Scottish Hill Running Relay Championships

Comrie Relay Championship HQ

It was late August, a mellow, sunny day that was just perfect. Gregor collected me for the journey up to Comrie, a picture-book village on the edge of the Highlands set in glorious landscapes. The Comrie Relay Races have been going for 19 years and were selected to host the Scottish Hill Running Relay Championships. The setting was mesmeric on the edge of the village, at the cricket ground with the pavilion built on a south-facing slope that was nature's design for basking in the sun as autumn beckoned. 

It was Gregor's first hill race. He had been invited to join the new Queen's Park Athletic Club, which had broken away from Shettleston Harriers earlier in the year. He had joined the previous week and been selected to run the first leg for the V40 team. It was serendipity that we had lived next to Queen's Park for seven years. In the year before Gregor was born, I started running competitively again, beginning with a half marathon in June 1983 and then the Glasgow Marathon in September. My training was largely around Queen's Park most evenings, trying to achieve a PB on every run.

Gregor had raced for ten years entirely on the roads; he had run 2 hours 21 minutes for the marathon and been selected to represent Scotland at International Events. He had always enjoyed running in the hills but was hesitant about competing in hill races. After his 420-mile run up Scotland earlier this year, much of it on trails and in the mountains, he was open to giving hill running a go when Queen's Park called.

When Gregor went for his warm-up before the start of the race, I set off for the first changeover point, walking up Glen Lednock on the Laggan trail, initially on the route of the first leg of the race, then climbing more directly through the spectacular native woodland and crossing the River Lednock on the Shaking Bridge. Across the river was the Lord Melville Monument at the top of Dun Mor. To the north were the craggy slopes below Ben Chonzie that were ascended on the third leg of the relays. 

The handover station was buzzing with 50 or so runners who were to take over on the second leg. I met Matt Ogston, an old running partner, who was a marshal, and Malcolm Patterson, the coach of Queen's Park AC. He was one of many who had transferred from Shettleston Harriers. He had a clear objective for Queen’s Park AC  to become competitive with tthe all-conquering Carnethy Hill Running Club, Scotland's premier hill running club. He seemed to know a lot about me from other runners I had competed with in the 1980s and 90s. I have always regretted that I didn't have the time to train and race for hill running and only competed in about ten races, although I did manage a dozen 2-day mountain marathons. The enthusiasm of the hill runners today reminded me of the easy friendship and companionship that is given in hill running circles. 

Gregor made a good start on the first leg, plugging his transponder chip at the handover station in third place, a couple of minutes behind Carnethy. He decided to run up the Glen to the next handover point to support his team. I returned down the west side of Glen Lednock and called in for a coffee in Comrie before returning to the cricket ground in time for the finish. Carnethy won in 3 hours and 5 minutes, a new course record. Queen's Park men's team came second and the women's team third,  whilst the V40 team were the first vets team home. 

The afternoon sun was beating down on the slope in front of the cricket pitch as the runners arrived and soaked up the sun and some seriously good food served by Strathearn Harriers. A perfect place to enjoy a grand day out and the companionship of the hill running fraternity, complete with happy children and well-exercised dogs. The last team arrived in just less than 5 hours as the prize-giving began. Every team that came in got a rousing reception from the crowd on the hill. There were no fools here.

Path in the Laggan Wood

Second leg summit - Crappich Hill

Lord Melville's Monument on Dun Mor

Shaking Bridge over River Lednock

Handover point for second leg

G finishing first leg

Time to relax at the finish

Queen's Park win V40 team prize - beer

London in the Time of Climate Change

From Primrose Hill

It was my first visit to London since February. Scotland had been washed clean by heavy overnight rain, but from Darlington down, the fields were drained of colour. It looked more like Spain with far too many settlements. The sun was out at King's Cross; a cooling breeze made it a pleasant welcome as I crossed to St Pancras for my local train. As I alighted, the heavens opened, and I had to retrieve my Gore-Tex jacket. I stopped under a shop sun canopy; the man next to me said, "At last". I figured he meant the rain and said: "You should have seen it in Scotland this morning". "Ah, so you've brought it with you" was the jovial reply. The rain hammered down for the 15-minute walk to my destination; my jeans had acted like blotting paper.

After the rains stopped, my daughter suggested a walk through the nearby cemetery and dinner at the local pizza cafe. We entered the cemetery at a new gate and walked for about a kilometre to the other end; the gates had been locked and padlocked. We walked back to the new gate, which also had been closed and the walls were high; we pretended not to panic in front of the grandchildren. Then I noticed the padlock hadn't been locked. We escaped, and the pizzas tasted great, even better than they would have without the cemetery adventure.

