip to the Joss Naylor part.

Ennerdale Horseshoe (36.8km/22.9miles with 2290m/7513ft of ascent).

Ennerdale was my curtain opener last year, after the long, dark days of Long Covid. Last year was a “Hotter then Ibiza” heatwave. This year threatened minus 4 degrees of wind chill!

The Friday night drive over to Wasdale was a joy, but Saturday dawned a mixed bag. I have run Ennerdale 4 times and know the route, so I was calm, (although never totally confident!)

Got there early, almost off to a very bad start, with this inches-off bit of parking!

E.S.P or pure luck, prevented me from stoving in the back of Lina’s car, just before the start. I was under pressure from a parking warden and didn’t see the post at all

(With a pair of binoculars) the race goes from the low bit in the centre of the pic (Ennerdale Scout Camp), then crawls up Great Borne (big lump on left) and along the Red Pike ridge as far as Green Gable, then swings over Kirk Fell, Pillar and back along Haycock, Iron Crag and Crag Fell (last hump centre left) before a joyous plunge to the finish (which luckily is the same place as the start!)

The race organiser says “This race route is not for the faint hearted but after completing you’ll proudly display it on your runners’ CV. It is a horseshoe but in many respects it is an out and back race. If you retire at or near the midway point (green gable ish!) you have a 10 mile jog, walk, stumble back to
registration along the valley floor.”

It is a race of one-third and two-thirds, the first 18 miles rough and rocky, then the last 6 miles grassy, runnable fells, but with a sting in the tail, (there is always a sting in the tail, Race Organisers are sadistic like that!)

My “Munching on the Moors” pack-up included a “Charlie Baker” sandwich, some malt loaf and a fistful of gels, (although I gave my malt loaf to a lad from Horsforth, as he was struggling as he had forgotten most of his food. Who would make an error such as that I ask you?!)

A friend at work had given me a Kendal Mint Cake caffeinated gel, this was my final emergency battery. I don’t drink coffee these days, so the combination of mint, sugar and caffeine was a potent one!
Managed to overtake 6 people on the last climb (they had blown a gasket) and finished feeling fairly fresh, (although driving home immediately afterwards, I did require a crane to get me out of my car when I got home at 10pm!)

I made a short, shaky race video here:

Two weeks later, inexorably was the day of the…

Buttermere Horseshoe (35.5km/22 miles with 2515m/8251ft ascent)

The RO has this to say “The Darren Holloway Memorial Race is one of the toughest Lakeland races in the calendar and makes a fantastic day out over the quiet Buttermere fells. In memory of Pennine Fell Runner Darren Holloway, this race is based on the original Buttermere Horseshoe.”

This only tells half the story…

Now, this was a new race for me, although I had run most of the race/tops separately, but over the space of 20 years. I had no time/opportunity for a recce, so spent my tea breaks watching the “Fly-by” of the route on the OS Maps app, thinking this would suffice!

I decided on smash-&-grab tactics; a 4am alarm and driving straight home afterwards.

In my giddiness I arrived 2 hours before kick-off, this was my first error.
Give me an hour, I have my 1 hour race routine down to a tee:
Toilet-kit check-get number-check everything-warm up-toilet-run.

However, give me 2 hours and it becomes:
Toilet-kit check-get number-chat for 1 and a half hours – realise time – panic – no time for proper warm up – no time to check everything – no time for toilet – rush to start – forget something important (such as half of my food, keeping nicely cool in my cool bag) – run – have a shocker of a race!

Weatherwise, it was a perfect day for it. Warm, sunny, bit of cloud and a bit of a breeze. The route is a big loop of everything one can see from Loweswater: Up Whiteside -Grasmoor – Whiteless Pike – Down and up to – Newlands Pass – Follow trod (if you can find it to) Dale Head – down to – Honister Pass – to the resting place of Alfred Wainwright at Inominate Tarn (the tarn without a name)- reverse Ennerdale route to – High Crag – High Stile – bypass Red Pike – down to a dip before a stream/ravine crossing up to – Mellbreak – down to the finish.

With visibility of 100 miles+ there was no excuses for navigational errors then.

In my defence your honour, there were 2 races going on at the same time and it was forgiveable to follow the wrong race route off Whiteless Pike (big THANK YOU to Richard from Marsden for shouting me back).

I realised my food shortages right about 5 minutes before this photo was taken .

Photo courtesy of Lakes legend, George Foster

Taking stock, I had a Charlie Baker sandwich, half a bag of jelly babies and 3 gels (and no Kendal Mint Cake rocket fuel). This was around 1/3 of the way round. My stomach was rumbling!

Around halfway round both my knees started playing up, it was like someone had removed the hinges. Uphills were fine, downhills weren’t.

I could see a small group ahead all taking good lines (route choice, not cocaine) including a distinctive CFR vest (Cumberland Fell Runners, local club with most likely local knowledge!) I made it my mission to catch them, which I did on the climbs, only to be dropped on the descents. I was on my Jack Jones for the last hour, when things were getting a bit desperate in the energy levels front, but finished (immediately and officially retiring my trusty but old) Walsh shoes, I went to the legendary CFR buffet. Chilli and rice and nachos and a cake stall which would outface Billy Bunter, all served by an amazing group of ladies who just could not do enough, fussing over everyone. Fed and watered, I made my way home, late and stiffening up by the minute. A grand day out 🙂

I made a short and shaky race video here:

Shoes!

Now this has become a bit of a fellrunnning blog, for which I apologise.
Fellrunners talk about all sorts of stuff, most of it not running related, (there is also a tale of which I am not sure is suitable for this blog, but maybe next time!)

One topic of conversation you can start up with any fellrunner is that of shoes! As a sport it is fairly simple and kit has only been overcomplicated by kit manufacturers in recent years. It is all about the grip!

Back in the day (where I generally live my life, unable to move on) there were only Walsh shoes. Hand made by Norman Walsh in a lock-up in Bolton.
Simple, bombproof, grippy as brown stuff on a blanket and minimal. Apart from a bit of lame competition by Ron Hill (Rivington Pike), Reebok (Fjellrunner) and the death trap that was the infamous Adidas Swoop. That was all there was, so things were simple. You wore Walshes, you could even resole them, eco-friendly before their time!

Walsh PB, available in narrow or narrower fit.

Then along came Inov8 at the turn of the century, who turned things (& prices) on their head. (Although not as crazy, nor pricey as carbon road shoes so I gather!)

Nowadays, other shoe manufacturers have realised there is a fellrunning market to be cornered and money, money, money to be made.

Back in the day.

1986 – When a bottle of milk cost 2 shillings and a house cost less than £100, Walshes cost around £30.

Now.

2024 – When a bottle of milk costs £5, a house costs half a million pounds and all top end shoes cost £130. Walshes have risen to £60.

So, after too many races where my legs and feet were absolutely trashed, I decided to bite the bullet, sell most of my internal organs and try the 3 best shoes currently on offer:

VJ Irock 4 – Amazing grip. In between sizes. 12 too small, 13 like wellies.
Ron Hll Reverence – Very well made, the Harry Bolton Electric Sex Shoe. Sadly too wide
Inov8 Mudtalon Speed – Would fit Daisy Duck well, but my canoe feet are too narrow.
So they all went back and my bank account became 500 sheets better off!

Then I tried Salomons, I’d worn them before and got on with them, but they have completely changed the last since the previous-but-one model (don’t you just hate that!)

So that is why I wore Walshes at Buttermere and paid the price (for having size 13 feet like narrowboats and not being able to find any clown’s shoes to fit me).

There is just one hope, watch this space…

Wasdale Horseshoe (34km/21.1miles with 2750m/9022ft of ascent)

The Race Organiser starts with this “Deepest lake, highest mountain, biggest liar and hardest fell race – that’s Wasdale. Wordsworth once said that
every fellrunner should do Wasdale at least once, or something like that!”

Wasdale is a beast! The sting in the tail is an ascent of Scafell Pike, England’s highest mountain, as its final climb, but there is plenty of drama before that!

I have run Wasdale 3 times, but there are so, so, so many places to come unstuck if the clag is down. (Last year a big incoming storm threatened to cancel the race, but the RO took a calculated guess and estimated that it would hit the fells late on. So we started in a sweaty sauna sunny kind of day and the tail-enders (me) got walloped on Scafell Pike. Sunburnt and borderline hypothermic in the same race).
The finish off Lingmell Nose is one of my favourite finishes in any race.
The first time I ran Wasdale there were 45 runners, the weather was pure choss, so I was on my own for most of the race. This year it is a British Championship race and the 300 capacity sold out in a few hours, things have changed.

I am carrying a rucksack full of niggles from Buttermere, but really, really, REALLY hoping I make the start line in 2 weeks time!

Raider’s round-up

A much needed away win at Swinton for the mighty Raiders.
Wakefield Trinity at home will be a trickier proposition.

Barrow ladies will be looking to bounce back against York Valkyrie next weekend!

RIP Joss Naylor

Fellrunning is quite a small, dare I say, niche, sport.
I have done it since I was a lad, I once won a race (with only 2 runners), I got on the podium another time (midweek Lakes race, small field), and I once got in the top 50 of a British Championship race, so looking at me, I haven’t even got any matches to set the world alight!

But, I absolutely love the sport with my whole (knackered) body and soul. For me, it is almost a way of life (if only I lived a tad closer to some hills!)

It is not a sport for primadonnas, people take it seriously, but not themselves. It is (generally) low key, low tech and even if you were the very best, it would not be possible to make a living out of it.
Races start in a field, go up a hill, or several hills, and then come back to the finish, where the winner might get a sports shop voucher, and everyone gets a cuppa and some cake. It is a simple, uncomplicated sport.

There are way more people doing it nowadays, compared to when I first started (Kentmere Pike race, 1986) and the sport has seen some phenomenal runners in its time: Billy Bland, Kenny Stuart, Ian Holmes, Gary Devine, John Wild, Colin Donnelly, Rob Jebb, Rob Hope, George Foster, Finlay Wild and more…

One name that is a household name, is that of Joss Naylor MBE.

Previous record holder for running the Pennine Way (which most walkers do over 2 weeks, Joss ran it in 3-&-a-bit days) and the Wainwrights (Most folk take a lifetime to walk all 214 tops, Joss did it in a week!)

To list but a few of his achievements:

1971: 61 peaks in 23h37m

1972: 63 peaks in 23h35m

1975: 72 peaks, claimed to involve over 100 miles and about 38,000 feet of ascent in 23h20m (record stood until 1988)

1971: The National Three Peaks Challengehe (Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon): 11 hours 54 minutes including driving time

1973: The Welsh 3000s – the 14 peaks of Snowdonia in 4 hours 46 minutes (record stood until 1988)

1974: The Pennine Way: 3 days, 4 hours, 36 minutes (record stood until 1989)

1976: Robin Hood Bay to St Bees: 41 hours

1979: TheLyke Wake Walk: 4 hours 53 minutes (set during the annual race)(record stood until 1981)

1983: The Lakes, Meres and Waters circuit of 105 miles: 19 hours 20 minutes

1986: (age 50) completed the Wainwrights in 7 days, 1 hour, 25 minutes (record stood until 2014)

1997: (age 60) ran 60 Lakeland fell tops in 36 hours

2006: (age 70) ran 70 Lakeland fell tops, covering more than 50 miles and ascending more than 25,000 feet, in under 21 hours.

(Bearing in mind the advances in everything over the years; footwear, clothing, nutrition, communication, paths/trods becoming more defined…
These all make the records above even more impressive!)

But Joss Naylor was more than just a phenomenal fellrunner.

