Broken Runner.
I've been itching to get out for a bivi run since Crete, wishing I'd taken a tarp with me or taken the massive fleece blanket from our accommodation out for a walk in the local hills.
Instead I packed a sleeping bag AND a quilt into my rucsac and headed into the Dreitch November Peak Moorlands.
I started by the cafe & Childrens play park in the valley. We had lunch 'inside the caf as I had ambitiously exposed my legs for the running so to sit around eating food, we sat in a room with warm fire.
I was Ok running through the park so I bravely got my feet wet at the stepping stones, knowing they would get dry again eventually - or if I got miserable enough I'd put on my waterproof Socks.
Even the heron looked soggy when I passed it. I taunted myself with a run past the nice warm pub then fields to the Stannington Road where it's pounding tarmac for a few hundred metres before branching off again onto a track then into farmers fields. Just as I was getting a bit too cool - on top of the moors running into the breeze - I bumped into a work colleague walking with her son. I slowed to a walk to talk to them until they turned off for home. I braved one more field before stopping to put my gloves and windproof on.
Half a mile later I concluded my legs were too cold and my hands needed something and sat on the pea-gravel driveway of the house at the end of the track to put on my knee warmers. I reached in my pocket and pulled out one lonely glove. Shit. At least I had my trusty marigolds so I put those on for a while.
The track continues to climb to a bench. By then I'd concluded the knee warmers were not going to stay up so I took a proper sit to add tights instead. They are the tights I normally sleep in so had to dig them out from the depths of my rucsac and in doing so found the other pair of thin gloves that I had packed to go underneath the marigolds. We were cooking! Along the farm track, up the hill to Ronkersley and down towards Bradfield but I turned off to head up towards open country as a black lab in the farm below had a woof at me.
Out of sight of the farm I took a bee-line along a fence and through a stalker's gate to follow the grousing line along a wall. My inner Canadian was relieved to be wearing hiker's orange whilst my inner Brit felt a tad too visible to the next farm up the valley so I hid behind the wall to make my way up. I turned my spot on in case I got shot.
The going was tussocky but relatively dry so I stopped for a while, out of the breeze in a grouse butt to get some rest and snack. It was squelchy in there so not at all tempting to pitch up early.
It wasn't a long rest. I had designs on making it to Fairholmes for early dinner before starting my run home, leaving myself as little as possible to do on Monday morning.
Braver out of sight of the farms again I stayed to the right of the wall but it was consistently soggy & difficult-going so I moved left, then back when I ran out of wall and was faced with a fence. I hadn't planned this part and had to dig the Garmin out to make sense of it. I've recently lost/expired my 0S Maps license so the boundary of open country wasn't easy to spot. I guessed and took a visual bearing to intersect with the corner of another path, the one I'd be slogging back up had I continued on my route instead of taking the stalker's gate. As soon as I set off it started to rain. For a moment I dreaded I'd lose my spot bearing in the mist but the cloud was high enough and I didn't need to get a compass out - just my coat. I was overjoyed to find I could pull my waterproof trousers on over my skort without feeling ruffled up & uncomfortable. Aside from the feeling of remoteness, it was a bit of a relief to get back on the path, though it was then a choice between going out of my way, or more tussock-hopping to continue in the planned direction. I was getting tired. I was happy to give up on the plan.
I carried on downhill to where the Peacocks live, crossed 2 roads and fields and was back into my faithful valley, womb-like, warm. I took a video at the bridge to record my joy. At this point I was still intending a bivi but not here, not right by the road.
Part way up the slope I realised I'd need the water to make my own dinner so I filtered some into one bottle then filled the filter bottle and set off again.
My next destination was headstone and I wanted to get there before dark. I had vague desires of setting up my bivi nearby but on the exposed moorland it wasn't going to be tonight. The weather was just getting wetter and wetter. My headstone photo was the last I took before my camera was packed into my waterproofs pocket. It was both too wet and too dark for this camera. Besides, it's not like there was going to be any sunset through the flat, grey cloud.
I retraced to the main path and soon my inquisitiveness to find out where that track went and my desire to traverse to Stanage via High Neb all crumpled into a desire to go home and behave like a normal person as I realised I needed to get out and put on my head torch before it was too dark to see.
• • •
I could have taken a much shorter route home. A distinct path led back down to the valley and would have cut off a massive corner for me. I n retrospect, this might have been a good idea as it led to golden leaved trees where there might have been some decent shelter at a good time of day to stop.
