Three-and-a-half months until the Highland Cross. Time to start training. But I’m a runner. Yes, I cycle, but I’m a commuter cyclist, a recreational cyclist, a cyclist that likes to have his head up, not craned over the handlebars. I’ll happily grind up a hill all day, but the thought of a 10-mile time trial…
Review
Heights of Madness was reviewed in the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. Here it is: Energetic is certainly a word that could be used to describe Jonny Muir, who set out to climb (for charity) the highest points in each of the counties in the UK in three months. To make it harder, he decided to eschew…
Rockall
Rockall is a tiny islet rising out of the Atlantic Ocean swell 187 miles west of St Kilda. More people have swam the English Channel or conquered Everest than set foot on this distant rock. Yorkshire adventurer Andy Strangeway is bidding to become only the fifth person to spend a night on Rockall. The most notorious…
County tops
In a madcap, two-day cross-country dash, I re-visited 12 English county tops, from Worcestershire to Suffolk, as part of research for a guidebook on these high points. These three hills were the highlights. Worcestershire Beacon, Worcestershire Cleeve Common, Gloucestershire Milk Hill, Wiltshire
Craig Dunain
Up Craig Dunain again, yet again. There is no other hill or mountain I have climbed so frequently, at the moment three times a week. And why not? The hill is a perfect training ground within easy running distance of Inverness. Craig Dunain – all 288m of it – doesn’t look terribly impressive in this photograph, but it’s a…
Ben Nevis Race – in!
I’m in! I’ve got a place in the Ben Nevis Race, the pinnacle of the Scottish hill racing season. I’m excited, yet nauseous.
Ben Nevis race 2010
I’ve entered the Ben Nevis race. That doesn’t mean I’ll get a place. That wasn’t meant to rhyme. I’ve just put an application in the post. Hopefully, the local yobs don’t torch the pillar box containing my neatly folded entry form and cheque tonight, which, in the part of Inverness I live in, is a possibility….
Mountain tracks
Labour is calling on the Scottish Government to improve the existing regulation of tracks on hills and mountains to prevent them spoiling the landscape. Following concerns raised by the John Muir Trust and the Mountaineering Council of Scotland, Labour has now lodged a motion in the Scottish Parliament, with the party’s environment spokeswoman Sarah Boyack describing “engineered…
Charging for Ben Nevis
About 160,000 people climb Ben Nevis every year, a quarter of them of them charity walkers. Obviously, their charitable intentions are to be praised. But those 40,000 people – many of them arriving, leaving and scaling the Ben at the same time – left an almighty mess. The car park was strewn with litter and the toilets used…
Snowy Inverness
Inverness is still under a blanket of white, 22 days after the snow first starting falling on December 19. This is a date imprinted in my short-term memory because it was the last time I was able to run or do any exercise of any kind. On that fateful day, I was among a group…
Craig Dunain
Last night was my work’s Christmas bash. No expense spared in this year of recession. To Wetherspoons in Inverness we went for cheap turkey and trimmings, and even cheaper drink. Hence the reason I woke up this morning feeling considerably worse for wear. A run will sort me out, I reasoned. Fresh air, that’s what…
Bushey Heath
I’m re-visiting many of the UK’s county tops for a guidebook, due to be published some time in 2011. This is one of the least memorable: Bushey Heath, a 153m ‘peak’ on the Hertfordshire/Middlesex boundary and the highest point in the latter county, which I visited during a recent few days in London. The ascent…
Heights of Madness 