On 6th December 2024, I packed up the van and headed to Northumberland with Pippin and Will in tow. Notifications kept pinging through from the NLFR 2024 Whatsapp chat. Will relayed these to me with a chuckle. “Wild Boar fell race is cancelled on grounds of safety and so is Gathering Winter Fools”. Still, no news on the Goat, which I was heading to do. It felt like Will spent the entire 3-hour journey telling me about the Beaufort scale: “60 mph wind on top of the Cheviots, and sleet! Beaufort scale says trees uprooted, devastation”. I was nervous, but somehow still slightly excited. Knowing that mountain rescue, who were comfortingly placed roughly every 5km on the race route, were still supporting the event, what could possibly go wrong?
We arrived at the race registration where a volunteer flagged us down and told us that the race had just been cancelled. However, “we were welcome to stay the night, make the most of it”. I thought, “what, camping in a storm?”, and suddenly the prospect didn’t feel as thrilling. I felt gutted that I wasn’t able to test my training in the race, it was the first time that I had ever strictly followed a plan and earlier in the year I’d not been able to train much due to repeated colds and a shoulder break and dislocation. I had become quite obsessed with my Strava progress chart over the last three months. The most consistent period of running I had ever done plummeted to 2h 4m in the week commencing December 2nd in preparation for the event. I wanted to put this training and my supposedly “fresh” legs to the test and I still had the annual leave that I had booked for recovery. So during the drive back, I joked with Will about attempting the Tea Round on the Monday, and extending the route with an Espresso Round on the back of it. “Dirty Chai round,” Will said, referring to the combination of tea and coffee. After 4 hours of stewing and a KFC later we got home.
The next day we met up with friends at the climbing gym. I fielded the idea to them in a joking tone, not being brave enough to commit to it. But I had wanted to do the Tea Round again. The first and last time I had completed it was on a beautiful summer day earlier in the year, in the good company of Niamh. I remembered reaching the top of Cat Bells and feeling like I was going to throw up (we went clockwise!). Something was off. It was also warm (>13℃) and I typically run hot, hence my preference to sign up for winter events. Niamh was amazingly kind to me and unsurprisingly to those of you who know her, she was also very patient and got me round the route. I loved the company, but wasn’t happy with my time given how awfully hard I felt I had gone at it (June, 1, 2024. 11h 5m).
The idea of running in the Lakes in the dark on my own scared me somewhat. I am quite happy running round Ilkley Moor in the dark on my own, but the Badger Stone isn’t quite the pinnacle that Causey Pike is. I had practiced some night running in anticipation for the Goat. My thinking was, if I can run for more than 3 hours round Buckden in the bog and dark, I’ll realise there’s nothing to be afraid of. However, I hadn’t anticipated the jump scares from the grouse and concluded from that gruelling experiment that running in unfamiliar places in the dark scares me. Fortunately, I have a Jenny. Jenny Lea suggested we drive up to the Lakes the day before, kip in the van, and I would start the following morning. On Monday 9th December, I would complete the Tea Round whilst Jenny workedfrom various Keswick coffee shops, and she would later join me after work for the Espresso Round. I knew that if I agreed to this, I would do it. Jenny had an early train to catch to London on Tuesday, so if I dragged her out to the Lakes and bailed, I’d feel like I’d let her down.
With my Goat kit bag at the ready including my new charm Billy Goat, a new addition to my kit, I set off from the George Fisher shop at 07:15. Billy was a lucky pin gifted to me from Jess and Phil. Phil was also supposed to do the Goat but was sadly injured before the event and had to pull out. Hearing this news had made me more nervous about the event. It wasn’t as if we had planned to run together. But knowing that Phil would also be enduring the boggy night gave me some comfort. But to remind me of this comradery, Jess and Phil bought me a little goat pin to tag onto my bag. A year previously, waiting near Fairfield in the wind and drizzle, they had attentively noticed the purple flower pin I wore on my pack for Lakes in a day, which I’d put there to remind me of the strength of my nan when I was being a wuss.
The plan was to check in with Jenny every time I reached a peak. I would drop a message including the time (in case my phone didn’t have enough signal to send). I realised as soon as I started to climb Cat Bells that I hadn’t packed as much food as I would probably need. For the Goat, I had resourcefully packaged food and energy powder into “20 mile zip bags” so that I could keep on top of my fuelling. I had left George Fisher with only one of these bags. However, I knew I had over-packed the food bags, because I can never quite get through 75kg of carbs an hour, so I wasn’t too concerned. But I was concerned by the fact I now had a lack of caffeinated products I had on me. I decided I would stop in Buttermere for a caffeinated beverage to mark the halfway point. This time round, I would take the George Fisher website’s recommended “reduced footfall” route, I was curious how different this was to the optimal route I last took and didn’t mind that it wasn’t as direct as I wanted to test myself on the miles.
