North Leeds Fell Runners

Tag: Ilkley Moor

Hello!

23 August 2021 /

Last week, we were delighted to host Emma Beddington on her first ever fell run. She is filling in for Rhik Samadder’s series for the Guardian on trying new experiences: Emma’s were fell running and swordfighting (yes, yes, not together). So she turned up promptly with photographer Richard Saker at our club run meeting spot in Burley-in-Wharfedale, managed not to look too terrified, then set off on a specially designed “not *too* brutal” route devised by Mike. And although you may not think it from this piece as she does not throw flowers at herself, she did brilliantly. Also, Emma, there was nothing pretend about those breathers!

Anyway if you have found your way here via Emma’s piece, welcome. If you are local to Leeds — that includes flat York — please do come and run with us one evening, you would be very welcome. Unlike most clubs, we are happy for you to run with us without joining, although of course we are always happy to have new members. We do insist though that you fill in a track and trace Google form that you can find on this website under “Covid.”

Here is Emma’s piece:

Emma Beddington tries … fell running: ‘It’s like dragging bags of cement uphill – only the bags are my legs’

My favourite part of childhood summer holidays with my dad was our trip to the Yorkshire Dales agricultural show, a respite from his usual gruelling regime of mountain walks and examining dead fauna. Between prize rams and displays of trimmed leeks we watched the fell-running races: infants and gnarled pensioners scampering up and then down a sheer crag, all for a biscuit and a certificate.

“Look at the little bastards!” Dad would exclaim, gesturing incredulously, plastic pint glass slopping bitter as wiry five-year-olds whizzed past, legs a blur. Lumpen by his side, mouth crammed with cake, I would feel an obscure longing: why wasn’t I a fearless, muddy-kneed dynamo?

Nearly 40 years later, I’m joining North Leeds Fell Runners for a run on Ilkley Moor to scratch that itch. “Fell running is an all-terrain sport,” the Fell Runners Association website explains, “and often involves routes with no paths … You should expect open moorland, rocky grass, bogs, tussocks, heather, boulder fields and some very steep climbs and descents.”

You’re not a proper fell runner if you don’t point a lot.
Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

I live in York, perhaps the flattest place in the UK, and my exercise regime is booking then skipping Pilates classes. I did one practice run, which I thought went OK until I got home and realised I had been out for only 12 minutes: this will be an uphill task in more ways than one. Limbering up in singlets and shorts, the North Leeds runners offer little reassurance. The age range is wide but everyone looks intimidatingly fit, even Burt the dog (he’s not in shorts).

I’m terrified. Ominously, before we start, I have to provide an emergency contact, then a woman called Liz says I’m very brave – immediate alarm bells – and a man called Dave tells me it’s fine until your peripheral vision fails. He’s laughing, so it might be a joke.

Thankfully, Mike, the unofficial run-leader, (65, with frighteningly long legs) has devised a “not too brutal” route for the group I’m joining: him, Hilary and Clare, who are recovering from injury and returning after a break respectively, photographer Richard and my friend Rose (a proper, hard-core fell runner who has volunteered for “keep Emma alive” duty). The bigger, faster groups choose their routes, then we’re off, through the gate on to the steep, bracken-lined moor.

Rose claims it’s a misconception that fell runners always run, but my impression is of accidentally joining a greyhound race: lithe frames whiz past at absurdly high speed. I’m going nowhere fast. It feels like dragging bags of wet cement uphill, except the bags are my legs. I’m overtaken by a limping sheep.

Far above, Mike points out the “fast lads”, already sprinting across the horizon. “If it helps,” says Rose conversationally as I stagger past, sweat in my eyes, chest itchy and heart trying to escape from my mouth, “your body is in shock.” I’m not sure it does.

What does help is the group often pretending they need a breather. This compassionate fiction keeps me going, plus my guilt at poor Richard, who – Ginger Rogers to my lumbering Fred Astaire – is doing everything I am, but backwards, with a bag of camera gear.

‘The sky feels huge, the clouds shading from cotton wool to angry black’ … Beddington and her fellow runners take in the views. Photograph: Richard Saker/The Observer

Finally, mercifully, the gradient levels out. As the prospect of imminent death recedes, I can look around: we’re surrounded by honey-scented purple heather punctuated by limestone outcrops.

The sky feels huge, the clouds shading from cotton wool to angry black, blue sky and diffuse golden sun. It’s wonderfully silent until the plump grouse startle ahead of us, grumbling. I’m running on Ilkley Moor, baht’at (unless my fleecy headband counts)! I’m starting to understand the appeal.

Perhaps sensing that, Mike’s encouragement becomes more muscular. “Come on!” he shouts. “Get moving!” It’s like walking with my dad, except he isn’t taunting me with a withheld Mars bar. The top is worth it: I love the 12 Apostles – a windswept stone circle – and the panoramic view over the Dales, Pennines and moors.

Instead of savouring it, however, it’s time to try “straight-lining”: picking a destination and heading there, path be damned. Mike hares off into an arbitrary patch of boggy, stony heather, like some kind of moorland anarchist. “Pick your feet up,” Rose advises. “And don’t get too close to the runner in front,” adds Hilary. There’s absolutely no danger of that.

The final mile is a sheer scramble downhill. “Brakes off, brain out,” Mike says: trust your legs and instincts. Against all odds, I love it with all my risk-averse heart. “This is great,” I hear myself saying, gleefully hopping from rock to tussock. I feel fearless, playful and childlike; subsequently pictures reveal I look like a flustered matron who has left Zoom Zumba in a hurry to bring the washing in.

But the feeling is real: I reach the bottom tingling all over. Lactic acid? Endorphins? Who cares?

