From Petra Bijsterveld…
The Dales High Way is a Punk Panther ultra event along the long distance walking route of the same name, which roughly runs parallel to the Settle and Carlisle Railway. 90 miles and 14,600 ft take you from Saltaire to Appleby-in-Westmorland via Skipton, Settle, Dent and Sedbergh. As well as being beautiful and at times quite remote the route is distinctly hilly, especially when compared to the more well known Dalesway, with the major climbs being Ingleborough and the Howgill Fells. For runners who particularly wish to do a 100 miler there is an option to do an additional 14 miles looping over High Cup Nick. I had no such desire, especially as it goes past the finish which is a big psychological challenge.
Four Harriers have done this race in recent years: Jane McCarthy, Andrew Merrick (both ran the 104 miles) and Ritchie Williamson ran it in 2021 in very wet conditions and Matthew Kennedy ran in 2022, setting the FTK on the 90 miles, completing it in 19 hours 37 minutes.
Ritchie spontaneously and very kindly offered to support me during my race, an offer I gratefully made use of. Whilst it is totally possible to take part in any PP event without crew, as there are well-stocked checkpoints with the best marshals, and you can use drop bags for kit, it is actually really nice to have someone looking after you when it comes to long events which go on through the night. It also means you have a car to sit in and keep warm whilst you change your clothes, shoes or eat your pot noodle, not something I had considered until Ritchie pointed that out. Although it’s May it gets pretty chilly once it’s dark. Ritchie even provided a blanket!
I had reccied the entire route in March and April, walking it in sections with my friend Gill Myers over 5 separate days (and travelling on the brilliant Settle to Carlisle train). The recces really helped me feel confident about the navigation, which isn’t particularly hard with a gpx file on your watch anyway, but I expected (and this turned out to be true) to run on my own as the field would be small and I did not want to come unstuck in remote areas, especially not at night.
The weather forecast was better than anyone could have hoped for and I kept fearing it would change to more typical Yorkshire conditions (as we had certainly experienced on our recces), but I lucked out with bright sunny weather, a little warm on the Saturday (but nothing compared to the Dalesway last August when it was 30 degrees), no wind to speak of, at least not in low lying areas, a clear night and zero rain.
15 runners lined up by the Victoria Hall in Saltaire for the 6 am start. I was very grateful to Hilda who had given me a lift there and waved me off. At least she was now up in time for the Saturday efforts! The first section is to Addingham via Ilkley Moor, and I was pleased to meet Jane and Andrew McCarthy above White Wells and Jill Ezard a little further on. By the time I reached CP1 in Addingham just after 9am the sun was out and my windproof came off (and stayed off until Ingleborough). Nice to see fellow Harrier Simon Stokes on the CP. I reached Skipton around 10.30 and quickly manoeuvred my way through a busy market with too many people in the way, I was glad to leave it behind and head for Sharp Haw and then the next CP at Hetton (25 miles). Not the Angel, just the standard PP fold-out table in a lay-by! But very welcome it was. Being in a competitive mood I checked when the leading female runner had come through and was told she was already an hour in front of me, so that straight away told me she likely was in a different league to me which was good to know (she ended up winning the 90 mile race, finishing 4 and a half hours before me). Onwards to CP3 at Feizor at 42 miles where Ritchie would be. Quite a long section taking in Weets Top, Malham Cove and Settle. If you are not into crowds of people Malham is definitely not the place to go on a beautiful sunny Saturday afternoon in May. I fought my way through the ice cream queue and past painfully slow (and it’s not even as if I was running in any literal sense of the word, it’s uphill!) moving walkers, including crotchety parents and complaining children. I was glad to move on to the open moor and admire Attermire Scar before descending into Settle. On this steep descent my quads first started to make themselves known and express with signals of pain that they were not happy. Like having early onset muscle soreness instead of the familiar DOMS. This was about 35 miles in and as I have done a number of ultras and never had this issue it was an unwelcome surprise. Still, at this point it was manageable. Through Settle to Feizor where there was a warm welcome from the CP3 marshals and Ritchie. A brief stop and I was off again to tackle Ingleborough, it was now about 17:30. Having had quite bad weather for this section on my recce I was pleased to now climb it in glorious sunshine. It was busy with walkers coming down off the top having done the 3 Peaks walk, they were all nice and encouraged me, they must have met some other PP runners ahead of me as they all seemed to know which event I was in. I found the climb OK, and enjoyed the view from the trig point and the lovely early evening light for a moment before descending towards Chapel-le-Dale. This is the path the 3 Peaks race runners come up and it is very steep. I am a very poor descender and hopeless on this kind of terrain. I had hated it on the recce and I hated it even more now. I longed for a nice track session instead. Utterly alone I had to be especially careful. I pondered how all the fell runners in the club would laugh (in a kindly way I am sure) at my pitiful progress here. At least it was dry and a lot warmer than on the recce, but my quads were now really complaining loudly. Took my own sweet time on the steep section and at least once I reached the flags I could run again though the hard surface gave my quads another pounding and I was glad to reach the grass. At Chapel-le-Dale Ritchie was waiting for me, by now it was chilly and I sat in the car for a few minutes whilst swapping over my soft flasks and putting on another layer of clothing. The next CP was Broadrake only a couple of miles away where no support was allowed so I would next see Ritchie at Dent. I pushed on quickly to reach Broadrake in the last of the daylight around 21:00. Here PP provided hot food, I chose veggie lasagne and a cup of tea, I then donned my head torch and set off for Dent. Initially I liked this section, I loved seeing the Blea Moor signal box beyond Ribblehead lit up from miles away, but the climb and descent became tedious on rocky paths which made for slow going. A brief meet-up with Ritchie at Dent (and the toilets were open, bonus!) just after midnight and I pressed on to Sedbergh via Longstone Fell. Only 5.4 miles, initially climbing on a minor road, but once on the moor it becomes very boggy. I did not really remember the bogginess from the recce, I think we had a dry spell then, because looking now at the guidebook it does mention the soggy underfoot conditions. Having kept my feet more or less dry so far, my shoes and socks soon became beyond soaked and I found it a miserable section. I guess the time of night now also impacted my mood a bit. I managed to run again once I reached the road in Sedbergh and opted to change my shoes and socks, deal with a surprise blister (I never get blisters! There’s a first for everything) as well as donning my long leggings, thick jacket and winter mittens ready for the Howgills. Ritchie had made one of my pot noodles which I wolfed down after which I set off for the next and last major climb. By now it was 02:30 and 67 miles into the race.
