Got them navigation blues

Walking up the lane through Jonny Bland’s farm I bumped into Billy Bland and Carl Bell, as we all variously watched the finishing stages of the Dale Head fell race. The ensuing conversation covered nearly as much ground as the runners had, and eventually turned to upcoming races. I suggested to Carl that his Keswick AC team were a shoe-in for the British Fell Relays the following month. Carl replied with a surprising statement that made Billy splutter, “but no-one can navigate in our team.”

Move on a month and Keswick have won the Hodgson Brothers Relay, having never been headed, and are surely favourites for those British Fell Relays. But things don’t always work like out like that, and favourites do not always win. On the first leg Keswick came in equal first, with Edinburgh University Hare and Hounds. By the end of leg two [photo: Mountain Fuel] they were leading by 1-22 from eventual winners Pudsey and Bramley.

Then came the navigation leg, with its 5 checkpoints that are not known in advance. By the end of the leg Keswick had slipped dramatically down the field, coming home in 71st place, now 31-29 down. To put it bluntly they had a ‘navmare’ finding the second checkpoint. At that 2nd checkpoint they were 201st (being only 231st fastest on that sector), then recovered to be 3rd, 12th, 3rd and 6th fastest on the sectors to the leg’s finish. The team ‘won’ the fourth leg by 1-27, managing to finishing 10th overall, 20-31 behind the winners.

This is all by way of illustration. It demonstrates that margins of error are very small. Even within that navigation leg it was only one sector that caused such a huge problem for the team. I asked one of the pair of Keswick athletes on this nav leg for their thoughts on what had happened. They are recorded anonymously, as it is in no way my intention to lay any blame for how events turned out.

If you are involved in the sport you will probably know who they are anyway, but thanks are due to them having the guts to share their pain

We found checkpoint one with no problem, with my partner taking the navigational lead. He had put in his homework and had been out and about on the fells on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday familiarising himself with the area, and was committed to doing his best for the team. Full credit to him for taking the initiative to work on his knowledge of the area and also his navigation skills in the run up to the relays, whereas the rest of us have only really focused on getting as running fit as possible. Admittedly I failed to make any effort to improve my navigation skills before the relays and didn’t get a chance to run in the area, so that decreased our map and compass literacy levels somewhat.

Between checkpoints one and two we took a contouring line around and ran across rough ground into a thickening fog. It was soon disorientating, but I had vowed not to interfere with the nav, as I would have been guessing and didn’t want a too many cooks situation. After longer than expected, we hit the fence and stream we were looking for, but not at the place that we thought we had in relation to the map. We went up and down the stream looking through the fog for the sheepfold, but it just wasn’t materialising. We tried moving along the hillside to see if we could find another stream, and listened out for the sound of the falls marked on the map, following a couple of false leads.

At this point it crept up on us that we may be a bit lost. A couple of runners passed lower down, we dropped towards them and then some more appeared. ‘Checkpoint two is way back that way,’ said the next pair. It was disappointing, but we ran against the now steady flow of runners, who shared some sympathies when they realised what we had done. Once we found the sheepfold it was pretty straightforward, but the first misjudgement had set us back a fair way.

We were able to make up some places, and Jacob had an exceptional final leg, to run the fastest time and make up 60 places I think. We were really gutted with what had happened.

Thinking about the above story brought to mind that the best runners have all had navigation issues at some point or other. A swift trawl through my book research notes came up with an example each for the three guys that I consider the finest of all fell runners.

Billy Bland was renowned for his ability to route-find in the Cumbrian races but wasn’t so sure about both Kenny Stuart and John Wild’s natural abilities in that area. “Kenny couldn’t find his way out of a paper bag if the top was open! I have said it many a time. To a certain extent John was the same. They were both racers and a lot better runners than I ever was, but they weren’t mountain men if you know what I am saying.” And yet Billy chose Kenny as his sole pacer on his leg 1 for his Bob Graham Round record in 1982.

Billy Bland admits that if he went out of Lakes he might not be so good at finding his way. On one occasion at the Chew Valley Skyline race he admits he followed somebody: I remember in particular going down there and I was very fit and I went up the first hill and down into the ghyll and Bob Ashworth had broken free and there were 4 or 5 other pretty good runners and I said, ‘does he know where he is going?’, and they said ‘yeh, think he does’. So, I set off after him. In the mist Bob could have run me to Manchester, I didn’t have a clue where I was going.

Towards the end it was possible for Bland to leave a tiring Ashworth, but in recognition of his path-finding, he sportingly held back and let the Rossendale man take the honours. Billy adds:

we came off last top together and because he had showed me the way round, but I had let him know that I could beat him, we still came over the line right together. Someone like Kenny Stuart would just sit on you, then beat you at the finish. Fair play to him, it didn’t bother me, in some ways he was a better runner than me.

Joss Naylor won the Mountain Trial 10 times, but got well lost on his second one, in his home valley at that. In 1961 Joss was just 22 years old, and ran in his second Mountain Trial, which was based in Wasdale. He was in the lead all the way and finished fifteen minutes in front of the next man, George Brass. Unfortunately, Joss had got lost after the third checkpoint, and thus didn’t win as he had missed the last two checkpoints. Joss claimed that his sheep didn’t range that far!

Footnote: If you want to read about my navigational inadequacies, and also a bit about how some top fell runners approach navigation then you might like to read an earlier blog posting: Bob the navigator: thoughts on maps and navigation.

NB: if you want a nav course there are various ones around. See for example: Nav4/Due North and Fellrunningguide.