The next day we were joined by Gregor; it was fresh and sunny, about 25°C, so we decided on a bus trip to Borough Market for lunch and a jaunt along the South Bank. The afternoon culminated with a humongous ice cream cone at Herne Hill. We sauntered back home; hot town, summer in the city, walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match head. The day reminded me of 1967 when, wherever you were in that balmy summer, the airwaves reverberated to the Whiter Shade of Pale.

The next day we visited Whitstable, one of the more salubrious beach towns along the north Kent coast. I had two friends at University that had lived there, and it has always been an intention to visit.  Greenwich to Manston is the longest stretch of the UK coast that I have never set foot on. It took over an hour on the train from south London. Whitstable was alive with day trippers; the emergency services and RNLI were giving displays of their equipment at the busy harbour. The main street was bustling with seaside shops. The grandchildren went fishing off the harbour walls for crabs and jellyfish whilst we sampled the local ales. Whitstable was slightly disappointing, confirming what an Irish woman from nearby Faversham had told me during my last visit to London. She had decided to move back from North Kent to Ireland. 

Sunday was a lazy day at home, although Gregor managed a long walk in Richmond Park followed by a 22-kilometre run back to Dulwich. The highlight was an Indian meal from Kricket Brixton, a restaurant that never fails to deliver. On Monday the grown-ups went back to work, leaving the children and retired folk to potter about. I decided on a pensioner's day haircut followed by a trip to Regent's Park, a place I had never visited. It was parched and a paler shade of brown. Unlike Dulwich College grounds, which were infinitely greener than their most distinguished alumni, the Royal Parks were not able to water their extensive lawns. The park was far larger than I had imagined and absorbed the lunchtime joggers, the foreign tourists and the citizens of St John's Wood with ease. The boating Lake was awash with families and the cafes were busy. 

I decided to pop up Primrose Hill to get a view of the City; it was heaving with young people looking like a mob of Meerkats as they peered over London's impressive skyscape. I had never been to Camden Market, so I dropped down to the Regent's Canal and followed it to the Market. The canal was lined with houseboats and shaded by overhanging willow trees. Camden Market was a hotspot for young people and tourists. The offerings were outrageously priced, and this continued along the crowded Camden High Street, a contender for the worst shopping street I have ever trundled down. The prize was to stumble on  Mornington Crescent Underground Station just across the road from the Lyttleton Arms. I had got there from Primrose Hill, a game winner! 

My London trip was almost over, although I was enticed into the massive Evans cycle shop at St Pancras and was almost seduced into buying a Checkpoint Gravel Bike at a 20% discount. The problem would be getting it back on the train. As always, the train journey back from King's Cross was on a fairly full train and five and a half hours sitting down is never good for your posture. I treated myself to an Ocean Pie from M&S and watched the Vuelta Mountain stage from Andorra on arriving home. 

Heading for Borough Market

South Bank vista

Whitstable Harbour

A meadow fit for climate change deniers

Regent's Park Boating Lake

Regent's Canal

Camden Market

Got there -the shrine to Humphrey

 

A Septagarian's Wedding

PGS Old Boys with Neil in sling

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, weddings were regular events as the baby boomers, having had fun in the sixties, settled down with mortgages, children, and debt, which was ramped up by inflation. I had been a best man on five occasions for a school friend (Neil), a couple of university friends, a flatmate and my brother. This weekend was a party for Neil on his second wedding to Jessica, his partner of twenty-five years. 

His children and his grandchildren were there along with old school friends and others that I had met over the years. It was a relaxed affair deep in the bucolic fringe of the Lake District at a house and garden straight out of central casting. The marquee, piper, casks of real ale, sparkling wines and the chance to play croquet or table tennis were available, but so were a spectacular array of canapés that were interlaced with conversations from yonder years. No presents had been stipulated in the invite, and dress code was whatever was comfortable, although my choice of jeans was probably a bit naff.

Neil and Jessica had got married at the registry office in Edinburgh City Chambers back in April. The party had been put off until summer, when an outdoor event in a marquee and the grounds of an eighteenth-century house would be more appealing. The only problem was that Neil had fallen down a ladder and broken his ribs and left elbow when painting windows. Neil had been a fearless rock climber and had never fallen when climbing to a high standard in the Alps, the Lake District and Scotland; I could vouch for that, having seconded him up many climbs that had scared the hell out of me.