All the above are mere results in the life of an extraordinary man.
As a youth he had his cartilage removed from one knee, then later 2 discs removed from his spine. Doctors said he might never walk again, but he proved them wrong! People say that the pain he endured every day with his back, was what made him such an incredible force of nature on the fells.
Everyone can dig in, but he could dig deeper, and for longer…

I had the honour of meeting Joss (twice).
First at the 2000 Wasdale Race, where he happily chatted with runners at the start and then he gave out drinks at Greendale Bridge, part way round.
The second time was at a talk at Keswick. Joss was talking about modern sports food (gels, etc..) and said that if a run was less than 50 miles, he would take nothing, if it was over 50 miles, he might “tek a Mars Bar and drink out of becks”.

Joss gave so much back to the sport, and to charity, in particular the Brathay Trust.

He was a proper Cumbrian character, a first class storyteller and a fellrunning legend.
King of the fells, Iron Joss.
Joss sadly passed away on Friday. The world has lost a great man.

RIP Joss Naylor (1936-2024)

And finally

Until next time,
Johnny

Jura

Good morning folks

I trust you are in fine fettle.
This blog will (hopefully) be shorter than the usual ramble-on-a-thon.
Primarily because it is mainly about one thing, JURA.
(Secondly, my back is shot to pieces and if I sit down for too long, I might not be able to ever get up again!)

Round-up

Other things have been happening, alongsidethe focus on this race/trip.

1) I passed my Advanced Motoring Test, which wasn’t easy (for me).

2) We all went out for the first time in yonks!

3) We marshalled at the Old County Tops fell race and Lina had her first ever fell run (not the OCT, just up to Stickle Tarn), on a weekend when the Lakes was at its absolutely glorious sunny best 🙂

4) It stopped raining at times!

5) Barrow men and ladies teams both won .
Beating the Flat Cappers is never easy, so it felt good 🙂

6) I got promoted at work, (for a job nobody else wanted or applied for), I was kind of pushed into it, so watch this space!

JURA.

Jura Fell Race 25/05/24
Distance: 28 km / 17.4 miles
Climb: 2370 m / 7776 ft

“The Paps are not the sort of place people should run. But they do, every year. The Isle of Jura Fell Race is a frankly ridiculous phenomenon, with 250 runners saying their prayers before bashing off from sea level up not just the trio of Paps, but four other peaks, with a scarcely believable 2730m of ascent over nigh 30km.” (Source: The National Scot website)

(IF YOU LIKE, SKIP THIS WAFFLE STRAIGHT TO THE VIDEO IN THE FINAL BIT AT THE BOTTOM!)

The Isle of Jura. 4th largest island of the Inner Hebrides, home to 200 people and 5000 red deer over its 142 squre miles. Famous for George Orwell (he wrote 1984 at Barnhill Cottage), Corryvreckan whirlpool (where Orwell nearly drowned) and a Distillery.

For me the main event and focus on this race, “The Isle of Jura Fell Race” came along at a bit of a mad time.
I like my job, it is generally fairly steady, but it hasn’t been recently, plus the driving test, plus the promotion application/interview, plus other stuff outside work, plus a slow puncture that became a fast puncture the week of the race, plus other stuff (i,e. life).

Which all meant that everything was very last minute.
I had set my kit aside, but the rucksack I had did not have Tardis qualities, so my skimped down kit got even more skimped.

Jura is quite different to other races. There are several options:

1) Drive over from Kennacraig on the Calmac Macbrayne ferry to Islay (2hrs), then the shuttle (10mins) to Jura, carry all that you like and either camp, or sell all your internal organs for some digs, (the hotel was full but there was one place offering accommodation for £1000 per night).

2) Take the fast ferry (£30 each way) from Tayvallich, landing on the pier right next to the campsite. 40 minutes each way.

3) Leave your car at Kennacraig, take your pushbike across on the CalMac ferry, then the diddy ferry, then ride 8 miles to the campsite.

Traditionalists go for option 3, so we did too.

My mate John had offered to drive from Kendal, so I was up at 4am on the Thursday morning, away at 5am and Kendal by 7:30am, not exactly feeling the love for the race and thinking of other options (weekend in the Lakes, new shoes in Kendal, turning around and going home!)
I don’t know why, but the lead up had been poor with training too and I had hurt my back, so my excuse book was wide open.

Luckily John was up for it, so northwards we went!

The weather was wet, wet, wet on the way up. We made the ferry on time and then got straight on the shuttle ferry.

Feolin ferry port (!) feels like a very lonely place after a long day. The handful of other runners sped off as I tried to work out how to attach a second rucksack to my bike. (Riding a singlespeed bike with SPD pedals and studded fell shoes, with a massive rucksack on my back). John kindly offered to take it on his rack, otherwise I might still have been there now.

8 miles of “undulating” road got us to Craighouse and a blustery campsite.

After the first in a row of army rations pack meals (cheap Wayfayrer’s style boil in a pouch meal), things felt better and I slept like a log.

Friday morning dawned with midges, sunny and dry, but oh for some breeze.

It suddenly felt very relaxing to have no pressure to do anything at all, we were at the race start, a day early, knowing that you could start up a fellrunning conversation (fell shoes grip, nav errors, “Have you races this before?”) with anyone nearby. Happy days 🙂
We decided to go off for a pedal.

The “Three Arch Bridge” is the last checkpoint on the course, leading to 3 miles of road, BUT, for extra spiciness, a mile of that was covered in metal sheeting, to protect the road from heavy plant machinery, used to buld a jetty, to land a boat, to bring a new boiler to the Jura Distillery on the Friday night, to then be taken up 3 days after the race. (Please do not rain on race day was the thought of all, as this would up the stakes even more!)

After a ride down the coast, I headed back to a filling campsite and the arrival of the rest of the P&B crowd. Midges forced an early retreat and quiet descended early over the campsite on the eve of the race.

Saturday dawned early (it stays light late and gets light early in Bonny Scotland this time of year). The midges were out in force, so after kit check and registration, I sorted my kit inside my tent. My jelly babies had all congealed into a massive mutated lump, like some kind of chewy dog toy.

Start time always comes round in no time and at 10:30am, to the sound of a trio of Bagpipers and a decent sized crowd, and OFF.

The race consists of 3 “Pips”, 3 “Paps” and one final “Pip”.
The Pips are smaller than the Paps, but they aren’t that small.

An absolute bogfest up to the first Pip, I can feel myself going backwards, with that all too familiar “my legs are not working” feeling I have had in my last 7 races.
People steaming past me left and right, then into the clag and on my own.
Nobody in sight, in front or behind.
Hoping not to get lost so early on, I check my map just as the mists lift enough to get a sighting. Pip 2 follows, then some friendly P&B support on Pip 3 and then the race proper begins.

A long descent to the valley precedes a LONG climb up the first Pap.
The clag lifts, the sun shines bright and a tailwind gusts, making pirouettes an additional bonus when lifting one leg on some of the scrambling bits. The view from Pap 1 shows the work left to do…
Scree slopes are usually runnable, but this scree is different.
Bigger and looser boulders, potential to snap something!

Paps 2 and 3 are in the bag, but Pip 4 has the potential camel to break one’s back, and it does.
I had started getting pain early on. It is normal for me (with me being lanky tall, with crap posture) to feel it on climbs, but on the final Pip, I just can’t straighten up, welcome cowbells and enthusiastic marshalls at the summit and the last Pip run off would be a joy if only I could run properly, but that is not a problem for long, as 2 miles of bottomless slop bog follows the bottom of the last Pip reducing me to a ploughing slog, then a river crossing and finally the Three Arch Bridge. All that is left is 3 miles of road.
(Some runners change into road shoes here, but my size 13 road shoes didn’t make the cut and are sat in my lounge in Tadcaster, along with a heap of other stuff left behind!)

I dig in and run the best I can, doubled over, trying not to trip (almost going a cropper) on the metal bit. Helped on by a P&B clubmate on a bike, despite busting a gut, I cross the line 24 seconds over the 6 hour mark. (Finlay Wild would have showered, got changed, had his tea and rowed home by this point. His record is a very impressive 2:58:09)
A tough old race with a bit of everything (climbs, bog, scree, cliffs, more bog, road, metal road…)
Not my best every performance, but I am well chuffed to finish.

Prizegiving waa followed by a Ceilidh, but we were on the early ferry, so I hit the hay and slept the best I could with a jeffed back.

Sunday dawned wet and midgey. By 8am were were off, and with less than 10 seconds to spare, we made the shuttle ferry, then blagged our way onto the early CalMac (we were booked on the 6pm crossing, 9:30am would get us home slightly earlier), back to Kennacraig, back to Kendal and back to Taddy by 9pm.

An awesome weekend. a cracking race route with a bunch of brilliant people.

(For the record, Scotland is my favourite place in the wholem wide world, but I am not keen on midges!)

And finally…

If you can put up with some brief shaky camera footage of the race, this is the before, during and after of my Jura Fell race weekend 🙂

That’s all for now folks.

Cheers
Johnny

Of fools and showers…

Good morning folks

Here is the latest collection of loose ramblings that I call a blog.
Spring doesn’t seem to have sprung, unless the future is just a cold and rainy mess. I am hopeful for warmer days ahead!

St. George’s

The youngster was chosen as flag carrier for her Brownies group at the York St. George’s day parade.

Being the hopeless tourist I am (having lived in Peru for almost 10yrs, I never made it to Macchu Pichu), until last weekend I had never been to York Minster!

I have rectified that now, having been twice in 2 days.

A rehearsal on Saturday night, where the Nipper got her first glimpse of what adults do on a night out. (York was on full Hen Do form with a lot of revellers worse for wear by 7pm!)

On the big day (Sunday), the weather was glorious and the crowds turned out in force. I have never been involved in a parade before, it felt a bit like a really slow race, with nobody trying to win.

All went well, nobody got lost and everyone went home happy 🙂

Time for a decent race?

Ever the optimist, after 4 stinkers, I must surely be due a half decent race.
(Not including Borrowdale last year when I bashed my ribs in 10mins after the start, which would make it 5-in-a-row).

Half Trog – November – Half of “The Beast”. Took a flying fall and almost knocked myself out. Got lost twice but finished.

Tour of Pendle – November – End of season classic. Just had one of those days when my legs didn’t want to move, took about 3hrs to get going, by which time it was almost over.

Blakey Blitz – April – First race of the year, rusty as anything, never got going until final uphill mile.

Eskdale Elevation – April – Hmmm…

After all heading up to Wasdale on the Friday, the shocking forecast proved to be shockingly true. Cold, clag with visibility of 50yds-ish. Wet rain (very wet rain) and strong winds on the tops.

In the club hut where we stayed, we were joined by 2 fellrunners (father and son) who were out to recce part of the Bob Graham Round and Old County Tops route. We were a little sceptical of the weather, but you do just have to get on with things 🙂
We had a good chat about all things mountain related.

A small field of runners (enter on the day maybe swayed a few folk?)

The girls would see me off, jump on “Laal Ratty” and we would all arrive back at the car, around the same time, that was the plan.
The Eskdale Elevation is a relatively new classic AL Lakes race, 4 checkpoints with free route choice, starting at the lovely little hamlet of Boot, heading to CP1 (a gate), up the back of the Screes to Whin Rigg (CP2), a long haul over to and up Scafell (CP3), then a tumbling descent to Eel Tarn (CP4) and home.

I knew the course as far as Scafell pretty well but was worried about the last bit, as that part of Eskdale looks very samey-samey and finding a tarn in the mist could be tricky.

Uphill start, into the gloom, legs slashed to ribbons through the gorse, over the back of the Screes, found a good “trod” to the dip near Burnmoor Tarn and then came across 2 other groups of runners all coming from very different directions!

