Hathersage to Bollington Outing. Marathon 15. Bad day in the office! Hard work I think dehydrated and tired from the weekend and week at work..

Well, what goes up, I guess must come down. This time I am not just talking about the running round here, more so the experiences of these blooming marathons! I had been on a high last weekend and during this week. The weather was picking up and last weekend was some great experiences. But I have been tired, really tired. I was still fairly positive about getting 2 completed this weekend which incidentally was a bank holiday weekend and gave an extra days playing.

On the cards, was the rescheduled run from Hathersage to Bollington which took in some local features such as breaking the ridge at Hollins Cross, skirting Mam Tor and joining the Pennine Bridleway for a bit. It also visited some old stomping grounds from the Man Tri days such as the Brickworks and Bowstones.

My companion for part of the route was Mark R. He decided to join me as I crossed the A6 at "just over half way". This turned out to be at about 30 k. I had been looking forward to this run for a while, as it brings together a variety of running and spectacular scenery along the way and hooks into some ancient forts and roads. I actually had to change the route the night before as the 'stepping stones' on the Derwent was underwater and this meant a jog down the newly opened cycle way to Shatton before turning off on the Townsfield Lane to Brough. Brough is an Anglo-Saxon word for fortification and here at the junction of the valleys and ancient roads such as Bantham Gate from Buxton and the Roman road to Glossop there was a Roman Fort called Navio built some 2000 years ago.

All that can be seen now is a few stone foundations that the footpath crosses, but on a satellite image the rectangle of the foot can still be clearly seen. From here I carried on on the footpath that heads into the back of Castleton before heading directly up to Hollins Cross midway between Back Tor and Mam Tor.

The latter was the direction I was headed but as the fog had descended instead of summiting in the mist I skirted round to the North West under the old ditch ramparts. Aerial photos of the Mam Tor late bronze age / early iron age hill fort can be seen here. Pushing on along Rushup Edge, my journey joined the infamous Chapel Gate (brilliant descent on a mountain bike) before heading North on the Pennine Bridleway.

Its been a while since I have run or biked along here and I have mostly avoided it due to the noise and destruction that the 4x4 vehicles and the motor cross bikes have been carried out, however a few years ago the 'Friends of the Peak' successfully campaigned to ban these vehicles from this stretch of the Pennine Bridleway. See here for further information. Since then this track has changed for the better. Nature is starting to take back some of the sections that had been made into jumps and some of the excursions that had been made alongside the tracks that the idiots had trashed have been levelled out. One of the striking things is that you can actually hear the birds along the trail now. Unfortunately there are some idiots still out there purposefully disregarding this legislation and only a few weeks ago we saw a small stream of 4x4 making there way along it. Luckily today it was peace and quiet and apart from 2 other runners and mountain biker I had the route to my self.

Conscious that I was meant to be meeting Mark soon, there was no time to hang around and I quickly descended down to the Hayfield Road and the Peep-O-Day. Quick text to Mark that I just had one more climb to carry out then pushed on up through the quarries to the Trig at Chinley Churn. Here I had to hop a couple of walls and electrified fences to get back onto the moorland and headed down to the Bridleway. Joining the road and heading down to Green Head and running behind schedule I bumped into Mark coming up the road to meet me! Hooray. We had a quick conversation about the route and me handing over the navigation to Mark confident in his ability to at least get us back to a 'waiting Hannah' when he promptly announced that we had missed the turning and gone wrong! We had barely gone 400 metres. It didn't bode well. After a quick change of shirt and a top up of water at our temporary checkpoint of the stinky A6 we waved goodbye to Hannah and Boys and headed of up the hill on rapidly stiffening legs.  Marks section to continue.....

I met Damo at Furness Vale as he was on his way down the hill towards the A6. I decided this was a wise meeting point as it meant I would only have 9 miles to run and Damo would probably be knackered! However he seemed to be in surprisingly good form as we got to the car to refill his water bottle and put on a fresh T-shirt. The only sign of his weeks of excessive running was when he started to apply the nipple tape and talked about "chafing". Fortunately for both of us we didn't stop for long and soon were on our way again, trusting my Garmin for navigation. This only worked when I was looking to make sure we followed the purple line which I must admit I got wrong once and added on some welcome mileage to Damo's total for the day.

The run was fairly uneventful over the moors to Bowstones above Lyme Park where we picked up the Gritstone trail. Back on familiar territory for me we headed across the brickworks road and towards Bollington. Whilst leading a muddy section of downhill for Damo I came a cropper and slipped over covering one side in thick mud and providing more amusement for Damo. All in all it was a good end to the run and we met everyone back at our house for some lunch and cakes.

Thank you Mark for your take on things. We had planned a somewhat longer route and had aimed to finish on the White Nancy, however I was well and truly broken as we were nearing Bollington and was barely able to get back up the hill to Marks House by the end. Oh dear oh dear. Mark Thank you very much for guiding me back. Then came a very awkward sit through lunch, journey home and rest of the afternoon. Where would I be without Sudocrem? Oh and that mirror gave a new perspective on things!

Shoe Choice: More Mile Cheviots. Legs wrecked. Think more the fatigue and early start as opposed to the tarmac sections.
Stats. Distance: 42.9 km  Elevation: 1.20 km  Total Dist: 645.0 km  Total Elevation: 11.18 km
km/marathon: 43.0 km