Wainwright’s 192 mile Coast to Coast (C2C) route traverses 3 of northern England’s national parks: the Lake District, Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors. 3 years ago I ran/walked the C2C self-supported in 6 days and enjoyed the route so much, that once I heard there was a race that covered the same route it sat niggling away in the back of my mind. However, with a few other races on my bucket list to be completed first, it wasn’t until this year that I was able to fit it in. The format is simple: you start in St Bees at 8.30 Sat morning and with the race clock continuously ticking you have until 23:59 Wed evening to run/walk to Robin Hoods Bay via the route on the supplied map. There were 7 support points offering food, drinks and shelter, and at 4 of these you could sleep and access you personal drop bag containing spare kit.
After a very wet winter the ground was extremely muddy and boggy along most of the route, and like many others I was on my arse in the mud within the first couple of miles! It stayed mostly dry, but very windy across the Lakes and I was nearly blown off my feet at least a couple of times. On arriving at the Patterdale support point (44 miles) at 8.30pm, I found out that storm Kathleen was bringing even stronger wind speeds and heavy rain overnight and hence we were being diverted on a longer, but lower route to the far end of Haweswater to avoid the exposed 790m Kidsty Pike (a few of the fastest runners did go over the Kidsty Pike earlier in the day prior to the diversion being enacted). Many runners paired up for safety and because the supplied map did not cover the diversion and like me not everyone was able to download the GPX file onto a watch. I paired up with Dominic and like everyone else we suffered an awful night/morning of extreme weather. I hobbled into Kirby Stephen (82 miles) at 11am Sunday with a sore ankle I’d damaged earlier on the descent to Patterdale, and also felt ill and unable to eat. I seriously thought of pulling out of the race, but after a good rest I was able to eat again, my ankle settled down and I decided to continue.
It was now after 3pm, the sun was out briefly, but still very windy. I was on my own, but I ran as much as I could over the notoriously boggy Nine Standards to avoid sinking into the ground and to catch up with other runners before nightfall. Dan & Mike were good company and we arrived at Reeth after the pubs were shut, but we were still 11 miles short of the Richmond support point and so slept for 15 minutes on the concrete floor of the Dale’s Bike Centre toilets (conveniently left open). Got to Richmond (115 miles) at about 5am and ate a huge bowl of curry and chips before curling up into my sleeping bag. I started out at 10am on Monday, together with Ian from Essex and Karola from Innsbruck – we formed a good team and would stay together all the way to the finish. The sun was out and the wind speed had finally dropped to something normal, so it was easy going across the flat Vale of York and we made good time reaching the Lordstones support point (145 miles) on the North York Moors by 11pm. After 3.5 hours of eating, sleeping and personal admin we were on our way again into a wet and gloomy moon-less night. Taking advantage of a good weather window and run-able ground we reached the last support point (Glaisdale 170 miles) at 10:30am Tuesday. By now we were all having blister problems that needed treating and so the stop was longer than anticipated. The last 20 miles to Robin Hood’s were tough and slow not just because of heavy rain and a cold wind heavy rain, but we always seemed to be either going up and down steep roads or zig-zagging across long stretches of thick mud and swamp. Even on the last flat few miles along the coastal path we were still wading through mud, but it did finally stop raining when we arrived at the finish just before dark around 8pm. As is the custom, I then pulled out of my pack the small pebble I had picked up from the beach at St Bees, and threw it into the sea at Robin Hood’s Bay.
105 started the full race, 69 finished – a significantly lower % than previous years. First male was 47:32 and female 52:42. I finished in 32nd place in 83:30 hours and could not have done it without all the help from the wonderful volunteers at each of the support points (including Eleanor & Fiona Mackenzie).
See here https://www.northerntraverse.com/ for full results and further info about the race and the shorter part-route races on offer
Phil Humphries