Upped the pace up Scafell with a bloke from Ambleside AC, with the weather getting wetter, wilder and colder. I really pitied the 2 marshalls on top, as it was GRIM.

I had written some compass bearings down on my map, but in the dash to get off high ground, I misread them. Running into a bitterly cold headwind and with icy horizontal rain in your eyes, it was definitely teetering on the very edge of Type 2 and Type 3 fun.

I also had the added challenge (excuse) of wearing a new-ish pair of shoes which were as grippy on wet rock as roller skates covered in vaseline!
If you don’t have 100% trust in your footwear, you are going backwards.

The few other runners around me had disappeared into the mist and I desperately tried to loose as much height as quickly as possible to get out of the weather. I had most of my kit on by this point and the thought of turning an ankle and having to walk down was simply unthinkable. I laid down behind a rock at one point to take another bearing and then got the hell out of dodge!

One problem with being lost is that you do start to convince yourself that where you are is where you want to be, or you look at features on the map (knolls and streams, of which there were plenty) and mould them into the features you want them to be. I wasn’t exactly lost, but I wasn’t where I thought I was and hoped to be!

So, after 45 minutes of running round in circles, (I wasn’t even close to Eel Tarn) I decided to bail.

(After the race start, the girls had taken the “Laal Ratty” steam train from Boot to the coast at Ravenglass, by this point they would have been back and waiting for me).

I took a bearing due south to hit the road and ended up about 2.5miles away from the finish, necessitating a tarmac path of shame, to report to the finish and declare myself disqualified.

(Apparently a lot of people had issues finding CP4, and either went back to the last checkpoint, or declared themselves DNF).

The Nipper hadn’t seen me at a race since she was a tiddler (Lima Marathon 2017?) She was even more gutted than I was to witness this shambolic run!

My legs felt pretty shot afterwards, so I thought an easier drive (than the A65) would be A590-M6-A66-A1. Which is MILES further, but easier driving, on paper. I had promised Fish & Chips from our outstanding local chippy, which shuts at 8pm. Loads of time…

By this time the afternoon had turned glorious, all the Lakeland fells were basked in sunshine, the Howgills and the Pennines looking equally as enticing. Had I dreamt my bordeline hpothermic race?

After stopping (a bit too long) at Tebay services, where the food smelled amazing, we were on the backfoot for a chippy tea
Then the A66 was at a standstill as it was closed. The whole world and his wife were trying to find an alternative route, which proved to be rather contrived. A forced stop at Scotch Corner services where a high pressure handwash dispenser almost blinded me and then, after paying £1.80 a litre for petrol, it sank in that even with Concorde and a tailwind, the Chippy would be long shut, so we trundled back down the A1 south, where luckily a frozen pizza saved our bacon!

Then I bought a new compass on Monday morning…

Next stop, Jura (hopefully, if my knee doesn’t implode beforehand)

(& just in case you think I am some kind of minority sport madhead, the entries for the Wasdale fell race, in July, sold out in 4 hours, bonkers!)

Raiders round-up.

After impressive wins against Dewsbury Knights and a nail-biting-one-point-win against York Knights, we got trounced against Doncaster.

Missing this guy

Barrow Ladies meanwhile had a one way traffic cricket score win against Salford, then were brought back down to earth with a bump against Wigan.

So in essence, both teams are consistently inconsistent right now!
(We won’t talk about the latest result, a blip, I hope!)

Onwards and upwards!

And finally

Another video!

Time was tight, so a quick out and back (home by noon) was on the cards.

Rishworth Moor, the big TV mast on the side of the M62, near the Yorkshire/Lancashire border is about my nearest stomping ground. Not especially hilly, but always good to get out on.

The forecast gave a good morning, but when I rocked up at 7am, it was down to the ground clag and blowing a hooly. The hooly remained, but the clag eventually lifted so I made another ladfromtad.com vlog.
Still got a lot to learn, (shooting and editing), please bear with me 🙂

That’s all for now, more next time.

Cheers
Johnny & the girls

Into the month of showers and fools…

How do folks

Hope you all had a mighty fine Easter.
Another month, another blog and another video (two in fact!)

The clocks have gone forward, it is officially spring, so (for a winter hater like me) we are going in the right direction

So, witout further rambling, here is the latest ladfromtad.com blog.

Super Jasmin!

Jasmin Karina Paris.

Even if you are not into fellrunning, chances are that you will have recently have heard of this 40 year old Vet (animals and over 40, see what I did there!) Mum of two and absolutely bloody amazing athlete.

Former British fellrunning champion (twice), Scottish Hillrunning champion (twice), Skyrunning champion, Wasdale winner (6 times), Lakeland Classics Trophy winner, former Bob Graham Round record holder, one-time overall/outright Ramsay Round record holder, Womens Fellsman record holder, Womens 24hr Munros record holder, and probably best known for her 2019 Spine Race victory in which she set a new outright course record for the 268-mile Pennine Way route, (i.e, She beat all the blokes too!)

The 2019 Spine race caught media attention as Jasmon was expressing milk for her baby daughter at some of the checkpoints (her daughter wasn’t running, nor waiting for milk at the checkpoints), and she still beat everyone and took more than 12 hours off the fastest previous time.

The Spine race is not a jolly, it is the Pennine Way in its entirety. Very fit walkers might walk it in 2-3 weeks. Jasmin ran from Edale in the Peak District to Kirk Yetholm in the Scottish borders in 83 hours, 12 minutes and 23 seconds.

She is co-founder of THE GREEN RUNNERS, of which I am a member too 🙂

All of the above is impressive enough, but on Friday 22/03/24 at around 9:18pm UK time, she crossed the line as first ever female finisher of the BARKLEY MARATHON.

No normal marathon and definitely not a normal race, in many ways.

Where to begin?
(From a purely selfish spectator point of view) there is almost no media coverage, there is one cryptic twitter/X feed from one guy, but definitely no ESPN/Sky Sports cameras. It feels like following a race on Ceefax back in 1982.
There is no race website and no livestreaming.

The race itself derives from an attempted prison break!

“Frozen Head State Park, where the annual race is held, once housed the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. This fortress-like facility counted among its inmates James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1977, Ray attempted a breakout. However, the dense vegetation and harsh terrain thwarted his efforts, allowing him to traverse a mere 8 miles over 54 grueling hours before authorities caught up with him, sprawled in defeat amidst the wilderness.”

Limited to 35 runners with no details advertised publicly.
Entrants must complete an essay on “Why I Should be Allowed to Run in the Barkley,” and pay a $1.60 application fee, if accepted first timers must bring a registration plate from their locality.

Previous racers have to supply an item such as a white shirt, or a pair of socks, as a donation potential non-finishers (and there are plenty of them).
Past finishers must also bring a packet of Camel ciggies as part of their race fee.
The start time is anytime from midninght to noon, with a conch shell horn being blown one hour before the start and the race begins when the race organiser Gary Lazarus Lake Cantrell (Laz) lights up a cigarette.

There is no course map, you cannot recce the course and GPS watches are not allowed. There are no waymarks, no aid stations. The route changes annually, with checkpoints marked solely by books hidden in obscure locations. Runners must locate these books to tear out a page, proving their adherence to the course.

The race itself is 100 miles.
A 5-lap course of 20 miles (100 miles with 13000ft of climbing or 160km with 15000m-ish of climbing in total, basically up and down Everest twice!)

Loops are run clockwise during the day and ACW during the night. On the 5th and final lap, runners are sent CW and ACW alternately, so in essence you can’t just follow the runner in front.

The loops start and end at camp, which is the only place runners can receive aid, tape up blisters, replenish food supplies, and take a nap — if they have time. Each loop has to be finished within 13 hours and 20 minutes.

Competitors have 60 hours to finish.

Ultrarunner Damian Hall (the other co-founder of the Green Runners, who ran Barkley for the first time last year and made it to loop five this year before dropping out, called it “a Kafka-esque hell.”

In a word, absolutelybonkers.

Jasmin had previously completed 3 laps of the course (entitled the “fun run”) and was one of only 2 women to have started a fourth lap, but this year, with just 99 seconds to spare she became the first ever woman to finish the entire course.

(As a result of the media blackout of the event itself, there are not many photos, but here are the five finishers).

L-R: Greig Hamilton, Jared Campbell, Ihor Verys(winner), Jasmin Paris, and John Kelly.

All of which adds up to a very historic achievement, in my opinion, on a par with the first ever sub 4 minute mile (and a lot longer and harder!)

I don’t have a telly, so I can’t watch Sports Personality of the Year, but if she isn’t at least nominated, there is something deeply wrong with this world!

Bull ROCK!

Last autumn, the Nipper and her school choir did a collaboration with a local York band, called BULL.

Long, long story short.

The lead singer of the band, Tom, invited us both to a VIP sound check when they played a local gig at the Crescent, York.

A brilliant afternoon and one which put a smile on both of our faces 🙂

ESOL/ESL/TEFL/TESOL

ESL: English as a Second Language
ESOL: English to Speakers of Other Languages
TESOL: Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
TEFL: Teaching English as a Foreign Language

People talk about “life changing” experiences and mine was at the Puericultorio A. Pérez Araníbar, in Lima, Peru in 2004.

Cutting a very long story short, after a course in TEFL and very little other prep, I found myself in Lima. Naively hoping that I would somehow learn Español via magic or osmosis.

I went there as a volunteer TEFL teacher, with little idea of what to expect. (I had expected the Andes, llamas and condors to be on my doorstep, but later found out that they were a bumpy 10 hour overnight bus ride up north!)

Working at the Puericultorio (a word translating to “childcare”, but in this instance a sizeable orphanage, a word which I could never pronounce as it contained too many rolled “RRRRRs”) changed my life completely. Another story for another time, but the volunteer organisation who I had gone through, became a place where I worked two years later (yet another notch on my sprawling CV), as Latin American Coordinator.

Working for a volunteer travel placement organisation was a job that was as amazing as it was frustrating as it was impossible.
Day to day work was just a firefighting exercise with an ever expanding to-do list and a logistical nightmare most of the time, but working with some brilliant people, especially a lass called, Emma, who coincidentally left there on the same day as I did (for smiliar reasons).

In my time as an ESOL/TEFL/TESOL/kind of Northern English teacher, I taught in a lot of different places, to lots of different students, the orphanage, in the jungle, in schools, language institutes, mining companies, shipping companies, telecommunication companies and in a community centre in Woodhouse, Leeds. (Emma from the volunteer placement job contacted me and that was how I became a volunteer there).
For me personally, teaching was/is the best job in the world. On a good day I would have done it for free and even on a bad day (of which there were few) nobody died!
(Due to screwing up my A-levels bigtime, I never got to university and therefore never got a degree and therefore never became the Geography Teacher I wanted to be. Therefore I was not a “proper” teacher. i,e. I couldn’t teach in a UK school, without getting a degree, which sadly is not going to happen now).

Anyway, generally as a teacher you have an attendance register and know exactly how many students you are just about to teach and their level of English.

Except at Woodhouse!

The big difference was that you never, ever knew who was going to turn up!

Woodhouse Community Centre was an amazing place, run by volunteers, which offers support to the local communty, as their mission statement states “Oblong aims to develop the capacity and skills of people living in socially and economically disadvantaged areas in such a way that they are better able to identify, and help meet, their needs and to create active flourishing communities, and to run a community centre, primarily for the benefit of the Woodhouse , Little London and Hyde Park areas.“

I was there from 2012-2014, slotted in between night shifts at the Brewery and loved every minute of it.

Classes could consist of 5 students, or 25 students, advanced level, or absolutely zero English beginners level. At times I was teaching 2 classes in 2 rooms, spinning several plates at the same time. It was awesome, exciting and I was very sad to leave, but I went back to Peru, so the commute would have been tricky!

