Paddy Buckley Round 8th June 2013 - Matt Davis

Last Saturday and a smidgen of Sunday saw me complete a solo unsupported round of the Paddy Buckley. For those not familiar with it, its the Welsh equivalent of the popular English Bob Graham or Scottish Ramsay Round. For me this was the last in the trilogy in the UK classic "big 3" 24hr rounds and for one reason or another over the years it was & has been a bit of nemesis. Reflecting on the style in which I've done them this was & will remain the the hardest of the three to achieve. Did I make it harder for myself, probably. But then after reading the short script written on the official PBR map by Paddy himself. It resonated with me & made me even more motivated to try to accomplish it in the manner I wanted, even if it meant failing several more times. The challenge(s) had become part of a bigger challenge something that would personally stretch me, wasn't going to be a given and afterwards I could look back with a sense of personnel achievement.

With such good weather lately I would have been daft not to have a crack at it last weekend. I've experimented with different start times & places. This one saw me with a new time of 3am at the Capel Curig start..On the day hill conditions underfoot were perfect, the best I've seen for years in some of these spots, the heat though did take its toll and after going well in the cool of the early morning I started to slow down as the day got hotter. The extremely good conditions very nearly, but not quite scuppering my attempt. The irony was my saviour; of all things the new Snowdon Summit Cafe. Where without conscience I "blagged" my way to the front of the queue and bought 2L of water to see me through to Llanberis where I bough another two. After here it was a constant battle round the Glyder's with cramp always a nano second from completely locking up my quads until I eventually managed to rehydrate myself enough to get rid of them for good. That resupply was in effect the crux to my success as it halted my physical decline and provided a massive moral booster to my wilting spirit. If it hadn't been for this I wouldn't have been in any fit shape to finish what I had left. It also says something for my respect of this round that even with a good bit of time in hand from early on I never dared have the confidence that I would finish it under the "magic" 24 hr barrier until I'd done the final climb of Pen Yr Ole Wen. I did though and despite having a very steady / nothing stupid decent off the last peak finished with a reasonable time of 22:46.

My weird moment for the day has to be trying to figure out what I was looking at sticking up out of one of the hills as dawn came, only to realise I was witnessing the first of three helicopter incidents on/around Snowdon! My surreal award goes to when having popped over Cribau Tregalan to be met with Snowdon summit looking what I can only describe as crawling with colourful ants (maybe it was the sun getting to me). But I estimate there must have been around a 1000 people either going up / down or milling around the summit area when I was there. Put into perspective for the rest of the route, I only came into contact / passed about 50 other people. How mad is that.