I am sure the gods had added height to the Howgills since my recce a few weeks ago. That’s how it felt anyway, it was so tough going up with the mileage already in my legs. Still, I loved every single minute of the Howgills. On my own, in the dark, but with the knowledge that the first glimpses of light would appear very soon. I was happy with my navigation, it is easy with the gpx of course but still, we had made a couple of small errors in the recce on those vague grass tracks which we then corrected and I remembered them all. Take the right fork, not the left, at the spot where we talked about the recipe for a ‘weetabix cake’. Funny how those snippets of conversation stick in your head. There are also points where your Garmin will bleep ‘off course’ but actually the tracks soon converge again and you can ignore the alert. It’s knowing which ones to ignore and here the recce paid its dividend again. As I climbed up the sky started to have a faint glimmer of orange and pink in the east, even though it was only 3:30, with a small orange crescent moon above it. I knew sunrise would be at 5:10, it’s amazing how early you start seeing some light appear. By the time I reached the trig point on the Calf it was 4:20, there was quite a lot of light and the birds were singing. It was an amazing place to be by myself. The sun rose above the hills as I travelled the long descent and I looked down on a beautiful inversion in the valley. Perfection only marred by the pain emanating from my quads which were now threatening full on industrial action. Not even working to rule, but a complete strike. By the time I reached the Wath CP and Ritchie I couldn’t really run at all anymore. Stiles had become complete torture, especially stepping down from them. Still, only about 14 odd miles to go, which is walkable. I had another pot noodle, some hot tea with sugar, swapped my cold weather clothes for the cap and sunglasses and set off for Newbiggin-on-Lune via the road, turning off onto the moor towards Great Kinmond, a last (1200ft) sting in the tale of hills in this route. Passing through fields along Great Asby Scar, which is a lesser known but fine limestone pavement, and descending towards the final CP at Great Asby. Just above the village lies a decidedly messy and indeed unsanitary looking working farm which had not won a beauty prize when I saw it on the recce. The public footpath goes through the farmyard, and this Sunday morning it was filled to bursting with cows and their calves eating hay. Twice I opened the gate to try and go through and several of them came towards me. And they didn’t look as if they wanted to discuss the merits of ultra running with me over a hay bale. They looked as unfriendly as the entire farm did. Now what? I wasn’t going to risk life and limb but had to get through. I knew another runner had been only just ahead of me, how on earth had he gone through? Was he good with cows, or had they only just been released into the yard? Anyway, pondering that didn’t help me here. Tried to find a way round, walked along the stone walls, nothing scalable. Certainly not with my barely functioning legs. Tried to shout in case the farmer was around, no joy. I was getting cold now too. It was a low moment in the event. Already reduced to walking, now I had ground to a complete halt. I knew there were runners behind me but a long way away. But hey, I had support, and thank goodness the checkpoint was down the road, my brain kicked in and I rang Ritchie and in due course he appeared in the car at the other end of the farmyard with one of the CP marshals, Emily who is also a PP runner, and unbeknownst to me, really good with cows! With one or two ‘shoos’ they all scarpered. It’s all in the arm signals, making yourself big! Ritchie knew exactly where I was due to the tracker, thanks to technology. And of course the tracker had accurately recorded the time I had waited there (37 minutes!) and Punk Panther RD Ryk Downes kindly adjusted my finishing time.
Cow crisis over I visited the last CP and kept on walking the remaining 6 miles to Appleby which I managed in an hour and a half. Completely unable to run, certainly not downhill, I could still walk at a good marching pace. I was delighted to touch the Moot Hall in Appleby. Whilst I will never run a Bob Graham and touch that most famous of Moot Halls in Keswick, this did feel like a very special moment to me. My time, adjusted for the cow-induced delay was 28 hours and 48 minutes and I was the 2nd female out of 5 as well as 1st (and only) F50. This was a tough event, even tougher than I had expected, but I loved (almost) every single minute of it.
With thanks again to Ritchie who did a fantastic job supporting me and gave up most of his weekend including a night’s sleep, and who also drove me home from Appleby. And to Jane McCarthy and Andrew Merrick who shared their experiences of this event with me, which inspired me to enter it.