The faster runners reappear, barely puffed after twice the distance; Burt the dog still wants to play. I’m ecstatically disinhibited at merely surviving. “How do you stretch your bum?” I ask peripheral vision Dave, a total stranger.

On the way home after chips in the pub – the best bit – I send my father a picture of me in “action”. “Wow!” he replies. I can almost hear his pint spilling: mission accomplished.

Would I go back?

North Leeds run all through winter, with head torches. Apparently, it’s stunning in the snow. Maybe I’ll … ha, of course I won’t. No.

Smugness points: 5/5

She survived. No sheep were harmed in the making of this image. Photograph by Richard Saker/The Observer

Dick Hudson’s

3 May 2019 /

My friend N. doesn’t do much fell running, but now, after marshalling for a few years at Three Peaks, has decided to do it in earnest. She began looking for qualifiers right after the race last weekend, and found Black Fell. Pre-entry but a guaranteed entry for elite runners. She asked a reasonable question: is this normal for a fell race? Isn’t it a bit, well, elitist?

I agreed that it was. And that it wasn’t normal. There’s none of that at fell races usually, I told her. Your changing room is the boot of the car in a freezing car-park on top of a windy hill or in a wet field, you might get a wash in a river if you’re lucky, there are no airs and graces, and no elitism when you can mix with Brownlees and their ilk in the pub afterwards.

N. had run Dick Hudson’s last year and decided to do it again. It was my first time running it. I wasn’t sure my legs were up to it as they’ve been sore with DOMs all week, but by Thursday that had worn off. And who can resist a race named after a pub?

The weather didn’t look promising, and it didn’t sound promising when the rain pounded on the skylights in my house just before we were due to set off. I suspected Wharfedale Harriers wouldn’t require full kit but I took it anyway, and we headed to Ilkley. We found Hilary, Emma, Ann and Clare already in the car park, and set off up to what Wharfedale calls the Barrier car park (but I and Google call the White Wells car park). There, for N, was a perfect fell race set up: numbers being dispensed out of the back of a van. I reckon there were about 150 by the time we gathered at the barrier (I was 100). The rain had stopped, my jacket had been put away, and we were off. I was carrying water and a jacket; many runners had no kit at all.

N. had told me that everyone goes however they like up the ridge, and I watched people go up two different routes, both of which looked short and steep and soft underfoot, but I followed the people going the conventional way up to White Wells. I thought I’d be walking most of this climb but my legs did an extraordinary thing and kept running. I kept Ann in my sights because she’s such a good climber, and managed to stay with her until the top of the moor when it flattened out and she zoomed off. I’d looked at the map before setting off and knew it was an out and back and that we went past the Twelve Apostles, but I couldn’t remember ever running the route to Dick Hudson’s before. I know the moors of Ilkley and Rombald enough to recognise paths, but not enough that I can’t get lost. Even so I didn’t pay much attention to where I was heading but just followed the Otley man in front of me. There were a few miles of nice gradient, though it was rocky and tricky. I heard someone fall behind me and turned to look, but she had people helping her so I carried on. It turns out it was Clare, who twisted her ankle and had to walk back. (Hope you recover quickly Clare.)

It was raining by now and I was cold but I was running well enough that I decided to run through it. I’d had a tough time at Three Peaks with cramp, so I was taking advantage of the months of training that were in my legs. Onwards, and then a strange thing started happening, and a few people overtook me who seemed to be young, quick men. I couldn’t understand why: were they just having a bad day? But I dismissed the mystery and perservered, all the way to the final steep field and the descent to Dick Hudson’s pub, where I shouted my number to the sodden-looking but cheerful marshal, touched the gate, turned round and set off back.

I got through the gate again and there was Rowan from Kirkstall coming towards me. This made no sense. He is tremendously quick. But sometimes he likes to float around races so I thought perhaps this was one of them. Perhaps he had chosen an uphill route to the ridge that had been really long? But I put it out of my mind because I had to concentrate on what was feeling like a slog, because it was (nice long descent = not so nice uphill return). My legs were heavy and I was cold. But the time and distance passed, and we got to the flagstones, and I managed to get some places by hurtling down the flagstones. Then it happened again, that much faster runners were overtaking me. I gave way to a couple, as I could hear their speed was greater than mine, and by now we were on narrow trods, as I’d followed people going the softer way back past the conifers and bypassing White Wells. I didn’t much want to be hefted into the bracken by someone who couldn’t control his momentum so giving way was self-preservation.

I enjoyed the descent, although my contact lens was giving me trouble, making it harder than it should have been to see all the rocks and obstacles, particularly now the evening was turning to dusk. But I stayed upright until just before the path, when I apparently decided a bum-slide would be better. Then a quick pelt downhill to the finish, which in good fell-race tradition was someone taking numbers at the barrier.

With the post-race milling around, I learned the answer to the mystery of the improbably quick yet behind-me blokes. They had all got lost.

What? On an out-and-back?

Not that I can laugh, having got lost on Ingleborough out-and-back. But I’d got lost in thick clag. And these moors were our local ones. And Wharfedale Harriers had put a map on their website. Straight out, straight back. I heard a couple of varieties of lostness: Rowan said he’d ended up at a barn (maybe the shooting hut on Burley Moor?). Others said they turned left after Twelve Apostles rather than going straight on, which would take them to Horniman’s Well. Most had done a mile and a bit extra, including David from Chapel A, who I have never before beaten in a race and never will again.

I really love evening fell races, and this was a beauty: the gathering twilight of the moor, the silence studded by the sound of thudding feet and sometimes a bird, the feeling when you finish that you can’t think of anything else you’d rather have done with your evening, then the satisfying fatigue that comes from effort, that rolls you into your bed, where you run the race all over again in your dreams.

—Rose George

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