Ullswater – runningin3time

6 at 60: it’s people who matter

November 7, 2021November 16, 2021sarahjlewisbriggsLeave a comment

This weekend I completed the Lakeland Trails series – 9 (I think) trail runs, all 14-15km except Cartmel 10km, and ending with the ‘dirty double’ this weekend at Glenridding.

My emotions and physical ‘oomph’ definitely fluctuate through the year, and recently I’d been feeling less enthusiastic about this particular challenge. I haven’t done quite as much training, I’d given blood about 2 weeks ago, and the change to autumn and the dark mornings and dark nights is getting to me a bit. BUT excuses out of the way, this was the weekend for doing 2 trail runs back to back.

Helvellyn on Saturday had also been entered by 4 of my friends, so it felt like a team effort. I’ve done the route and parts of the route before – most recently on my birthday in 2020 when Penny and I had walked up to Grisedale Tarn for a swim, just a couple of weeks after running up there (see https://runningin3time.blog/2020/08/31/grisedale-tarn-and-crummock-water-re-visited/ and https://runningin3time.blog/2020/09/15/birthday-micro-adventures/) – but last time I’d run the trail run route I’d been suffering from a broken heart. All I could remember today as I ascended the first hill towards the YHA was how physically heart-broken I’d felt that day: and in fact it’s not surprising as the physical effort does make your chest almost ache.

The rain was coming down and the wind was against us, taking our breath away, until we turned along a bit of stony, muddy single track. This is the sort of running I love – the wind behind me, my footing relatively secure, and a rocky, muddy path beneath my feet. I should add that it has taken me YEARS of practice to get more confident on this sort of trail, and even so yesterday I slipped about 4 times.

We dropped down between the valleys before rising up again towards Lanty’s Tarn – where it was very muddy and I fell over, fortunately on to grass. Anne was not so lucky later on – when we met her at the finishing line she had a lump on her head which by Sunday had turned into a colourful ‘black’ (blue/purple) eye. From Lanty’s Tarn we were again heading into the wind, with the rain slashing across us from the side: at one point a gust almost blew me sideways. I was already wet through to my underwear.

*Wet through to my underwear (but still cheerful).*

Rather than continuing on to Grisedale Tarn we then cut across the valley (I felt sorry for the marshals, but particularly for the one up here, exposed to the elements) and there was then a track followed by road all the way back down hill. Towards the end I was feeling tired – I should have stopped to eat a Graze bar, but didn’t want to undo my jacket to get to my bumbag – but I continued along the road and on to the finishing field. As I turned the corner into the home straight I saw Mark behind me – and picked up the pace to make sure he didn’t get past me! Mind you, it was close: and Penny came in about 5 minutes later, followed after a bit by Anne with her black eye but in a buoyant mood, and Tricia – who has done very little running recently but still managed to complete 15km and be smiling at the end (and who was going to be camping over night with her husband!).

Unfortunately it wasn’t a day for hanging around and exchanging stories, as we were all so wet, the rain was still coming down, and we were getting cold. I was staying at Penny’s overnight (it was nearer than going all the way back to Brampton, and my fab. neighbours and friends Mark and Laura had said they’d feed the cat) and I spent a lovely half hour warming up in the bath and watching an Italian show on Netflix – there’s a rather scathing review of it here but for a tired body and brain after a soaking wet run it’s fun (the reviewer is critical of Luna Park too, but I also enjoyed that – sometimes trite predictability is exactly what you want. Who says you have to be thoughtful all the time? And also both are helping me with my Italian).

After risotto and apple crumble (great carbo loading) and watching Strictly Come Dancing and part of Lord of the Rings I, I fell into bed and slept until about 8a.m. A bowl of granola and a coffee and it was time to get going again: this time Penny was coming along to support me (and leaving her husband to play with motorbike parts and watch motorbike racing).

Fortunately the weather was a LOT nicer and despite dire warnings about not being able to park, we parked at the Glenridding ferry car park – the steamers weren’t running which probably meant more spaces for runners. It did however mean that rather than the lovely boat ride over to Howtown to start the run, we were running from the same starting point as yesterday: the mud slides had amazingly drained a bit overnight, so the ground wasn’t too bad to walk on.

The run took us south to start with and past the field that we would have parked on if it hadn’t turned into a mud bath yesterday (this is where my car got stuck last time I did the Helvellyn run: it was bad enough having a broken heart but then to get your car stuck as well…). The stony path undulates through some grassy land before dropping down to come out just near a pub at Patterdale: across and down the road a short way and we then ran down the track towards the farm which advertises wool for sale, and from there turned to go along the lower path which runs parallel to the lake. I’ve only ever run this the other way round – once when I did the Ullswater trail race from Howtown and another time when Penny and I ran all the way round Ullswater (only two and a half years ago! https://runningin3time.blog/2019/03/25/following-the-daffodils-the-ullswater-way-and-memories/) when we were running round lakes for her 50th birthday.

