There is a vicious simplicity to the snaking line of summits that make up the Welsh 3000s. This is hallowed turf and rocks: Crib Goch, the roof of a nation, the rock-desert of the Glyders, Tryfan, the quiet, high mountains of the Carneddau. It is a classic: an undertaking that is long and arduous, but eminently…
‘A lifetime aggregate of aptitude and commitment’ – how to complete the Frog Graham Round
When Gary Tompsett became only the second person to complete Ramsay’s Round in winter he put his trust in a ‘lifetime aggregate of aptitude and commitment’. (His faith was well judged: his solo, unsupported time of 33 hours was not eclipsed for five years.) I was a much younger man when I first read Tompsett’s…
Running for sustainability: finding stuff-free
‘The revolution won’t have an online entry fee, plastic medal or pointless goodie bag.’ I come back to Ian Campbell’s words time and time again. (Campbell once ran up Allermuir, a 493-metre hill in the Pentlands, 29 times over three days, clocking a cumulative ascent that would have seen him summit Everest from sea level.)…
A hill a day, every day, for 31 days
An aspiration for March: summit a different hill every day, travelling on foot, by bike or on public transport, but never by car. ‘Why can’t we just be there?’ My daughter stared impatiently at me, returning my gaze in the car mirror. We were on the M6, somewhere between Edinburgh and Chester. It was a…
The curse of the split-second
How strange that human lives – the best part of one-hundred years if we are fortunate – are shaped by the merest fragments of time. And yet so many moments go by meaning nothing, carrying utter irrelevance. And then there are others when time conspires against you in a way that seems ruthlessly pre-determined. I…
Everest on Allermuir: we were there
It is a simple idea: take a hill or mountain of personal significance and see how many times you can climb it in 24 hours. For Christopher O’Brien, the hill in question was Allermuir, a 493-metre summit in the northern Pentlands overlooking Edinburgh. Mad? Certainly not. You will not find incredulity here. Hill and ultra…
2020 and the Rigby Round: the year of the almost-FKT
I am the keeper of the records for the Rigby Round, an entirely self-appointed role and inherited from no-one, but inspired by the desire to maintain a list of those people who succeed in the dogged task of running a continuous loop of 18 Munros of the Cairngorms, ideally within 24 hours. The Rigby Round…
Round of the Pentland Hills: conceiving, planning, doing
It was not a question of whether there should be a hill running round in the Pentland Hills – such an idea has been mulled over by a number of runners over the years. But what hills? Without obvious height classifications like ‘Munro’, Corbett’ or even ‘Donald’ in the Pentlands, you have to work harder…
They are still there
I went to the hills today. It was my ‘usual’: from my front door, two miles of pavement, park and alleyway, before reaching the barricaded car park at Swanston at the foot of the Pentlands. I looked up: the ‘T’ wood that climbs with the contours of the hillside, the crags and scree of Caerketton,…
‘Maybe ever’body in the whole damn world is scared of each other’: running in the time of coronavirus
The residential streets of southern Edinburgh are quiet this morning. A lone, calling wood pigeon. A car bumping over potholes. A couple, heads down, shuffling towards the shop. I run on, beating the couple to the shop, turn right, then left at traffic lights, and without any plan, find my legs inexorably drawn to the…
Fine lines
The weather did not seem so bad. I suppose that is how this sort of story tends to begin – from a place of complacency. I had been cold for much of the morning, but as I scouted the lower slopes of Carnethy Hill, a little over an hour before the first racers would be…
Going for a run
Researching a book some years ago I spent several months asking people why they run – or, more specifically, why they choose to take running to hills and mountains, why they find joy in high places rather than the pavements, roads and parks favoured by the mainstream running community. The responses rarely deviated from cliché,…
Heights of Madness 