E.O.D. (Enter on the day)

I admit that I am completely stuck in the past, yearning for things “back in the day”, when everything seemed less of a ballache than nowadays!

Image courtesy of https://www.blogger.com/profile/00692867731240538477

“Fell races used to cost £1 on the day and you popped 20p in a self addressed envelope, to get your results 6 weeks later! Shoes cost £20 a pop and nutrition involved a choice between a banana or a jam sarnie” you will hear me say again and again…

Nowadays there is the internet, race entries are done in advance online, results are available pretty much instantly, shoes are £100+ and I won’t even go down the nutrition route.

Was the past a simpler (cheaper) time, with less complications (or reponsibilities?) Who knows!

However, nowadays fell running is way more popular, races sell out before closing dates, entry fees are not £1 and if you can find a first class stamp for 20p, I will have a book of 12 please 🙂

All of which is a seamless, albeit lengthy segue from teaching a class of unknown quantity/level to modern day fell race organisers.

Races are booked online to cut out a shedload of admin on the day and to know whether to cater for 20 or 200 hungry post race runners!
Why would you not have pre-entry races?

As a result of my hopeless lust for nostalgia and shocking admin, I have either missed the race closing date or not-got-in-before-it-filled-up. Resulting in a change of gameplan.

Life is not linear and races fill up faster than you think!
I had planned on running the Half Tour of Pendle, then the Coledale Horseshoe before Jura, but…

I missed the closing date for Pendle and Coledale was full before you could say Supercalifra…

So, the plan is to run ESKDALE ELEVATION

(I won’t go into any details until I have actually set foot on the start line!)

Training – in and out!

In the jumble of nonsense that goes onto my Strava profile (what I loosely call “training”), it is notable that there is less running these days, as 2024 is the year of S&C (not to be confused with S&M).

I had big ideas with the mighty STAIRMASTER, a kind of uphill treadmill/stairway to pain, but reality means that I don’t get to the gym often enough to make it pay, so sadly the Stairmaster is now OUT.

In come weekly Weights, wobble board and weighted vest

And I am three months in with Carla Molinaro’s excellent SCY programme.

Just need to find some time to do some running now!

Tight lines

The Nipper and I hadn’t been fishing in a while and rather than getting battered by the North Sea, we opted for a day inland.

Despite having a full week off work, (to be fair the forecast was generally crap from Monday to Friday) I chose the coldest and windiest day to go fishing with the Youngster.

Highfield Pond was our chosen location. “It is fishing really well” said the bloke in the fishing tackle shop.

Arriving early (being the only car in car park was an ominous precursor) we took shelter from the bitter wind and thence started a pretty lean day of fishing.

The Nipper lost one fish (only bite of the day), I managed to snap my rod and we had eaten our packed lunch by 11am, so we went home, just as the sun came out!

First blank in a long time, but it is always good to get some fresh air 🙂

MAN-WITH-A-VAN?

In the last ramblings, I was on the trail of a new (or more like 15th hand) van.
After hours and hours and hours scouring ebay, I was on the verge of giving up, then by sheer chance a bloke at a garage told me that his mate was selling his van.
It ticked all the boxes and best of all didn’t involve a 18hr train ride to Torquay.

Affordable 🗸
Not a wreck 🗸
Local 🗸

I was given a number for his wife, (as she was better with phones than he was, I was told).
What could go wrong???

After some second hand chat with the bloke, a price was agreed and a meet up was arranged.

I sorted out provisional insurance, emptied the ATM and was on my way!

Literally just as I was walking out of the door to go and collect the van, with a wad of £20 notes in my pocket, I got a text saying that he had decided not to sell the van.
Make of that what you will!

So (for now), I have given up on the dream as a daft idea!

(As a footnote, one may ask “Why did you sell a perfectly good van last year?”
The answer is threefold.
1) It would have been cheaper to run it on a mix of liquid saffron, pure cocaine and unicorn’s tears.
2) LPG garages seem to be mainly located near El Dorado. (The mythical land, not the soap opera)
3) I simply needed the brass.

Raiders round-up

Not a lot of good news coming out of Craven Park of late.

Beaten away at local Jam-eating rivals, Whitehaven, by one point, a late drop goal, means that the only way is up for the Shipbuilders right now.
(Although, as no teams actually do get promoted this year, the only real way is not to go down!)

Still looking for an elusive win in the league, at home to York next weekend.

Barrow Ladies meanwhile just got edged out by Wigan by 2pts in their most recent Superleague game.

Both teams need to get into winning ways soon. COYR!!!

AND FINALLY

I am just about keeping up with my promised quota of 1 video per month.

The realisation that the Jura race is about 8 weeks away made me panic, but my mate, Barry stepped in with a suggestion of a trot round the only AL race on the North Yorks Moors (“AL” races are minimum 20km and average not less than 50 metres climb per kilometre).

The Bilsdale fell race starts at Chop Gate and does a big loop up and down every hill and boggy bit in the vicinity. It was a clear but breeezy day on the tops. I went for something a bit different this time with the filming. Less chitchat and much shorter duration. I am sure the old format (sprawling wafflefest) will be returning soon!

So, here is ladfromtad.com vlog episode 3 (<5mins, with an alternative soundtrack from the original!)

Then, inexorably, rearending straight into episode 3 is the red-hot-off-the-press Easter Lakes outing in episode 4.
Glenridding-Catstyeyam-Helvellyn-Nethermost Pike-Dollywagon Pike-Fairfield-St. Sunday Crag-Glenridding. Less than 10mins long. The editing was brutal as I chopped and slashed and burned it down to a watchable length.

Plus, a rain free and clear day in the Lakes, priceless 🙂

That’s all for now folks.
See you next time 🙂

Johnny

Marching on…

Good morning folks

I trust you are in tiptop form.
Here is the latest hotch-potch of nonsense I have the cheek to call a blog.
2nd blog in 3 months, need to step up a bit.

Spring is definitely in the air, at last (I personally hate winter!)

New back cog so I can go and new brakes so I can stop, thanks to Steve 🙂

Will it ever stop raining?
Never mind spring, roll on summer!

So without further rambling, here is the blog.

The Nipper.

Just to say a big thank you to all who sent messages.
Thankfully we are turning a corner now with the Youngster.
A few more follow up appointments this month.
Saturday night disco is back.
Onwards and upwards.
(We shared the chips!)

Man-with-a-van?

Back in the distant year of 2001, I bought a van.
I had been looking in the Auto Trader (magazine, pre-online) for weeks and weeks and after viewing a lot of duffers, I found an unpolished gem somewhere on the moors outside Halifax. An old gentleman called William was selling his old Transit van (white, naturally) after a mishap towing his caravan through Portugal. A pothole had flipped the caravan and turned it into matchsticks, so he gave the chassis to a scrap merchant and filled his van with all the caravan paraphernalia, selling it all as a job lot for £999.

An absolutely terrifying test drive (William driving, black ice galore, as fast as an ageing Transit can go…

The V5 changed names and it was mine.

(Despite being a happy snapper all of my life, I cannot find one single photo of it, so for artist’s impression, it looked something like this).

**Credit to Andrew Parsons, no relation!**

My brother, James, is a Carpenter and with his help we kitted it out as a basic, but very comfortable campervan, which I took everywhere, mainly the Lakes and Scotland, (when I wasn’t transporting fridges and furnture for people. It is remarkable how popular you become when you have a van!)
Before the Influencer days of “Vanlife” and “Stealth camping” were a thing, I just used to bomb up to the Lakes the night before a race, sleep like a baby in a layby} and all was good. I absolutely loved that van, it never let me down but when I first went travelling it had to go (it was slowly rusting away). I sold it to the brother of a lass I met in a camping shop in Kendal, who lived in Skipton. I drove it there, sold it and rode my pushbike back, with £999 in my pocket.
I never do things simply…

(* When I used the phrase “Sleep like a baby in a layby”, I wasn’t implying nor suggesting that you should let a baby sleep in a layby. A cot in a house is probably better.)

Fast forward to 2021 and the not-so-great Firesale.
“Everything must go”, and it did. Pushbikes, guitars, amps, climbing gear and my old faithful Honda C90. I sold a large chunk of my soul on ebay on that sad day.

**4 HOURS TO GET TO MARSDEN, (via everywhere!)**

That trusty little 90cc grapefruit-engine-sized step-through never, ever let me down, why oh why did I sell it on?

It did however free up some brass to buy a van.
I started looking around but in my price range everything had been to the moon and back and/or had some major mechanical fault.
Junk basically.

Then by sheer chance a mate at work told me that his sister was selling her van and wanted a quick sale!
I booked a one way train ticket to Oxford and filled my pockets with readies. My mate had said “It’s more muscle than van”, which was cryptic, but upon driving home in the almost immaculate Nissan Elgrand (I had to look it up too), the petrol gauge seemed to be a victim of gravity, at a time when fuel prices were at an absolute all time high. (E5 petrol too, which is even pricier!)

“More muscle” now made perfect sense.
(In its defence it was a 3.2L V6 automatic after all, fuel efficiency wasn’t its forte!)

Looking around I found a chap called Simon in South Elmsall who did LPG conversions. He did 3 per week and had a 6 month waiting list.
“Do you ever get cancellations?” I asked.
“Never” was his response, so I waited patiently for 6mths and then paid my money for a conversion, in effect bringing the running costs down to half,

IF I could find any LPG that was.

This rare commodity was a bit scarce, with additional problems of some pumps not working efficiently due to atmospheric pressue, tank pressure and pump pressure. Complicated.

In the end the not-so-great Firesale of 2023 forced me to sell it on and I bought “El Rojo”, my beloved 2002 K11 Micra.
My 6th Micra; I learnt to drive in one, one was my first car and another one took us to Mongolia, along with a string of other K11s.

This was all in the middle of Honda Jazz-gate (don’t ask). It was fate, as I was outbid in the last second, but the higher bidder disappeared so a very nice man in Kettering called John sold it to me and I have been happy ever since.

However, whether it is want or need, recently I have been becoming increasingly obsessed with vans of all shapes and sizes. I realy wish eBay did not exist at all at times.

Again, as always ex-work vans have all been thrashed to Jupiter and back and/or have previous MOT horror stories, so I am currently swaying more towards a “Micro Camper” (Citroen Berlingos, Peugeot Partners, Renault Kangoos and Sooty and Sweep vans). Part of me fears it will be a bit too diddy, but watch this space!

Like most of my life, I am living in daydreamland, but you’ve got to have a dream…

Plans.

Training hasn’t quite been going as planned…
2024 was to be the year of S&C (strength and conditioning), which it has been.
I signed up for a year of SCY (Strength, conditioning and yoga for runners), with 2 weekly attempts to keep up with the instructor, online thankfully (I only ever tried yoga once before and almost gave the 100yr old teacher called Xena, a nervous breakdown, I am not very bendy at all).
The idea/theory is that running alone is not enough, you do need additional strength training to prevent injury (an injured runner isn’t just a bear with a sore head, more like a junkie with no gear!)

Have also invested in a weighted vest and a wobble board too, which are both entertaining and have just done a “Weighted vest Stairmaster” session, which almost killed me but all this is just covering up the blatant fact that running is not going well at all and it is indeed running that will get me up them there fells for my ambitious/audacious/unrealistic race programme which is as follows:

March
Stan Bradshaw Tour of Pendle, Witches county, Lancashire: (Didn’t run, good start to season!)

Coledale Horseshoe, Lakes.

May
Jura fell race, Scotland.

Limping into…

June (deep breath)

Duddon fell race, Lakes

Ennerdale fell race, Lakes

Photo courtesy of https://goingdownhillquickly.blogspot.com/

Buttermere Sailbeck fell race, Lakes

Photo courtesy of http://www.northumberlandfellrunners.co.uk/

Great Lakes fell race, Lakes!