It’s a beautiful route, and flashes of memory came back from running it before: some of the larger stones looked familiar. This time we rounded a corner and there was a climb straight up a hill. As I hadn’t studied my map properly I thought this was the only major hill (it was fairly small) and enjoyed the consequent descent back along a path which ran parallel to but higher up than the one we’d just run along. At one point I fell over but bounced up again: a guy behind me a bit later wasn’t so lucky and I didn’t see him again (I should have stopped to check he was OK but I’m afraid I didn’t).

Then there was a HILL. A steep, long hill. Strava was later to tell me that the total elevation for this run was 454m – about 120m higher than yesterday when we were going up the side of one of the highest hills in the Lake District. I think today we may have been running (ha! nobody was running – everybody but everybody was walking) up the side of Place Fell.

We came out near the top on a plateau which isn’t far from Angle Tarn, and ran down a steep track which I had previously been down after ‘running’ up to Hayeswater and along to Angle Tarn (https://runningin3time.blog/2019/06/23/an-almost-bonus-lake/). At the bottom instead of running into Hartsop – which is what we’d done before – the route turned back towards Patterdale, before retracing our footsteps back to the pub. This time we went a different way across the grassy bit before running downhill to the main road. I was struggling by now and walking bits and only crossed the finishing line after 1hr 53 mins (yesterday it was 1hr 39 mins). Even so it looks as if I did OK for my age group.

This is is something which really upsets me and disappoints me about the overall series, as they’ve told me that they’ll be measuring my overall performance on the FV50 age group not the FV60 age group – in triathlon it’s how old you are on 31st December in the relevant year, which would put me in the FV60 age group. I also didn’t get a t-shirt for this final race, which I’m quite, quite sure was the only one I HAD ordered a t-shirt for. So all in all despite some fantastic routes, I finished the series in tears – probably partly just due to tiredness: the t-shirt for today was black, so it didn’t look that great and isn’t that much of a miss and certainly not worth getting upset about. It’s just a pity that I’ll have nothing to celebrate having completed the entire series other than these blogposts (maybe they’ll have to do).

Fortunately Penny was there with a small bottle of fizz and we celebrated me finishing another challenge, before going to have lunch in one of the Glenridding cafes. I then picked up my car from her house and she gave me another bottle of fizz to take home, picked up two of my children from their Dad’s (the other one is self-isolating for 2 more days) and drove back to Brampton, to home and another warm bath.

Thank goodness for the moral support of friends.

Ladies of the Lakes – 2 and 3

August 26, 2019sarahjlewisbriggs1 Comment

I’ve always been somewhat put off swimming in Ullswater by going out one evening with a triathlon club. The idea was to swim across the lake and back. It was colder than I’d expected; it was choppy (one person actually got out on to the boat accompanying us, she felt so sick); at one point the steamer went past; and I was right at the back of a bunch of serious, ironman-training triathletes. I also had visions of great pike shooting up from the bottom of the lake to nibble my toes, or worse. The fact that it is almost 200 ft. (63 m) deep in the middle didn’t console me much either.

I knew it would make more sense to swim up and down parallel to the shore rather than straight across the lake, and having swum in Bassenthwaite, Crummock Water (twice) and attempted Derwentwater (muddy), I was feeling somewhat more optimistic about Ullswater: and Anne had confirmed that she knew a really good place to swim.

So, one rather rainy Saturday – we were going to get wet anyway – Anne, Jo and I travelled down to Sandwick towards the south-east corner of the lake. I hadn’t driven down here before although I’ve run round there twice – in fact the cottages there were what made me comment to Penny on our ’16 lakes runs’ that I’d like to live in the Lake District one day. There’s a group of about 4 or 5 houses with a nice grass verge where you can park (though I’m not sure the householders would be that happy to have that widely advertised). It’s then a short walk over a rushing stream and through a field to a little beach. The path is part of the Ullswater Way, so we felt quite public as we got changed – and a family had chosen that point to stop at the picnic table provided so we probably bothered them as much as they bothered us.

It was definitely a wetsuits day, and Anne had even bought a pair of gloves – something I must invest in (I have to admit to wanting some Huub ones to go with my Huub wetsuit). Jo had a new wetsuit, having tried a secondhand boy’s shortie wetsuit in Crummock and also having enjoyed open water swimming enough to want to come along again. We swam up and down a fair amount in a slightly farmland-ish setting, walkers going past on a fairly regular basis and commenting. It was all really friendly though if what you wanted was a ‘get away from it all’ experience, this wouldn’t be the one.