Jessica's mother hosted the event at her house. It started at 12:30 pm. Neil's stepmother was there, along with a motley assembly of friends and distant relatives who had negotiated the maze of local roads to a location so remote that it was absent on most satnavs. A nearby field was used for parking, and a handful of folk came on bikes. Neil and Jessica had met through cycling. 

The summer heatwave was finally over, and we were regaled by an artistic blue and white sky that induced a relaxed atmosphere, perfect for conversations that provided answers to life's journeys and secrets. I met a distant cousin of Neil, a retired Doctor from Herefordshire who had worked with my old girlfriend's brother, whom I had climbed with in the Avon Gorge. We both had memories of their eccentric Irish father who was the local GP in an idyllic Cotswold village. I met a Pilates teacher who promised to provide me with exercises to improve flexibility after my hip operation. Another of Neil's friends had married one of Neil's former girlfriends, whom I had inadvertently introduced to Neil during our underage drinking days. An old school friend had just published an illustrated children's book; he was always a talented cartoonist and had been an amazing javelin thrower. Jessica's brother was over from Montreal with his family and had 2 days before his flight home. He was taking his boys to Glencoe to climb Buachaille Etive Mor; I was able to show them photographs of the treat they had in store.

I chatted to Neil's children, in their forties now, and probably revealed some scurrilous episodes from Neil's past. I was asked by many about Ian, Neil's older brother and also a good friend who had sadly died in his mid-twenties after a badly executed operation. Neil and I had scattered his ashes on Scafell Pike on a miserable December day before drinking away our sorrows in an Ambleside pub. 

Guests had been asked to provide playlists for the dancing and eating in the marquee. The bubbly and casks of local ale kept people talking during the buffet. People rotated, shared stories and found common ground. The party had fizzed on as time whizzed by, and by 6pm people were drifting off to nether regions. I reflected on the way home that I had been to four funerals and a wedding in the past twelve months; it's a baby boomer's thing.  A film waiting to be made, perhaps?

Fit for a wedding

The setting

 

A Dash up Great Calva

The Dash

Friday, 14 August 2926

Great Calva      690m    1hr   54mins
Little Calva      642m    2hrs 16mins

Ascent:         530 metres
Distance:      11.5 kilometres
Time:            3 hours 42 minutes

I was attending a wedding party for Neil and Jessica in the North Lakes and decided to leave earlyish and climb one of my remaining singleton Wainwright hills. After the heatwave of recent weeks, I had been awoken by a thunderstorm, and it was raining as I left. The M74 was relatively quiet. After Carlisle, I navigated the narrow lanes to Outhwaite using satnav, then, using OS maps online, to the start of the walk on the Cumbria Way at Peter House Farm. I squeezed into the last parking space. I was feeling a bit anxious having struggled up Ben Gullipen in the heat a couple of days earlier, but nothing ventured. All the hills were enveloped in grey cloud after weeks of sunshine, wildfires and eclipses.

The track was just what I needed, a steady incline and the prospect of reaching the imaginatively named Whitewater Dash, a soda syphon of a waterfall on the Dash Beck, that unlike most water courses in England was still spouting H2O. At the top of the Dash, I was about to start the steep path onto Little Calva when a couple warned me against it. I followed them along the Cumbria Way for another mile and found what I thought was the start of a narrow path through the heathers to Great Calva. I could see them a couple of hundred metres ahead, but they had found the real path; I had been hoodwinked by a sheep's path that disappeared into a bog along the stream before eventually joining the path that was scored into the peat and heather. And then, just twenty minutes of a slog to the summit, enlightened by a chat with a couple from Middlesbrough who were descending and on the way to Bakestall. 

My last visit to Great Calva, in 2010, had included Bakestall. They were part of 10 Wainwrights climbed with Gregor in a frantic day and a half involving 4 separate walks; I had moaned about the tedious slog up the heather-clad Great Calva despite having speed and fitness on my side. Arriving at the summit, the clouds had dispersed although they lingered on Skiddaw and Blencathra. The woman from Middlesbrough had made a disdainful reference to Mungrisdale Common, a piss-take of a hill listed by Wainwright. My sentiments exactly. It is no more than a gentle uplift of less than 10 metres on the descent from Blencathra towards Great Calva. Wainwright had probably stopped for lunch there to do a sketch. 

I decided to descend via the adjacent hill, Little Calva. It was an easy path across to its flat summit, which was decorated by a small gathering of stones that certainly didn't constitute a cairn. Obviously Wainwright didn't have lunch here; otherwise it would be listed. The descent was gentle at first, following some fence posts until the final 120 metres of descent, which were steep as they gauged out a channel through the heather. Arriving at the Cumbria Way, I made reasonable time down to Peter House Farm, but it had not been a dash; last time the walk had also included Bakestall and took 2 hours 41 minutes. This time it had taken almost 4 hours, including a couple of stops for chats and 15 minutes on Great Calva having some lunch and imbibing the joy of a summit. Summits are not only viewpoints but self-inflicted endorsements of achievement. 

