Hardmoors Saltburn marathon

Sunday, August 11, 2013

Dave Robson

The Hardmoors Saltburn marathon route was a bit of a mystery. There had been a map published on the website, but we already knew that there would be changes to the route through Guisborough Woods. The route was to be fully marked, but it was going through some dodgy areas and I was doubtful the tape would remain there, so I printed off the map from the website, drew the route and downloaded it to our garmins, just in case. The route on the garmin helped a lot when we found some of the tape confusing or missing or apparently put somewhere to send us the wrong way, though we didn’t see that.

Dave in the money!

Melanie and I met up with a few familiar faces in Saltburn Lesiure Centre. Phil Owen was there as he was going to be handling two busy road crossings. We started through some streets and made our way down to the Cleveland Way and up to Skelton, Skelton Green and started the long drag up in the direction of Slapewath. Steep descent there, cross the first busy road and up through the motorcycle woods (they probably have another name !). Then after getting to the top we were directed off the Cleveland Way through Guisborough Woods, a lovely downhill, but we knew that this would be followed by a climb. It certainly was, a steep climb up an overgrown path which came out about 150 metres from where we had left the Cleveland Way. More climbing (but gentler) and then leaving the Cleveland Way again for a descent down and up onto the moors above Commondale. The moors took a bit longer to cross than I anticipated, but we got to Commondale and then had a steep climb out of there, then it got more gentle.

We had had a brief shower earlier, but we hadn’t got the waterproofs out, but we could see some very black clouds approaching, so it was out with the waterproofs. A good choice because for the remainder of the path across the moors it threw it down, just torrential rain. Got to the second busy road crossing and Flip guided us safely across and the countryside became more rural. We came across one piece of ambiguous tape and as we got there about eight runners emerged having made the wrong choice of route. We probably would have made the wrong choice too, but all of us now chose the right route.

I had expected this part of the route, 14m onwards, to be fairly flat, fairly undulating would be a better description. The weather was getting warmer too, so we slowed a bit. We reached Skinningrove safely and so I knew we were approaching the coastal part of the Cleveland Way again. However, I knew we had to go up to the cliffs, so we started the ascent and reached a junction where we could go up a road, down a road (but towards the coast which was the right direction) or straight on up an overgrown path. Several runners were there scratching their heads. No tape in sight. We decided to go up the road as that was closest to the route on my watch and everybody else followed. It turned out to be the right way as tape eventually started again.

Nice run along the Cleveland Way with a breeze to cool us down 🙂 though I was starting to struggle a little here. Got to the last checkpoint outside the Ship Inn in Saltburn and the marshall said to follow the Cleveland Way route past the Spa Hotel and it had been retaped. But before we got there we found more tape sending us down by the river. We took that path and then a taped path upwards. The tape then disappeared, but I know this area a bit so we kept on heading up to the road and found our way back on to the Cleveland Way. More tape took us slightly down again (this route was turning out much hillier than I expected), before the final climb back up to the road leading to the Leisure Centre. 5hr 43min which is probably our fastest Hardmoors marathon, they certainly are hilly !

Then to my surprise I learnt that I had won my age category and was presented with a very nice trophy. A lovely end to a lovely day 🙂

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