So far the weather had been kind to us: despite the frequent rain showers of the previous few days it had been mostly sunny. We got out – we have set a criteria that we must be in the water for at least 30 minutes (even if we get out in the middle and then go in again) – and got changed and at that moment there was a sudden but brief downpour. Fortunately the trees around the lake and the beach sheltered us and after only a few minutes we started the walk back to the car, where we had some sandwiches etc. About 10 minutes later the heavens opened in earnest and we leapt into the car and headed home.

Unfortunately Jo wasn’t able to come with us the following weekend (I was due to have the kids, but my ex had taken them away) and we’d decided we’d do Wastwater. This is another daunting lake. The scree slopes glower over the water on the southern side, and at times the water can look black. There’s not a huge amount of vegetation around the lake either, which perhaps adds to its starkly majestic feel: it’s not as enclosed by woods as many of the lakes are.

Wastwater is the deepest lake in England so if anything I should have felt more nervous about it than I did about Ullswater. However it doesn’t have a steamer going up and down (and potentially likely to chop you up), which helped, and I had seen people kayaking, diving etc. from the other side. My aim was to park near where Penny & I had parked when we ran round the lake. Having had incredibly heavy rain earlier in the week (the rivers were looking full to bursting), Friday had turned hot and sunny with forecasts of some of the highest temperatures ever for the bank holiday weekend.

The weather forecast was right and Saturday was glorious. As a result Wastwater was heaving – at least, heaving for a relatively remote Lake District lake which can only be directly reached from the western edges of Cumbria (there’s one road in which comes to a dead end at Wasdale Head, where Red Pike, Great Gable and Scafell Pike look down over the lake). However due to the lake’s rather daunting reputation, having plenty of people around was good rather than bad, and we joined the groups around a bay with an island in it.

The water was beautifully clear, and you get into the lake via stony beaches. The water was so clear that swimming across to the island you could see below easily: there weren’t any weeds until we were in about 8′ of water (I didn’t feel them beneath my feet when I put my feet down) and you could see some sort of pipeline running along the lake bottom. We swam out to and round the island before having a picnic lunch; and then got back in again. While Anne swam round to the next bay, I swam round to the next bay and then to the island and back again.

No often I look taller than someone else…

I felt that my swimming was improving: I haven’t swum regularly for so long that my stamina isn’t great, but these swims are giving me the confidence to know that if I did more training I’d feel like tackling a triathlon again.

Ambleside in the distance – so near and yet so far

We drove back over Hardknott and Wrynose passes: a narrow, hairpin route with stunning views. Just over the top of Wrynose I pulled in to allow a cyclist more room to go past: and burst my nearside front tyre on a rock. We spent the next 3 hours looking as if we were having a picnic admiring the view towards Ambleside from the top of Wrynose and acting like police officers making sure nobody came round the corner too fast and straight into the back of my car. When the breakdown van finally turned up it took the guy less than 10 minutes to put my spare wheel on: and I was extremely glad I hadn’t tried to do it myself, as even with wooden blocks behind the back wheels and a rock in front of the offside front, the car shifted a bit as he jacked it up (the first guy who had gone past us had said we were on too steep a slope to change the wheel).

We got back to my house hours later than intended but Anne’s lovely husband Mark had good-naturedly driven down from their house (he had had a long journey back from London already that day) to look after the kittens, who I had left outside all day and who I thought might be rather hungry. As we sat and had some food and drinks, we discussed our scoring system for the lakes and came up with a scorecard which gives marks out of 70 for each one. So far Wastwater is in the lead, Crummock Water second and Ullswater last. Wastwater had been utterly superb: so superb that I’m hoping to get a group down there for a sunset swim and picnic on my birthday in a couple of weeks’ time.

An almost-bonus lake

June 23, 2019sarahjlewisbriggs1 Comment

and a new challenge (or two)

“What run shall we do next?” and “so what’s your next challenge?” were questions running around in my head unanswered. That’s the trouble when you’ve achieved a goal: it can be a bit of an anti-climax, like the weird time after exams when all of a sudden there’s extra time and you’re not quite sure what to do with yourself.

Fortunately with ‘exercise’ type goals there doesn’t ever seem to be an end. Even for ultra-marathoners there’s always that new race to do or a set-back such as an injury or illness can mean going back a few steps and having to start again. So it wasn’t long before – almost accidentally – a couple of new challenges popped their heads up.

One of the challenges to decide on is for the year I turn 60. The year I turned 50 I had a baby, and so the following year I attempted Kielder marathon (having said I’d never run a marathon), just after I turned 51. For my 60th birthday I was recently reading something which gave me the idea for a cycling and walking challenge – but it’s still more than two years away and so far it’s only an initial idea, so I won’t say any more here and now.