Photo courtesy of https://www.cvfr.co.uk/2019/06/special-k-topping-the-charts/photo1_robertsatgreatlakes/

Plus/and/or, possibly, a crack at the Tranter’s Round.

Photo courtesy of https://www.gomountaingoats.com/tranters-round-1

If I am still alive, June inexorably leads into…

July

Wasdale fell race, Lakes

Photo courtesy of Granddayoutphotography & Elvet Striders

(Only one race in July as I was absolutely destroyed after Wasdale last year!)

August

Borrowdale fell race, Lakes

Myself, about 2hrs after falling on my ribs on a boulder.

Borrowdale falls on my birthday this year, 22 years after I first ran it as a young lad!

I never plan past August as my legs will probably have dropped off before then.

Ambitious?
Perhaps.
Best get some running in then, hadn’t I.

(All of the above could be wiped out in a flash, as the fickle balance of training properly/not getting injured is a rather precarious one.
In addition to this, I am generally a disaster in normal everyday life, so an empty calendar, giddiness and the FRA Fixtures booklet are a heady and potentially dangerous cocktail!)

Raiders round-up.

The mighty Shipbuilders took a trip to deepest, darkest West Yorkshire at the weekend, Belle Vue, Wakefield to be precise.

Despite being in the game, for most of the game, the ex-Superleague side took the honours and Barrow bowed out of the 1895 cup.

As previously mentioned, we’re focussing on the league this year 😉

And finally

I have been out and about with the camera.
Still got a lot to learn, please bear with me, it will get better!
Just local this time, but with history, scenery, botany, wrong turns and more, here is the ladfromtad.com vlog – episode 2

The subtitles (again) make even less sense than I do, but that does give me faith that AI will never completely take over the world, as long as there are mumblers about like me!

Thank you for reading and watching 🙂

That’s all for now folks.

Hasta la proxima.
Johnny

p.s. If that wasn’t enough rambling for one sitting, I just stumbled across this old link to a past C90 adventure 🙂

https://alpkit.com/blogs/deeds/operation-point-clunk-north-part-1

2024…

Good morning folks

I trust you are in fine form.
2024.
Never, ever, have I embraced a new year with such vigour.
Since the last blog (mid-December), a lot has happened, apologies, it’s not a micro-blog this time, but I will definitely semi-skim things down next time
It was most definitely a December to forget, but on the other hand it is kind of positive now, to look back at how bad things were and how much better they are now.

The Nipper

A long, twisting and at times, complex story, so I will try to keep it brief and objective as possible.
A timeline might best explain things.

29/11/23: Valentina felt ill; headache, fever, dysuria (burning when passing water) & general malaise.
01/12/23: Severe stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea & begins. Went to Out of Hours (OOH) Selby and sent home.
02/12/23: Symptoms worsened, went to YDH A&E, sent home.
03/12/23: Symptoms worsened, went to Leeds OOH, sent home.
04/12/23: Symptoms worsened markedly, went to YDH. Admitted. Diagnosed as having Gastroenteritis, kept in isolation for 3 days, then discharged.
09/12/23: Symptoms worsened to point of not being able to walk, went back to YDH, readmitted.
10/12/23: Saw a surgeon (3pm), suspected burst appendix. Taken to operating theatre 8pm, returned at 01:15am. Kept in YDH for 3 days, discharged.
18/12/23: Symptoms worsened, difficulty walking without aid.
Rang Surgeon’s secretary, told to go to GP, rang GP, told to go to OOH, rang OOH told to go to GP, saw GP, prescribed a cream!
19/12/23: Symptoms worsened, tried to make GP appointment, told there were none until 04/01/24.
20/12/23: Symptoms worsened, went back to try to book emergency appointment, saw GP at noon, sent straight to YDH. Ultrasound showed post-operative abscess. Readmitted to YDH.
25/12/23: Discharged from YDH at 6pm with prescription for antibiotics, went to only Chemist open in York, didn’t hold that medication in stock. Hospital said to return next day for medication.
26/12/23: Started vomiting uncontrollably at 9pm, continued through night, went to YDH at 5am, readmitted.
27/12/23: Vomiting stopped at 10am. HR measured at 230bpm at 5pm, admitted to HDU.
DIagnosed as Tachycardia (Valentina had had this before, but nothing on this scale), HR between 200-235bpm for 4hrs. Administed 6 doses of Adenosine (a heart regulating drug given in a single, double, then triple dose), this did stop the heart on the 3rd attempt for a split second, but then shot back up to 220bpm, unfortunately it did not work. Consultant told us they would try again in the morning. Vomited at 9pm, HR lowered. (Vomiting had triggered a reset).
Advised we could go home next day, asked if we could stay in a bit longer.
30/12/23: Discharged. No follow up. Pushed for follow-up. At discharge we were told Dysuria was now a separate issue, advised we would have to go to LGI. Asked if we could be referred by hospital (as LGI had been remotely managing the case as there are no Pediatric Surgeons at YDH, told to see GP.
04/01/24: Saw GP, referred to LGI Urology & Cardiology.

18/02/24: Still waiting…

So, December was a bit fraught and Christmas was a bit different.
(I drove to hospital on Christmas Eve and didn’t even realise it was Christmas Eve!)

The Youngster never complained throughout, but now is very scared of needles, after numerous canulas, blood tests and the fact that she has difficult veins to find.
(Unlike my Niagaras, which would be a Junkie’s delight!)

Mistakes were made and it seemed like a constant battle to be seen and heard, to penetrate the defensive red tape walls of the NHS, but all the Nursing staff on the ward were absolute angels. (Hospital food isn’t that bad!) It is just a shame that this wasn’t spotted first thing, as it would have then been a routine operation with a relatively speedy recovery.

The Nipper is back at school now and is doing really well. I think that the company of kids her own age (and not her old folks, doctors or nurses) has helped a lot.

Here are a montage of photos of smiles through a difficult time.

Just to reiterate our sincere gratitude to everyone for your support.
Now it is time to move on…

Guy Goma II

Guy Goma was a man who was in the right place, at the wrong time.

Guy had gone to the BBC studios for a job interview for a cleaner and was patiently waiting in reception when a BBC producer stormed in and asked “Are you Guy?”

Guy said yes and was ushered to a make-up assistant (which seemed peculiar to him) and then placed in front of a live TV camera (which must have seemed even stranger to him), but up until then, he still thought it was part of the interview.

When the interviewer started the interview with
“Well, Guy Kewney is editor of the technology website Newswireless. Hello, good morning to you”, Guy Goma realised that a mistake had been made, but carried on with the mistaken identity charade the best he could.
A short video shows this HERE.

Moving on to my own world and now, I was invited to a meeting at work this week (thankfully online and not in front of live TV cameras). Names will have to remain unnamed, to protect the identities of those present, all still wondering why on earth I had been invited along!

Alarm bells should have started ringing for me when I saw the meeting title, even with my imaginative mind, there wasn’t even a hint of a tenuous link to my job.

Just why had I been invited to this particular meeting? I accepted the invite anyway.

Things didn’t start well (for me) when I was prompted to register for some kind of learning course platform, just as I was trying to log on. This lost me 4 minutes and as it turns out, wasn’t even connected (to the meeting).

So, arriving 5 minutes late, it did seem that the people had been waiting for me.
Was I that crucial to this meeting?

Introductions all round, (apart from my own, I think I had already been introduced by the host). Some high-fliers and a low-grade minion (me).

I was asked a tricky question early on and managed to answer it, then thought I had best ask a few (hopefully semi-intelligent) questions myself.

After a l-o-n-g 45 minutes it was all over, and I was still wondering why I had been there, but trying to be diligent as ever, I sent an email with a “call to action” set of ideas to the meeting host.

Next day I received an apology, turns out the wrong Johnny was invited to the meeting…

Tight lines

Trying to get everything back to as normal as possible, the youngster and I planned a fishing trip to the East Coast, Hornsea to be precise.
It was a bit last minute and rushed, but a sea fishing outing always chucks in a few surprises.

One thing it didn’t chuck in was our tea though!

The fish were tiddlers which were all returned.

Other (more experienced) fishermen also had had a very quiet day, which made us weekend chancers feel a bit better 🙂

We did get a bagful of rocks for the aquarium and had plenty of sea air,

whilst doing a good imitation of King Canute. A grand day out.

Fish and chips!

When a surgeon asked what her dream meal would be (when she eventually got out of hospital and was better), the Nipper said, without hesitation,

“Fish and chips”.

(Surgeons do sometimes ask kids some strange questions, including the classic ones such as “Are you feeling better?” and “Do you want to go home?” It would take a plucky 9yr old to say no to such loaded questions!)

We therefore looked forward to and savoured a first class fish supper at the Wetherby Whaler, with our good rally friends, Matthew and Raquel. A good feed was had by all 🙂

T’Lakes

I did manage to shoehorn a training weekend in the Lakes into January.
It was a fellrunning weekend with a club I am a member of a club called ARCC (Achille Ratti Climbing Club). I run competitively for Pudsey & Bramley AC, but ARCC are a mountaineering club who have “huts” in the Lake District and a community of like minded mountainlovers, many of whom run, but only 2 of which I had previously met. Definitely going out of my British Library social bubble and having to speak to people who I had never met before!

It was a long old haul across the A65, but entertained by Dave Grohl’s outstanding audiobook “The Storyteller“, I got up on the Friday night in time for a quick pizza and a place in the Snorer’s dorm (I don’t snore, I didn’t realise that the far dorm was reserved for blokes who make an alarming amount of noise whilst sleeping!)

Saturday dawned claggy and windy, with a forecast of deteriorating weather on the tops.

The planned route was a recce of “The Great Lakes Race“, a relatively new race starting in Langdale, heading up the Band onto Bowfell, over Esk Pike, Great End, Scafell Pike, Scafell, Slight Side, over middle earth and up and down the most confusing fell in the Lakes, Pike o’Blisco with a hurtling plummet to the finish. That was the plan…

Unfortunately our merry group of 4 got split up in the mist around Esk Pike.
The conditions were bad and worsening, so rather than enduring a direct, blustering headwind across a wet and wild Scafell Pike ridge, we reversed our route back over the Langdale Horseshoe route, back over Esk Pike, Bowfell and up and down P-O-B, back to the start/finish.

It was my first run in the Lakes since I trashed my ribs at Borrowdale (August last year) and although it was naturally great to be back, it confirmed what I already knew and that is that I have a LOT of work to do, if my planned plans will actually materialise this year! My planned training hasn’t really materialised yet.

The highlight of the weekend however was a spectacular pie & peas supper.
It seems the majority of ARCC members are Lancastrians, and (sticking my neck out further than a giraffe) the Red Rosers do make a decent pie 🙂

Raiders round-up

The season proper hasn’t quite started yet, but we have had a mixed bag of pre-season friendly results and are also now out of the (Challenge) Cup, which leaves us to focus on the league (which doesn’t start until March 17th, so as long as we aren’t playing, we won’t be getting beat!)

COME ON YOU SHIPBUILDERS!!!

In other news…

The Nipper gave me a new look!

Promoted to Sixer at Brownies 🙂

Winter/Raynaud’s Syndrome sucks! Roll on spring/summer…

Tad River was up.

and the bridge was closed-open-closed-open-closed and open again.

Best of all, Saturday night disco is BACK 🙂

And finally

After 5 attempts, I have finally managed to make the first ever ladfromtad.com running v-log.

