British Hill Relays, Kettlewell

15th October 2011

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Fantastic weather for this year’s British Hill Relays down in Kettlewell, Yorkshire.

Despite taking no map or road atlas, all 6 Westies eventually found the venue on Saturday. On the Friday night, we picked up Sam Alexander from Skipton, meeting at the strangely named Rhubarb bar/restaurant, before retiring to Malham Youth Hostel. Owen stumbled in around 1am having got waylaid with his Glasgow departure.

Anyhow, at 10am on Saturday morning the event kicked off with wall-to-wall sunshine and around 180 teams taking part. Sam got us off to a good start in 32nd position, and handing over to Niall and Brian for the longest stage on Leg 2. Niall and Brian worked well to gain several places, and handed over to Cameron and Owen in around 25th place with teams arriving thick and fast.

Dark Peak ran the fastest times on Legs 1, 2 and 3, and sent Lloyd Taggart off on Leg 4 with a comfortable lead. Mercia had been right on the heels of Dark Peak for the first 2 changeovers, but somehow blew it on Leg 3, and in fact Shettleston came in 2nd for the Leg 4 handover with Oleg Chepelin heading out just ahead of Morgan Donnelly of Borrowdale. HBT were also well-placed and sent Murray Strain off on the final leg to run the fastest Leg 4 on the day. Edinburgh Uni Hares & Hounds were the 3rd-placed Scottish Team, a good bit ahead of us.

I eventually caught glimpses of Cameron and Owen hurtling down the finishing fields, in the mix with Bowland vets Chris Reade and Quentin Harding. All 4 of them arrived at the dibber almost simultaneously, but while Cameron was trying to dib the lady steward pushed him back to let Bowland dib first, so as soon as we tagged as I was immediately chasing Mike Johnson plus a Rossendale guy. I possibly shouldn’t have chased Mike so hard since I pretty much ran out of steam on the climb, and got caught by Wharfedale, then just before the summit of Great Whernside I was caught by Pennine, and then on the descent I was passed by Pudsey vets, so I dropped 3 places in total. But overall it was by far the best Westies performance we’ve had at one of the British relays during my time in the club. Thanks guys for all your hard work!