I planned to pole my way up most of the peaks as ascents are my weakness,. Jess kindly lent me the poles (for a lot of my training too). Unfortunately, I discovered quite quickly that I had DOMS from my pathetic climbing attempts on the Saturday. Despite this, by 08:17, I reached Cat Bells and didn’t want to throw up. It was a bit breezy on the tops but I had beautiful clear views across the Lakes.
My tactic for completing this Tea Round was to just get out of Buttermere. This is where I had a massive wobble in the summer with Niamh where I dramatically declared, whilst stumbling up Whiteless Pike, that I couldn’t go on anymore. After this point, I had energetically embraced the remainder of the round. So in my head, Buttermere was Mordor (obviously a parallel universe version of this, given its beauty). If I could get to Mordor and leave feeling OK, I believed that I would be totally fine. At 09:59 I checked in with Jenny, “entered Mordor…the descent was horrific”. It really was. This section differed from the last time I did the round; 307m descent over 0.65km! This was where the mental test began for me. I made my way up High Stile, then followed the ridge round to Red Pike.
This isn’t an official peak but it was one I hadn’t done before. I could see where it got its name from, apparently its colouring comes from syenite (I just googled this). I cautiously worked my way back down into Mordor, the rocky step descent felt neverending, though I was acutely aware I was very alone in this region so didn’t want to risk falling. At this point in the round, I had only seen one other person, on Red Pike.
When I made it back into the valley I was saddened to discover that the pub were had planned to get some caffeine was closed. Fortunately, I discovered a lovely little cafe instead (Croft House Farm), and there I had my espresso and topped up my water. 12:39, message from Jenny: “my data has stopped working lol… so text if you’re alive’…. I replied ‘I’m nearly at Whiteless Pike 13:00’. 20 minutes passed. “Reached Wardrope 1320’.
Jenny : “That’s not on the round!’
The weather had started to turn and I had my first showery embrace. I chucked my waterproof on and carried on. I was out of Buttermere, and knew now that the best was yet to come. Along came Grizedale Pike at 14:02, followed by Eel Crag and a gel at 14:22. I had started to get peckish at this point but knew that I would be back in Keswick in a matter of hours.
Eventually, I made it back to the shop at 16:40. I walked over to the car-park nearby to find Jenny and the van. After a sock and t-shirt change and a lot of snacking, Jenny and I jogged over to the shop where we set off for the Espresso Round.
It was so nice to have company at this point, there was no way I’d have convinced myself to leave Keswick for Cat Bells again if I was on my own. I had taken a paracetamol an hour before leaving as my nerves were starting to hurt from having cold and wet feet all day. I started to feel spaced out, wondering if perhaps I should have waited until I had eaten. Thankfully, this outer body experience passed by the time we reached Cat Bells. We forged our way across to Barrow where we briefly got lost (as usual). This time it wasn’t the fault of the compass, and the map hadn’t been plotted upside down to trick us. I anticipated that Causey Pike in the dark would be a challenging scramble. However, despite a stiff breeze the night sky was completely clear of clouds. We stopped momentarily and switched off our head torches, allowing our eyes to adapt to the light of the bright stars. We could pick out the silhouette of the mountains to the south of us and Keswick to our (sort of) north.
I started to get excited at this point, knowing there was only one climb left. We jogged up Rowling End after again missing our turn (don’t worry, we’re good for the nav leg!) and reminisced about the Fell Relays in 2023 where we and every other unwitting non-local bashed our way through heather and rocks to contour round Rowling End (a mistake not to be forgotten).
We made it back to George Fisher around 20:30. Total time (including van stop) 13:46:47. Tea Round elapsed time 09:25:40. Espresso Round elapsed time 03:52:44. I hadn’t realised until later that I had got a Tea Round PB. Hard to say if it was the training, the cool weather or not being unwell that did the trick. So I suppose there really is only one way to find out. I’ll just have to do the Tea round again.
Takeaways:
- Do things that scare you… safely (take a friend and plenty of food)
- I really like cola straws from Tesco
Ellis Maguire