***Patiently awaiting the Premiere***, ***suspense in the air…***

It was a bit of a daydream, which is now actually real!
In a nutshell, having been inspired by other videos on Youtube, I thought
“I fancy a crack at that!”
This blog is maybe what is called (for want of a better word) “niche” and the videos will probably be even more so. Basically it is about a bloke running in the hills, trying to film himself and his surroundings with a bit of chit-chat thrown in, in a way that will hopefully be mildly interesting to other people.

That is the plan

Inspired originally by a friend called John (Lakeland Trail Runner on YouTube) who makes top end quality films and especially by a trip with John to Scotland last autumn, (coinciding with Storm Babet), I decided to save up my brass buttons and invest in a video camera. I did have a GoPro from back in the day, but it was basically buggered, so I spashed out on a DJI model. It is a fancy piece of kit, which I am yet to work out.

I am still very much in the learning stages; filming, using camera to more than 1% of its potential and above all, (dramatic music…) editing. This skillset is BRAND NEW to me and is a fine art in itself.

This offering of nonsense was the combined product of 5 separate outings, none of the first four of which were usable (comedy of schoolboy errors; crap camera angles, crap weather, technical mishaps and a plethora of other lame excuses).
The fifth effort was not exactly what I wanted, but we all have to start somewhere and hopefully one day I will look back and say “That was rubbish!” when I am banging out quality video after quality video.

(Or, I might just carry on saying “That was rubbish” after every video!)

So, without further adieu, here is LADFROMTAD RUNNING V-LOG -Episode 1.

As I said, this is a work in progress that can hopefully only get better, watch this space and if it is your thing, please SUBSCRIBE here:

www.youtube.com/@JohnnyParsonsladfromtad

That’s all for now folks 🙂
Hasta la proxima.
Johnny & the girls

p.s. Time goes way too fast.

Not the last blog :-)

Good morning folks

I trust this finds you in finest festive fettle.
An uncustomarily short(ish) blog.
I am sure you’ve got better/more pressing things to do right now!
The good (?) news is that this is NOT the last blog.
With three clicks and a painless paypal payment (paypal feels like Monopoly money, that is my downfall) I renewed my WordPress subscription and domain registration.
Therefore LADFROMTAD.COM lives on into 2024.
(And insomnia is a great way to get things done when you really should be sleeping, but just can’t!)
Several reasons, discussed below.

The Nipper

(Not a reason, but something that put things in perspective in a big way for me).

How much personal stuff does one share on a blog post?
I thought long and hard about this.
Life isn’t just unicorns and chocolate boxes, sometimes real life is just awful and everything is $hit…
Writing is cathartic for me, it is one of the main reasons I write this stuff (even if nobody reads it!)

The Nipper has been unwell, very unwell.
Thankfully she is on the mend now, but has been through a very rough time and will take some time to recover.
She started to feel unwell around the end of November and went downhill fast. I tried to get her into hospital (01/12), visiting Selby, York District and a Leeds Outpatient clinic, and was sent home each time. On the Monday she was getting worse so we managed to get her admitted to York (04/12), she had chronic diarrhea with severe stomach pain and fever. She was diagnosed with Gastroenteritis and discharged 4 days later, but she just kept deteriorating to the point where we were seriously, seriously worried about her and took her back into York on the Saturday (09/12), where she was seen by a surgeon on Sunday afternoon and taken into the operating theatre at 20:30 on Sunday night.

She came back on the ward at 00:30 and the surgeon gave us a bleak report, telling us that her stomach has been “like a warzone”. Her appendix had burst some time ago and the infection had spread to other organs. When a surgeon is telling you all these terrible things, things go into a horrible slow motion nightmare. Lina and I spent a week doing 26hr shifts at YDH, trying to help the young one to get better, to get through another attempt at inserting a cannula into forearms bruised with failed attempts at getting needles into veins that didn’t want to show. It was tough for a 9 year old.
The nurses were like angels, working their own 13hr shifts and never complaining, ever.

After 5 days she was off the morphine and off the IV antibiotics and drip, so we were sent home. She is still not right, there is still something that has not been fixed and as we have been discharged, we were told to see our GP, who told us to go back to an out-of-hours clinic, (again), who themselves told us to go back to our GP. The cycle starts over 😦

It is heartbreaking to see your own child suffering in pain.
To see them terrified, begging, not to have more needles stuck in them, but you just have to put your trust in the medical staff.
It is just sad that this was not spotted earlier, when a routine operation would have cleared things up and we’d have been home, long ago, well on the way to recovery by now.

But, we are grateful, things could have been a lot, lot worse.
We are especially grateful for all the amazing support, messages, cards, presents and good wishes from everyone, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts.
Work have also been brilliant, I am very fortunate in that respect.

Crocked!

Keeping it brief, and in the grand scheme of things a tiny, microscopic detail. Running (when I could) was almost keeping me sane, so it was almost inevitable that I got injured. A knackered hamstring.
Running was right at the bottom of the list of priorities right now anyway.

2023

If you ignore December, it has been a good year!
Had to sell a lot of personal treasure (and a lot of junk) on ebay. None of which were easy, straightforward sales, most of which resulted in a loss.
Repeat the mantra (which I never learn) after me “ebay is not a way to make cash when you are skint!”

Inlcuding a keyboard now playing in a church in Nigeria!

A fishing chair, weighing close to a hundredweight, which (despite being brazenly advertised as COLLECTION ONLY) didn’t get sold 4 times.

The van had to go 😦

The Honda Jazz came and went (to Ilford). Good riddance!

The Micra came into my life 🙂

We had some good fishing trips.

Moved house (Lard was not available).

Running was up and down, but a HUGE improvement on 2022 🙂

An obsession began with the stairmaster, temporarily on hold.

The Nipper climbed her first ever mountain, (which was also my first ever mountain), Great Gable.

And I finally got up to Bonny Scotland after dreaming about a trip up north for almost 10 years…

…just in time for Storm Babet!

2024

Sometimes it’s best not to make plans.

Youtubing?

Well, last month I said that this blog was ending and I was starting a Youtube channel, but seeing as I haven’t got a camera and I can’t run, that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, hence my decision to carry on scribbling this nonsense. Hopefully, possibly, watch this space???

Podcast of the month.

I listen to a LOT of podcasts, most about running, training and/or mountains.
This one is a bit different. Obsession and addiction. Something I can also relate to, and not as dark as you may think, but a massive eye opener (with cursing and profanity, you have been warned).

https://www.richroll.com/podcast/david-choe-626/

Raiders round-up

No news is good news and as it’s still the close season, we aren’t getting beat.
Onwards and upwards, come on you Shipbuilders!
However, the club is trying to break a world record in January.
260+ people at an exercise class.
Niche? Who cares! If it raises money for charity, it’s all good.

And finally

Although it was during that past lifetime phase that we are all trying to forget called the “Lockdown”, there were some happy, bonkers times too 🙂
(Apologies for the Nipper eating on film, I had 5 minutes before work (Zoomland) to get ready and give her her breakfast, so I naturally assumed I could fit that in and film a 3 minute Vlog in that time before my first call of the day, clearly I was wrong!

Redefining the word “amateurish”

Merry Christmas & a very Happy New Year to you, your loved ones and your lovers.

See you in 2024!

Johnny & the girls 🙂

The penultimate blog…

Good morning folks

I trust you are well and haven’t bankrupted yourself in the Black Friday sales or gone mad with pre-Christmas hysteria.

The last-but-one blog!

I have said that before, but as Mark Renton said “This was to be my final hit, but let’s be clear about this. There’s final hits and final hits. What kind was this to be?”

For a messed up junkie, the man was a prophet way ahead of his time!

So, with references clearly stuck in the 90’s and before, what is happening to a man who battles with the uncomfortable bedfellows of tradition and progress?

Well, having been highly inspired by my mate John. I am switching this nonsense from a blog to a kind of vlog (or more likely, haphazard videos).

https://www.youtube.com/@lakelandtrailrunner
(Check this out at your earliest convenience!)

John makes outstanding Youtube videos of his runs into the hills, I have been considering switching from written bobbins content to video bobbins content for a while now.
The main obstacles right now are that I don’t have a camera (bar my crappy, temperamental mobile) and I have zero idea about editing, but never let supposed hurdles spoil an ambitious/audacious daydream 🙂
I love writing this blog, mainly for its cathartic qualities, but I would love to learn/try something new.

It will all be happening HERE

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_Na5bx_haQMK8LQ5m3DVA

If you are interested, please click on the link and subscribe.
Being brutally honest I gave up social media about 5 years ago, so this does feel a bit strange, but if you don’t try, you never know.
It is not going to be “Look at me-my life is 100% amazing”, more down to earth, if I ever do start taking myself too seriously, please slap me down, immediately.
Youtubing? Watch this space!

2023 running wrap-up – A year of two halves.

A brilliant year up to July and then everything seemed to turn to rat$hit soon after. Work to do for next season.

All races are measured on the FEPO scale (I have just made this up).

Fun
Epicness
Performance
Overall

April
Guisborough Moors Race

Going back to a race I said I would never go back to (after being disqualified after winning the Boys race in 1988), I swallowed my pride and hoped for the best. More of a trail/road race, I gave it my best and had ny best descent of the year, finishing absolutely empty.
Fun – 4
Epicness – 3
Performance – 3
Overall – 3

June
Ennerdale Horseshoe fell race

During the glorious heatwave that was the summer, Ennerdale was held on a day where Blighty was more scorchio than Ibiza!
A race which has an easy last 6 miles, but it’s the tough 18 miles beforehand that is the problem, as are the cut-offs!
A record number of drop-outs (heat) and a finish that was a cross between a war zone and One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
I drank 4 pints of water before the race, 4 pints during the race and 4 pints after the race, and I was still peeing bright yellow the next morning!

Fun – 3
Epicness – 5
Performance – 3
Overall – 4

July
Wasdale Horseshoe fell race

A tough cookie of a race. Runnable first quarter, but a rough last three quarters. Held on the 1st of July, the same day that summer ended and a race which was almost cancelled the day before, due to a storm forecast to roll in midrace.
Got sunburnt in the first hour and ended up almost hypothermic in the last hour. Very satisfying to get round, but was completely broken afterwards! (I had fallen coming off Pillar, but was aching everywhere afterwards, so it wasn’t that bad).

Fun – 2
Epicness – 5
Performance – 4
Overall – 5

August
Borrowdale fell race

After acclimatising (to the rain) in Kendal for a week beforehand, I felt ready.
Unfortunately my clumsiness led to a slip, trip, stumble, sidewards crash into a boulder with my ribs about 2 miles in. It was too early to drop out so I carried on but suffered for the rest of the race and was sidelined for a fortnight afterwards, trying not to cough, laugh, sneeze or tie my left foot shoelaces.
This was where the season fell to pieces!

Fun – 2
Epicness – 4
Performance – 2
Overall – 2

October
Hodgson Brothers fell relay

A late call-up for the team and one that I couldn’t turn down.
Paired up with my Morley mate, Charlie Mac, on the last leg, I tried my best to hand onto Charlie’s coat-tails. He was kind enough not to run me into the ground. I climbed badly and descended even worse.
Great to see all the P&B crew, but we didn’t win, nor would we have won with my lame efforts.

Fun – 5
Epicness – 3
Performance – 2
Overall – 4

November
Half Trog fell race

Another race, another faceplant!
Last minute entry, had run the full trog before, a log time ago.
Was doing ok and was even in the top 10 (briefly), but a sly rock caught my left foot and I went down like a sack of spuds, one of those downhill no time to put your hands out, head hits floor, birds flying round afterwards.
Then got lost (twice). A day best written off.

