“Will She take a stud Sir… ?“, she most certainly would today, dry as a bone on pavement but muddy and wet offroad, should’ve worn the heavy duty fell shoes rather than summery trail shoes for this.
Besieged with a plethora of weak excuses its only three Stilton Striders at the most wonderful Great Hucklow Fell race today (Race 4-of the Accelerate Gritstone series), namely Myself, Greg Pettingill ( aka Sir Godfrey De Pettingill) and Steve Dewit (For a Chewit) [Err, his surname is Dewick… -Ed].Having done this race before variety is the name of the game, making it hugely enjoyable, a downhill start for a good while and a good `bum slide` banking to go down open preccedings, half a mile in and all are covered in mud. Over a couple of fields before a long endurance sapping climb to the first summit followed by a very marshy descent on springy marsh-like ground which see`s a few go over teeth first. Another climb to the highest point and another long marshy descent before a nice long strip of tarmac, Greg by the way has taken `Pole Strider` position clearly enjoying himself immensely on the terrain. Back onto the grass and we enter single track woodland which many would label precarious, its slippy and angled, low branches, rocks and tree routes and you have no way of passing the person in front-you think Bluebell woods is treacherous?
We come out in a long valley which is totally made up of ups and downs along sheep tracks, before a sharp pull out of the valley and a V-shaped down and up that makes the last hill. Into the woods and were descending down now to the finish at Great Hucklow, even get me doing a sprint finish! Covered in mud from so many bogs and muddy sections, feels great.
Greg may have made under the hour, I was about 80 seconds behind, didn’t catch Steve`s time but superb race lovely mix of everything and the Stilton top is dripping its quite humid out there, yep all runnable also!
£5.00 entry for a 6.2-ish mile race, Inc Flapjacks of many varieties after the race and probably the best post Banana I’ve ever tasted (locally sourced?) , great day out and great race, i`ll continue to sing very highly its praises. [Rob]