Kielder Grey’s Summit Fell Race

Sunday, February 7, 2010

BM / 9.7km / 396m

Dougie Nisbet

The story goes that after the first test-flight of the Spitfire in 1936 the pilot turned to the designer and said, “Don’t change a thing”. It crossed my mind to say this to Will today at the Harrier League when we were chatting about the first (and possibly only) running of the Kielder Grey’s Summit fell race. Already Will is talking about variations on this route; whether it stays the same or has some new twists and turns, it’s got the great raw material that is the Kielder Forest and can’t go wrong.

The race suited me just fine and dandy. It started with a brief bit of tarmac, then onto some forest tracks that climbed into the heights of Kielder and warmed us all up before the real fell stuff began. As soon as we veered off-road and hit our first non-running climb I took the opportunity to do a quick costume change. I was overheating again and needed to cool down. The trick is to make sure your bib number isn’t safety-pinned to your baselayer, otherwise when the peel off the singlet you find yourself blindly stumbling through the heather with a rather constricted view of the world.

Feeling cooler and comfortable it was soon time to hit the Three Pikes. I’d lost my DFR targets and so started the climb with no interesting blips on the radar to chase. I enjoy a good slog up a fell and often find it’s where I make my gains. Sure enough, by the time we crossed the snowline and neared the top, I could see DFR’s Dawn Metcalfe who had finished ahead of me at Wansfell, and suddenly I had someone to chase.

At this point the route follows much of the outward course of the Kielder Borderer, except backwards, and I got frequent blasts of back-to-front deja-vu. Stumbling down the descent from the three-pikes I could feel my balance going and made the decision to fall into the snow rather than wham my joints trying to recover. Good move. The snow was scratchy but forgiving. I picked myself up and had another go at catching Dawn. In the race-briefing Will had warned us of the final bridge-crossing was sheet ice and would require us to tip-toe across holding on to the wall. It was around here that I passed Dawn and overtook her in a slightly surreal fashion as we both gingerly crossed the bridge seeking out the scarce traction afforded by the track edges.

I pushed on to the finish and was content to run in without any ostentatious sprinting. Then several things happened at once. The finish seemed to be at the top of a staircase, and half-way up I could see NFR’s Terry Hart, who is never far away from me in a fell race. He seemed too far away to catch and I hit the stairs without ambition. Then a voice hollered from above, filled with exasperation, mockery, and accusation, it boomed; “Come on Dougie, SHIFT. YOUR. ARSE!”. Looking up I saw the gauntlet-thrower at the top of the stairs was Phil Owen. I decided to do as I was told and sprinted passed Terry on one of the hairpins to the finish and found myself at Kielder Castle. It’s not many fell races that can claim to finish at the top of a flight of stairs!

I’m a big fan of Kielder although I’m never sure why. It’s a long way to travel to risk being mauled by midges, but it’s a great big slab of interesting wild space and it’s a great place for fell races.

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