Fun – 1
Epicness – 2
Performance – 2
Overall – 1

November
Tour of Pendle fell race

The last long race of the year. Covering every inch of Pendle Hill, with the infamous “Geronimo” descent and 3 big climbs in the latter stages. Half an hour of sun, 3 hours of fog, rain and wind. A day where I didn’t get going until the last few miles (it’s a 17 mile race, so that is not good).
Had problems with the foot I had fallen on the week prior, which made uphills and downhills tricky. Was fine for the last mile of flat.
A curtain closer for 2023.

Fun – 3
Epicness – 3
Performance – 3
Overall – 3

Racing aside, there were other highs with supporting two Bob Graham Rounds and an amazing 3 day trip to Bonny Scotland with my mate John.

I am very, very guilty of self disparagement (and how I wish I could drop this bad habit).

To say that in 2022, I really thought it was game over for all competitive sports, it hasn’t been a bad year. There is an uncomfortable and hard to swallow equation with training and fitness which is basically that

Hard training + not getting injured = improvment.

However, with the inexorable inevitability of aging, this sum is skewed somewhat, so Rejoice, o young man, in thy youth!

Hard training + more hard training = stay at the same level/get injured.

So it becomes,

Hard training + the four letter word (REST) + more hard training = just about stay at the same level.

Which means that it is very hard (but not impossible) to get fitter/faster as one gets older, but one is battling the law of diminishing returns.

BUT, as I tell myself, I’m not just about to pull on a GB vest and in the grand scheme of things, nobody (bar myself) really gives a monkeys, so just enjoy what you do (now) and don’t live in the past 🙂

Next season???

An empty calendar is always a dangerous thing!
This year was weird in that it had no specific goal, I was just going from race to race and hanging on by my fingernails.

I generally HAVE to have a plan, or I go off my head.
So, the main plan for next year is either The Ramsay Round (audacious) or the Tranter’s Round (ambitious). Aiming for midsummer weekend, time/training will tell.

As a warm-up, I am aiming for
Duddon Valley or Ennerdale or…
The Isle of Jura race

Lots of work to be done before then.
Watch this space.

Raiders round-up

No news is good news, but it is the close season, so they aren’t going down or up or anywhere, just yet!

The future!

This blog will self destruct at midnight on NYE, to be reborn in a phoenix (nights) style reincarnation on my YouTube channel right here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCA_Na5bx_haQMK8LQ5m3DVA

And finally

As a benchmark of the level of videos I might hopefully be making, here is a blast from the past from the dark days of Lockdown.
We had to film our Superclunk.com Vlogs (sic) in the tiny gap that was Lina leaving the house to go to the shop and my morning online zoom job starting, which left about a 10 minute one-take-wonder window of opportunity. The youngster was only 6 at the time and was somehow following my lead!
Inspired by Morecambe & Wise/Big Night Out style, if nothing else, it was fun, at a bit of a weird time, which lockdown was (and without going into lockdown wars, Arequipa lockdown was nuts!)

This was my favourite 3 minutes of nonsense, which brightened up an otherwise bonkers time.

This was a close second favourite 😉

Will shoehorn in one more blog afore this WordPress account turns into a pumkin/implodes at midnight on the 31st of December.

That’s all for now folks 🙂
Johnny

Video killed the radio star?

Morning folks

I trust you are in fine fettle.
After the last ramble-on-and-on-a-thon, which was almost as long as our aborted Ramsay Round recce, this blog is a bit more one-shot-espresso than a double Mocha-choca-cino-with-a-99-flake.

Halloween, clocks changing and plunging into sudden darkness at 5:30pm means that autumn is here.

Not my favourite season (being colourblind means that all the various tones of leaves are wasted on me), it is marginally better than winter, but roll on spring I say!

The youngster and her school choir were invited to a recording studio with a local York band, here is the end product. Not a band I had heard of, but a catchy little tune 🙂

Bogtrotting.

3 years ago today was my last race in Peru.The Misti Sky Race.
A race and mountain I got a bit obsessed about, but sometimes that is only way to approach something that is way bigger than you (and your limits/skillset/cojones size).

(I wrote a blog for Alpkit here: https://alpkit.com/blogs/deeds/return-to-misti-msr-2019

https://alpkit.com/blogs/deeds/return-to-misti-msr-2019

I am still on their homepage , reminding me of unfulfilled business/daydreams in Peru…

Back to reality here in Blighty, to mark the occasion, I entered the Wadsworth Half Trog fell race in deepest, darkest Hebden Bridge. The Full Trog is in February and covers 20 miles of sloppy Pennine bogland, the half trog is just a half of the full and therefore weighs in at around 10 miles.

Fell races are abbreviated with a whole lexicon of abbreviations and acronyms.
– “N” equals navigation required.
– “LK” equals local knowledge (is an advantage)

Obviously I oversaw both of these when I entered on Friday night and was hoping for a clear day.

This was on their social media on Sunday morning:
Perfect trog weather get the compass out

Tight lines.

Haven’t been out fishing with the bairn in a long time, not since a red hot day in summer, which now seems about 10 years ago.
Been keen to get to the coast, but it was often a case of
a) No time
b) Crap weather
c) Wrong tide times
d) All of the above.

So, when all the planets seemed to align with Neptune’s Trident, we did an early morning dash to the East Coast, in the hope of catching something for our tea!

Sea fishing is different to freshwater fishing.
It is free! (You need a licence and a permit to fish in most lakes, rivers and canals).
You don’t have a clue what you will catch, (the sea is a big place).
It is.
You get a good feeling how King Cnut (not a typo) felt, as you are constantly battling with the tide, advancing or retreating and most likely getting wet.

Brilliant fun, but generally rather chaotic!

The Nipper always seems to get stuck into some sand art as we wait, but as the waves got wilder we started catching a few.

Final scores were
Old man 3
Bairn 2
(last cast wonder by myself).

After a long ride home, stuck behind a truck doing 30mph all the way, I (badly) filleted our catch and we complemented it with a bag of chips from the amazing Kirkgate Chippy, (I am not sponsored by them, but I wish I was! 😁)

Musical interlude…

In the late 80’s, when I was busy working at Little Chef and doing my best at completely screwing up my A-levels (unintentionally, I so wish I had passed them), there seemed to brilliant bands playing in Leeds every week; at the old Poly, the Uni and the Duchess. It was a time when I naively thought all these good bands would last forever and gigs would always cost a fiver!
One of the best concerts I had the good fortune to witness was The Cramps.
Lux Interior and Poison Ivy, the king and queen of the weird, mixing up punk, rockabilly and B-movies into something quite, quite unique.
Crazy times and happy days!

Raider’s round-up.

The close season means a well deserved rest on the old nerves and regrouping for the new seaspn (which will hopefully be better/less stressful than last season!)

Video killed the radio star?

A seed was planted on the recent Scotland trip (see video below).

It was an absolutely brilliant outing, filmed expertly by my mate John
Like and subscribe to his awesome channel HERE

Although I do take photos (on my crappy phone, which is sooooo tempreramental in the wet or cold), video does seem to capture the occasion just that little bit better.

When we drove to Mongolia in 2012, one of my main objectives was to make a short film about it, for posterity. I took some advice off the Climbing film making genius that is Al Lee (see his fine work HERE) and he told me that the problem is (in climbing films) that the film gets in the way of the climbing which gets in the way of the film!

In other words, the amazing end product you see on YouTube is not just a case of point-shoot-ready, it has actually required a lot of graft (during and after film making) before the film maker presses “PUBLISH”.

This I found out only too well on the road to Ulan Battar, when we were overarmed with a 35mm camera, a GoPro, a Kodak Sport camera and 2 phones, ending up with loads and LOADS of footage, which takes forever to mangle into some kind of watchable film.
(Plus the fact that I have never, ever edited a second of video footage and owe an unpayable debt to my mate, Matthew P, for editing weeks of junk to get a very satisfactory end product here 🙂

The quality of cameras available nowadays is amazing. GoPros were a real gamechanger: High quality footage, simple to use, bombproof and best of all, not a million quid. Action cameras mean that with some effort, it it possible for people outside National Geographic cab make high quality films, (with a lot of work, and a bit of magic/luck!)

However, as I said earlier, I have zilchio (post production) editing experience, which is where YouTube comes in, thank you tutorials!

The offshoot of all of this waffle is that I am thinking about switching this minestrone swirl of words, also known as a blog, into some kind of video format. It would have to be skimmed down and might be a bit rough and ready, but rather than spend 3-4hrs typing, I could spend that time editing and hopefully producing some kind of interesting content.

Why?
For fame or fortune? I am not a massive fan of social media, so am I a hypocrite for now posting videos? Tricky one.
Tiktokanory?
Not really my thing to be honest.
Just wanting to show a wee bit of the great outdoors, but definitely NOT in a “My perfect life is amazing-hashtag-look-at-me” kind of way, because it’s not.
(Never ever used a hashtag and I am not about to start now!)

The biggest drive for me is to learn a new skill; making videos and editing. I am starting from scratch, so please bear with me.

I would be curious to hear any thoughts on this, if you have any 🙂
As always, watch this space…

Top reads!

Need a new book?
Buy this, now!

Available HERE.

And finally…

I am (told and I agree that I am) stuck in the 1970’s.
However, I almost wish I had been born in the 60’s, as just 3 years before I was born, THIS was happening!

Egremont Crab Fair, home of gurning and Speed Pipe Smoking!

Hoping to squeeze in one more wrap-up of 2023, before the blog turns into a pumpkin and self destructs at the chime of midnight on New Year’s Eve, to be reborn as some kind of YouTube channel.

Hasta la proxima amigos 🙂
Johnny

Bonny Scotland

Good morning folks

Here is the latest wrap-up of gubbins that is the blog that is my jumbled up life!
WARNING: The second half of this blog is a bit hillrunning heavy, if in doubt please just scroll down to the video at the end 🙂

It had been a bit of a quiet time since the last blog, ergo, no blogs.
I bashed in my ribs at Borrowdale, which although not a showstopper, was enough to put a BIG spanner in the works for the remainder of summer.
I couldn’t really do much at all for 2 weeks, then started training (pitifully lightly) but not enough to make a difference, so put all races on ice.

I did however get a late call up to the mighty P&B team for the Ian Hodgson Relays in Patterdale, a 4 leg-2 person relay, in which my old Morley mate Charlie and I ran the anchor leg from Hartsop over Hart Crag and St. Sunday Crag before plummetting down to Patterdale. Lack of fitness on my part, a very short distance (7 miles is the shortest fell race I have run in a long time) and a distinct lack of balls on my part (fortunately coupled with Charlie’s patience, as he was flying) left us mid-league at the end.
It was however AWESOME to catch up with some old faces and meet some new ones. Some people flit from club to club to club, but Charlie and I both agreed that we were both P&B forever 🙂

Tight lines.

Just one fishing trip for the bairn and I of late. A boat trip off Whitby. Spent a lot of time sailing around and not a lot of time fishing, but caught enough for tea for 2 nights 🙂

New wheels!

After watching summer turn into autumn, back to summer, to autumn and then fade into darkness…

A series of events of coincidence, fate or maybe just sheer magic led me to Kettering to buy a second hand eBay bargain Cyclocross bike for a knockdown price.

In the not-so-great Fire-sale of 2021, I got rid of all my bikes, and the only wheels I had nowadays are those on my commuting bike, which I am borrowing on loan, so the birthday money and ebay sales fund was just enough to cover it.

A possible return to the (very back of the) muddy CX grid potentially beckons.
Watch this space…

Carry on Camping!

Managed one last summer weekend trip away with the bairn. Just before the August Bank Holiday deluge.