But back to the Lakes. Penny wanted to go for a run, as did I. She’d been on holiday with her husband and then to Lundy for a weekend with a friend, and in between the two her mother had died. She’d done very little running but also, I sensed, needed to get up into the hills for a run. I made a few suggestions based around the fact that at some point we both want to run the entire length of High Street, from Pooley Bridge to Ambleside (c. 23 miles ‘from Fort to Fort’). Penny pointed out that Askham Fell would be really wet, so we opted to drive down to the car park at Brotherswater, just south of Patterdale, and run from Hartsop and up past to Hayeswater to High Street and then back down.

The track goes uphill from the beginning, alongside the Gill which splashes down in leaps and small waterfalls from the lake, which is at 425m (1,400 ft). Towards the top just before we met the lake, there was a small pool which, had the weather been warmer, would have been tempting to splash or swim in.

Whilst we were warm from ascending the track (at a walk rather than a run I must add!), there was a strong wind and I was beginning to wonder about the advisability of going up on to High Street, which we could see ahead of us and which would be very exposed. We’d been through one rain shower already, you hear frequently on the local news about the unwary being caught out and about people being blown off hilltop ridges, and all the people we met were going in the other direction to us – i.e. downhill. It may have been my imagination but I got the impression that they thought we were nuts, if not even totally irresponsible, to be out on the hills in running gear when the weather was so changeable.

looking back down towards Hartsop
warm but windy
Hayeswater Gill
once a dam
reminiscent of Wastwater

The lake itself is beautiful: the slopes plunge down into it in a way reminiscent but not as grey or threatening as Wastwater – the scree is surrounded by grass, giving the valley a softer impression than Wastwater. The wind was rushing through the valley and we headed to where we thought there was a bridge over the stream, which showed that there was then a clear route up to Great Knott and High Street. Although the Gill looked ford-able at this point, we decided that today was not really a day for getting soaking wet (i.e. accidentally falling in), and instead turned back a short way to a foot bridge. Having been reading up about Hayeswater in order to write this post, it seems that when United Utilities stopped using Hayeswater as a reservoir, the National Trust took over and installed a micro hydro-electric scheme and carried out repairs to the footbridge and tracks. The scheme is not visible: photos on the National Trust webpage show a small powerhouse looking like a traditional barn.

From the footbridge we could see some walkers coming down from the High Street direction, and we followed a slightly indistinct grassy path uphill towards them, before joining a better path higher up. The wind had not lessened, and Penny pointed out another track to our left, heading in a northerly direction. We passed this and went higher up – stunning views of Hayeswater and a brief lull in the wind meant we were able to open the map. Deciding being safe was better than going up on to High Street, which would be exposed on both sides, we turned a few yards back to this other path.

This was a joy to run on. A stony path headed downhill, clearly manmade, and continued to undulate over the hills to Angle Tarn, splashing occasionally through some small becks. The wind was still strong – I had to borrow Penny’s buff as I couldn’t see for my swirling hair – and pushed us against the hill, but it at least meant that the rainclouds which we could see in the west got blown away over us without us getting wet.

Neither of us had been along this track before and we were both enjoying it. At Angle Tarn we spotted a little red tent and we both commented on what a lovely place it would to camp; the Tarn itself looked gorgeous on this sunny blustery day, its wiggly edges surrounding a few islets. Somewhere else to go wild swimming when it’s warmer.

‘the promised land’

From here the path wound its way up and round until suddenly a wide grassy pass opened out before us: my first thoughts were ‘the promised land’. I could imagine being a weary foot traveller, slogging through the mountains, to suddenly come out on these verdant meadows, still high enough for spectacular views towards the separate ends of Ullswater, but with a less wild, isolated and rugged feeling than previously. Perhaps not surprisingly we came out on to a small level area where there were signs of industry – there had clearly once been a power supply or something here, and there was further evidence of this as we descended a stony and initially steep track down towards Patterdale and the valley floor.

We ignored the track which went down into Patterdale itself and instead headed in a southerly direction down and back towards Hartsop, passing Hartsop Fold holiday lodges (I commented how much nicer these looked than those green plasticky ones you see so often around the Lake District). A short jog back along the road and we were at the car, talking about doing the run again but taking the route we had originally intended; debating how far it was along High Street Roman Road; and commenting on how this was a potential ‘bonus lake’, reiterating how lovely it was, and how lovely to see bits of the Lake District we hadn’t before. The comment ‘this is why we live here’ is one which we’ve both stated plenty of times while out running. There is little that can beat being out exploring this gorgeous landscape under your own steam: in all weathers, but especially when the weather is good.

We had covered about 6.4 miles but as we headed towards the bar of the hotel in Glenridding for a quick drink before going home, we also discovered and agreed on our next challenge: to try, each time we go running in the Lake District, to run (off-road) routes that we haven’t run before.

I think we’ll have a lot of options!