Scarcely recovered from Friday – chopping onions still makes my fore-arms wince – I ran my first Dartmoor Runners race today and only added to the week’s tally of bad calls and hissy fits.
First, navigation is not a strong point. I’ve spent too much of my life in the company of men who would not let map and compass out of their grip, so have been lulled into the illusion that I know what’s going on when actually all I know is the sweet feeling of being-lost-never-being-my-fault.
Second, there was fog down to our feet. So, what, I’m meant to use a map and compass without then looking up at the landscape to see what’s REALLY over there in that direction? And second point continued, do you know how ANNOYING it is to have to keep getting a wet, tatty map out of your bumbag when you’re supposed to be RUNNING??
Third, someone had stolen the second checkpoint. This is quite an important point so I’ll say it again: someone had stolen the second checkpoint. So I’m alone on top of a rocky tor, in poor vis, rummaging around in the granite, not finding a checkpoint – OF COURSE I’m going to lose all confidence in the few navigational skills I do possess.
So I cling stubbornly to my one conviction, that there is a checkpoint on top of a rocky tor on this compass bearing, and on I go. Down thru rocky and bracken, river crossing, uphill thru acres of shiggy (technical term), a second rocky tor, more rummaging, more granite, down again, a third rocky tor – getting slipperier and more precipitous with each climb, and still no CP. By now it’s obvious I have gone wrong and a slip on the third top brings me to my senses, so I climb down for a proper map session and work out I’m about 2 miles too far SE, having crossed Little and Great Trowelsworthy Tors and being well on my way across Lee Moor. Across which great billowing clouds of even denser fog are, well, billowing.
At this point I have a complete hissy fit – fortunately witnessed only by some phlegmatic sheep – about the whole navigating, map-reading aspect of things, and resolve that at least I’m going to get in a decent run. So I take a due north compass bearing and doggedly follow it, up hill and downdale, thru acres of bracken and the same river I crossed an hour earlier in the wrong direction, until I hit the main bridlepath just east of the tin mine at Eylsebarrow. I run on to nun’s cross – a path that at least shows up in the fog – and towards Princetown, picking up the Devonport leat which bears up and over Raddick Hill and should lead me to the fourth CP (at this point b***er CP3, in the middle of a stone enclosure).
At last, after more than two hours on the moor, I glimpse a couple of other runners dimly through the mist and head towards them, assuming they will lead me to the CP and not, as actually happened, into a waist-high sinking bog. By the time I’ve crawled onto firm land I’ve lost them again, and go on to lose 10 more minutes looking for an aquaduct which I become convinced has also been spirited away by vandals.
Down the Meavy to Norsworthy Bridge, up again to CP5 – and my map is so soggy by this point that the clips just look like more rain-damage – and finally back to Meavy for a not-too-convincing ‘good effort’ when I claim my 2 checkpoints in nearly three hours. Still, I have to say, it was a good run. Even when things go this badly wrong, and it’s blowing a gale, and I’m not just wet but deeply marinated in marsh and sheepshit, there is very little I’d rather be doing on a sunday morning than this.
+++Very important point: Dartmoor Runners require you to be an ‘excellent’ navigator to take part in one of their events. It is entirely my responsibility that I set off on a run without being as good in that department as I should have been. The run lived up to its reputation for being well-organised and friendly, and I will definitely be back for more, after a winter of map practice naturally. And it should also be said, I know dartmoor well, I knew where I was (if not where I should be) at all times, and I was running well within my capabilities, so I wasn’t at any risk. Except embarrassment of course.+++