Raiders round-up

As far as the men’s team goes, it was (as ever) a gradual nervous breakdown over the course of the season. After being in the promtion play-offs last year, 12 months on we had a desperate fight to survive the drop, and (as always) it went to the wire, to the last game, where Newcastle and Keighley went down and the poor old Flatcappers, Featherstone Rovers, were somehow denied promotion as Toulouse got it together to go up.
Barrow men finished 4th bottom and survived relegation, just.

MEANWHILE, in the Ladies team, it was a very different story.
An all-Cumbrian (Furness, Westmorland and Cumberland, but mainly Furness) side beat Leigh Leopards to get promoted to the Superleague!!!
Always in top form, wining the last 6 games on the bounce.

Onwards and upwards for both teams next season!

“Up the road….”

As a young lad growing up in Cumbria (was Westmorland and now is Westmorland once again, but we won’t go there), this tune is one that sticks in my mind forever (followed by “This is Border Television, broadcasting to Cumbria, South west Scotland, the Isle of Man and North and west Northumberland, from the Caldbeck, Selkirk and associated transmitters of the independent broadcasting authority“, but you had to be there!

Anyway, as a result of being brought up on news of sheep rustling in Dumfries, Moffat and Peebles, I feel (and maybe other Cumbrians also feel) some kind of affinity with our geographically close Caledonian neighbours.

I have travelled round the World a fair bit, but my favourite place on this whole planet is the Scottish Highlands, I would move there in a hearbeat.
I love Cumbria and the Lakeland fells, but the Scottish Munros (tops over 3000ft) are next level!

Round, round get around, I get around.

A “round” is a long distance fellrunning challenge. Not a race, not marked and a route which can be done anytime you fancy (although a winter round is a different proposition). The main objective of a round is to get round within 24 hours, even if it is 23:59:59

Bit of history. The Big 3.
The Bob Graham Round (England, Lake District)
First run in 1932 by Keswick Hotelier, Bob Graham, running in a pyjama top and sustained by boiled eggs. Traversing 42 fells, starting and finishing at Keswick Moot Hall taking in 66 miles (106 km) with 26,900 feet (8,200 m) of ascent. I did mine in 2009, it was an obsession, but it had to be, it was a grand day out!

The Paddy Buckley Round (Wales, Snowdonia)
Cooked up by Paddy Buckley, but first run by Wendy Dodds in 1983. A round of 47 summits, 61 miles (100km-ish) 28000ft (8534ft) of uphill, another stiff day out.

The Ramsay Round (Scotland, Western Highland)
The Tranter’s Round (devised by Phillip Tranter, a benefit of these rounds being that if you are the pioneer, you can name it after yourself) used to be the Scottish 24 hour challenge, taking in the Mamores, the Grey Corries, the Aonachs, Carn Mor Dearg and Ben Nevis. At 37 miles (59km) with 17717ft (5400m) of climbing, it’s a bloody long day out.

THEN the formidable Charlie Ramsay extended this to 58 miles (93km) with 28500ft (7500m) of climbing, by adding on a group of additional munros around Loch Trieg, which has more ascent than climbing Mount Everest from sea level!

(More about this chap later on…)

All of which leads to the latest obsession.

A possible 2024 Ramsay Round attempt???

I mentioned the idea to my mate John, who is a top bloke to spend time in the hills with and an outstanding Youtuber.
He really knows his onions and also makes top class videos HERE.

https://www.youtube.com/@lakelandtrailrunner/about

The seed of an idea quickly sprouted into a plan, which quickly became reality.
“Let’s go and have a look at it”.

So we did!

A loose plan of driving up to Fort William on the Monday, staying overnight in the Youth Hostel (conveniently the start and finish of the route), 3 days/2 nights in the field, doss down in Youth Hostel then drive home. Simple.

Doing what is nowadays known as “Fastpacking” (carrying all your kit and moving as fast as possible, but realistically not as fast as you would if you weren’t carrying a 10kg brick on your back!)

In essence, moving as fast as possible in the hills whilst being self contained with only the basic essentials. Simplicity.

Or so it sounded, then I tried packing enough in my ancient, diddy 27 litre racesack and skimmed down everything

Bare bones kit included:
Tent-Sleeping bag-Sleeping mat-Stove-gas-Pan-Cup-Headtorch-spare clothes-first aid-enough food for 3 days on the hoof.

It was a squash and a squeeze, but in the end I had to scale everything right back to the lightiest/skimpiest I had, especially my sleeping bag and tent.
In its day the Rab “Top” bag was a revolutionary concept in its day for all weight-freaks, racing snakes and outright masochists. It would not be out of place at a Rocky Horror Show.

It weighs about the same as a bag of chips as it is basically half a sleeping bag. Its design means that you cannot move at all whilst sleeping as the mesh base lets any heat you may have in there, fly right out…

Coupled with a tiny tent that would make a good crisp packet, I wasn’t in for a cosy night, but sometimes needs must!

The round can be roughly split into 3 sections:
1) Glen Nevis YH over the Mamores to Loch Eilde Mor
2) Loch Eilde Mor round the tops of Loch Trieg to the Lairig Leagach.
3) Lairig Leagach over the Grey Corries, The Aonachs, CMD and Big Ben Nevis down to the YH.

This was just an exploratory recce, “having a look”, so the whole route was ambitious, especially with our loads and the time of year. A bit of a suck-it-and-see/play-it-by-ear approach.

So, after a great drive up in clear conditions, at 7am on Tuesday morning, after kipping in the red hot furnace that is the YH, we were ready for the off with the sun yet to rise (this is October we’re talking about and this is Scotland!)

Day I

Early doors-ish, heading up the Glen Nevis road in the half-light, looking for the secret fence crossing, which would lead us onto the forest track and then a kamikaze (abandoned) attempt to cut through the blown down forest beating a hasty retreat to the forest track, breaching the cloud inversion and up, up onto the ridge.

Heaven!

Munros as far as the eyes could see, including the mighty Ben Nevis uncapped with cloud, but capped with a dusting of snow. We started ticking off the unpronounceable Gaelic name summits.

Mullach Nan Coirean-Stob Ban (one of two)-Sgurr a Mhaim-Sgurr An Lubhair-Am Bodach-Stob Coire A Chairn-An Gearanach, including “The Devil’s Ridge!”

A gorgeous morning had given way to a brooding, grey and an increasingly gusty afternoon. The Mamores ridge includes 2 out-and-backs, the second of which we decided to drop off to find somewhere to camp, as time was ticking.

A noise that had been with us all day was the sound of rutting stags (what a great band name that would be!) We seemed to be in a valley surrounded by them, nature taking its course!

A Wayfayrer’s Veggie Curry disappeared down my gullet way too quickly and by 6:15pm, it was lights out/sundown for a l-o-n-g, cold (and generally sleepless) night, kept awake by the calls of randy deer!

Day II

Alarm set for 5:45am, which was ambitious and still absolutely pitch black but with the distinct possibility of rupturing my bladder, I got up and started the faff-a-thon which is breaking camp.

We hadn’t quite finished the Mamores, so therefore had to rethink our ideas.
The Loch Trieg loop would be ambitious tagged on to the last few Mamores, and indeed, when we finally got on the ridge, the wind had other ideas for us.

(In reality the full route over 3 days would have meant 3 superlong days if the conditions had been favourable. As we had cut our first day short, we had to rejig our plans).

Although we had been following the mountain forecast very closely up to our departure, we were unaware that Storm “Babet” was brewing…

After summiting Na Gruagaichean (glad I am typing that and not tripping over the pronunication) the winds beat us down to the lonely valley along Loch Eilde Mor, but the winds still not letting up nor easing down.

“She’s not goona let us out”

Another route reassessment led us to head for the Meanach bothy.
A “bothy” is a stone shelter, free to use and open to all, some more basic than others, but a good place to hide from foul weather. Meanach is a great two room bothy. After a brew, we headed north for the Lairig Leagach bothy, sacking off the Loch Trieg munros for another day. Even in the valley bottom, the swirling crosswinds and gusts made for an entertaining passage!

The only downside of a bothy is that you never know whether it will be full, (you can’t book and there is no way to check), so we plugged on, hoping there would be space as by now the wind was reaching crazy strength and there was little or no shelter to pitch our tents.

It was empty (other hillgoers must have seen the forecast) and we listened to the wind trying its utmost to rip the roof clean off all night, along with rutting stags (in between gusts).

In bed by 6:30pm for 10 hours in bed, but in reality a fitful few hours of shuteye before dawn, when at times the storm sounded to be dying down, but in fact it was merely building up!

Day III

The home straight, not!

The original plan had been to do the Grey Corries, The Aonachs and then Carn Mor Dearg arete, leading up to the high ground of Ben Nevis and down, down, down to the tropical climes of Glen Nevis Youth Hostel.

Heading up Stob Ban, the wind was howling in and also abruptly gusting.
Now, if wind is (unidirectionally and constantly) strong, you can kind of brace yourself and adjust how you move, but sudden gusts are real sucker punches.
The wind got wilder and wilder the higher we got, almost feeling like someone was angry with us for even being there!
About 50ft from the top, the wind was pinning us down, preventing upwards or downwards movement. The main danger was not getting to the top, but getting off the top. We faced a very exposed ridge, at least where we were, we were being pushed into the slope.
So, by sign language (for it was impossible to hear each other’s voices) we agreed to contour round to hopefully get out of the wind, which took time, but in actual fact was just as exposed. Pursuing the rest of the Grey Corries would have been suicide, so we decided to drop down.
As we contoured further round, the relentless wind pursued us.
I was about 10ft in front of John when I heard the rustle of his jacket.
I turned around and a monstrous gust caught me off guard, taking me off my feet and dumping me several feet away, very, very fortunately not on a big pile of Quartzite! I had got my stick handle wedged under my bottom rib and ripped my jacket, but apart from a painful attack of cramp in my calf, I was unscathed.
Definitely time to get down to lower levels.

(Not many photos taken during this time!)

We plotted a route to lose some height and try to get out of the wind, but it took time and even in the valley bottom, it was still blowing a proper hooly, thankfully a tailwind now though. We passed a young couple in full gear with BIG rucksacks heading up the valley, I wondered if their friendship would still be intact by the end of the day?!

Apart from the rutting calls of stags and ferocious gusts of wind, all was quiet in the pathless valley. A sheet of rain was racing up to meet us but with the wind behind us we made good progress hitting the path and then dribs and drabs of bedraggled daytrippers around Steall Falls and below. All downhill now, onto the road, past a group of shouting workmen wrestling with fallen trees, (the trees were winning) and eventually back to what would be the finish line on a round, Glen Nevis Youth Hostel.

I absolutely LOVE being out in the hills, in any weather, but it was good to get a warm shower, despite having to wipe a ton of Lochaber mud off the shower room floor (twice, after dropping my clown shoes on the way out too!)

Food for thought.
– There are less summits but much, much longer climbs on this round (than the BGR).
– Despite poring over maps for weeks and months, the (real life) scale still caught me out. Humbled is a word that sums it up, (as is spanked!)

I take my hat off to anyone who has had a crack at the Ramsay Round and as for a winter round, those folk are beyond Superhuman!

It was an awesome trip. It opened my eyes and upped my psyche levels 100pts+

There was a lot of talk about this chap whilst we were out on the hills, The Monarch of the Glen, Finlay Wild. 12 times Ben Nevis race winner and Ramsay Round record holder (along with a shedload of other records).
A man of inspiration!

Next step, a potential second exploratory recce in the spring?
The question of going supported or unsupported?
The logistics are complicated. It is a long way to Fort Bill.
The weather can change at the drop of a hat.
The racing calendar is pretty full throughout May and June. Prior to May is a risk as winter lingers on in the north. After June is midges galore season!
So, watch this space

And finally

Watch THIS video NOW 🙂

That’s all for now folks.
Until the next time.

Cheers
Johnny