I had booked a hotel for the night in Cockermouth, one of the few places, even in this less visited part of the Lake District, that had a vacancy. I showered and changed and then drove to Hesketh Newmarket, where the wedding party goers were meeting for a meal at the Crown Inn, the fuelling place of Mount Everest junkies Chris Bonington and Doug Scott. It was the perfect summer evening, but the occasion was interrupted by a government announcement on the danger of wildfires, all of our phones going off at regular intervals. Apparently, a fire chief in the Midlands had demanded the warning, although for most of the UK there was no such danger. The consternation was viral, another example of a centralised UK government decision that should have been devolved to localities in danger.  Scotland had been subjected to heavy rain for the previous 48 hours.

Conversations resumed after phones were switched off. Chance to catch up with old school friends, and acquaintances of Neil whom I had met at various birthday and other significant events since we first became friends at school 65 years ago. We had spilled ou to the street and mingled with locals before being herded into a back room for our meals. Driving 20 miles back to Cockermouth at 10:30pm was a bit of a trial, but sleep was easy.

The next morning, after my first full breakfast for over a year, I explored Cockermouth for a couple of hours. On the edge of the Lake District, it has a friendly demeanour, located on the banks of the River Derwent and with some fine buildings. The main street was host to many independent shops, including a splendid bookshop, and half a dozen coffee shops with not a franchise amongst them. I visited an arts fair and found paintings by a local artist; she had imaginatively combined her paintings with OS maps to make greeting cards. She had one of Slater's Bridge in Little Langdale, one of our very special places. After a coffee and charging the car, I drove back to the wedding destination near Caldbeck for the wedding party.

Binsey from Cumbria Way

Path to Great Calva

Great Calva summit

Great Calva from Little Calva

Skiddaw from Little Calva

A peek of Thirlmere beyond Lonscale Fell

Slater's Bridge

 

Eclipse of the Sun

 

7:25pm 12 August 2026

There was a great deal of publicity for the total eclipse of the sun on 12 August, but that was for Iceland and Spain. The UK will have to wait until 2090 for a total eclipse. So in the UK we had a partial eclipse visible in most of England. In Scotland, the eclipse was largely concealed by the cloud cover.  I was a bit underwhelmed.

I think Pink Floyd did it better in 1973.

And all that is now

And all that is gone

And all that's to come

And everything under the sun is in tune (Everything)

But the sun is eclipsed by the moon

Spain had a total eclipse

The elusive Ben Ledi

 

Ben Ledi from Ben Gullipen 

Loch Venachar and Ben Ledi

I have climbed Ben Ledi over thirty times, more than any other Scottish Mountain. I could climb it from my in-laws' back garden and did so several times a year, sometimes carrying skis to the top for some dodgy descents. I trained for mountain marathons by running it in the 1980s and 90s and occasionally dragged my children and their friends up. Although it is less than half an hour away from home, I have only made a handful of visits since moving house several years ago.

It has been my intention to climb it since my hip operation, but I had been diffident about attempting it too soon. I had climbed the local smaller hills half a dozen times and had a couple of days hillwalking in the Lake District. After my weekly exercise session in Callander and on a perfect summer's day, I decided the time was right for Ben Ledi. It was midday as I drove to the start point at the Stank; the car park was full and so were the parking places on the A84 to the north. It was the day before the schools went back and families and teachers were maxing out on their summer holidays;  I decided to make a shorter excursion up Ben Gullipen instead. As recently as late 2004, it had taken a mere 45 minutes if I ran the less steep sections on the ascent and ran all the way down.

It was 27°C as I began the seriously steep section at the start of the ascent, stopping every few minutes; and when I reached the gentler gradients, there was no oomph in the legs. I ambled to the summit in 45 minutes. The reward was Ben Ledi looking magnificent set against the crystal-clear blue skies. I was thankful that the car park had been full. It would have taken a couple of hours to reach the summit in the heat at today's pace. I began to justify my walk by telling myself that it is sometimes better to admire the mountains from below. I walked down at a sedate pace; the hip was no problem; it was a sore back and breathing that held me back. I was home by 2pm. My exercise class and a slow plod up and down a micro hill were sufficient to prompt a heatwave-induced siesta. Ben Ledi could wait.