However, it felt too early to stop and there were some prospective spots on my planned route back which were speaking to me.
• • •
With the light dangling around my neck for now, I ran on up to the path that skirts the reservoir dyke and turned left towards home instead of right towards more adventure. It felt like a good decision, I mean I still had to work tomorrow. I'd not totally given up on the bivi idea and still kept an eye out for spots but everywhere was sodden and every step took me closer to civilisation
In a last flash of wildness, somewhere, the sun started to sink low enough that colour started to spread through the sky - somewhere far away. My cloud-free view was way, way to the South of West. If there hadn't been a hill in the way it would have been over Buxton, down to Shropshire. The gap in the clouds turned momentarily silver then fawny brown and mauve. I photographed it because it was the only sunset I had and my camera responded that it was definitely too dark to focus on anything. It made one attempt and then refused to take any further pictures, the sun had gone too far.
Not much later I turned my head torch on. The benches were all sodden and as I got closer and closer to the city, civilisation began to creep in.
• • •
The bridges over the dyke were concrete and closed off with fencing. Attractive-looking bomb holes had puddles in the bottom. Soon car lights were visible on the road at the end and the shelter with no roof was far from attractive.
I joined the road, now intent on heading home to the Waitrose pizza I put in the fridge last night. A happy cyclist called out a greeting as he whizzed past on the downhill but at least I was warm and wet, even if he would be home well before me.
When I reached the path home I decided not to run down the bridleway but take the top path for a change and because it's more remote. It all seemed too early for stopping but, you never know. When I heard the sound of the river next to me I was confused. I'd not been this way in ages and had forgotten how to get onto the top path. A dog barked at the head torch stumbling around by the river, talking to itself and backtracking until it found the path that routed up the side of the gritstone crag. The rock was dyed to the white of limestone - so drenched in dripping, silver lichen and sparkling in the LED torch light. I was soon back amongst the twigs and brown leaves.
There are a few bivi spots up here I've contemplated in the past but again I made excuses - too wet, too early, too overgrown, too close to the path. I investigated new spots which seemed buried deep in the trees but they were just on other paths - side-routes, dog-runs through the bracken. The seeds of the waitrose pizza were well and truly sewn.
In one last-ditch attempt I followed the dog tracks to caves that I had stumbled across in the summer. The one I found was no more than a wide crack in the ground and it was dripping wet. Nervous of falling into any more holes in the dark, I made my way back to the main path where my brain started to play tricks on me,foreshortening the route to believe I was nearly back until I remembered the next hurdles and how much further it was to go.
Sooner or later, "too soon to stop" turned into "dinnertime" and my body began to complain but the rain was persistent and even when it wasn't raining, I didn't want to stop to eat in case the rain started up again. Bivying wasn't an option as long as I was running along a 6 inch ledge 2/3 of the way up a precipitous slope.
Eventually my body protested at the big drop into the stream bed by the golf course. My stomach rumbled down the down hill, my brain crashed and took us on a scramble through the undergrowth before realising we'd missed the river crossing and had to backtrack then my legs all-but-refused to carry me back up the hill on the other side. I knew I'd need to stop soon.
• • •
I'd mostly dried off and it hadn't rained for a while but when a flat ledge appeared amongst some blackthorn bushes, I couldn't pass up the opportunity to test my tarp-pitching in trees without any stakes.
I snaked under the thorns, attached one third of the tarp to three tree points then crawled into the far corner to tension the whole thing out. One side flopped down and wafted in the breeze but there wasn't much breeze so it just made the whole thing much cosier. I'd never have slept with the fine, ultra-light tarp stretched out across black thorn but while I was awake I could keep an eye on it and I was really pleased I'd pitched it in no time. I dug out a knife and the lump of Saucisson I'd carried and as I sliced off a chunk of meat the heavens opened and I was dry and cosy in my little Den, texting TSK that I was heading home in a bit.
The rain didn't fall for long so I soon stuffed the tarp back in its bag, loaded up my sit mat and got moving as quickly as possible to pump blood back around my body - mostly to my hands - my fingers numb from handling a cold knife and fiddling with knots. After enough of a jogette to get the feeling back I gave up and walked the rest of the way home and at 8.30pm sat down to my pizza. At least I got the most out of the day - around 25 kms worth, despite having spent the best part of the daylight packing.
Lesson learned : thought I'd pack an extra quilt for sleep warmth but I think a coat would've been more useful for rest stops.
