It was cool and tranquil first thing, but the day feels like its going to be hot. I did half an hour of yoga in the kitchen to soothe my bursitis and the neighbours-but-one were still up from the previous night, drinking wine and talking quietly in their garden. They swayed, hissed about geo-politics and fed our cat some bacon. The cat took it, shook it like a rodent and fled into the house and hid. The temperature yesterday hit a high of 26 degrees Celsius and today its predicted to be 29.
Our kit list for the day’s fell race includes a waterproof jacket, gloves and hat, survival bag, food and fluids, map and compass. All of these are stuffed into my running backpack, along with a litre and a half of water. There’s also a spare bag with a change of clothes, more food, water and a first aid kit. At 8am, the neighbours are gone and Jawad arrives and we drive to Tony’s through the quiet, grey lanes and hills of eastern Sheffield. Tony then drives all three of us to Ladybower Reservoir.
Its a bright summer morning so its busy and there are plenty of people out early, finding things to do around the water. We park amongst the pines overlooking a portion of Ladybower that joins up with Howden. Where one starts and the other begins, its hard to know. We stretch and walk down through the trees and the warm roads to the visitor centre to register and to drop off our bags. Somewhere out under the water on the lake, are the villages of Ashopton and Derwent, drowned to create a reservoir and drinking water for Sheffield. There’s no wind in the valley and the trees don’t move or make a sound.
Everybody in our group has a running injury of some sort, except Tony. Jawad is recovering from an Achilles rupture, Matt has hip issues and I have bursitis and Achilles tendonitis. We’ve agreed to go slowly, to avoid aggravating our injuries, although Matt hasn’t committed completely to this course of action. Personally, I am happy with this. I love to race, but a regular run without pain is much more beneficial to me than occasional fast ones that run the risk of putting me on the sofa for three months.
There are a few familiar faces making their way through the pine trees to the start line, but names and places escape me. I put the spare bag containing the first aid kit in the wrong pile (the organisers have offered to take one bag per runner to the finish line for us) and a kind stranger notices and moves it into the right one. Competitors gather at the bottom of Derwent Dam, warming up and fiddling with watches. Derwent Edge, erupting through the top of the hillside above us, looms to the right and Derwent Dam shoots up vertically directly in front, the sun starting to illuminate its great dull man-made surface.
The gritstone edges we’ll be running across were made by people too, surprisingly. Forced up by pressure into the daylight and the elements and the industrial revolution, they were quarried from their original forms into the stacks of jumbled stone that so easily take up residence in a person’s imagination and memories. Their profiles are quintessential – almost spiritual in the half lights of the various seasons – and they seem to come from the same hard-to-talk-about place as animal silhouettes, cloud shapes and lights in the sky.
Down here beneath the dam however, its time to start and with no whistle to mark it, the race gets underway. From the valley floor, we run to the far corner, where everyone gets into a queue. At the top of some steep steps, there’s a brief section of trail before a sharp right turn up the valley side into Hancock Wood and up, up and up to Derwent Edge, the first of nine.
Nine Edges fell race 2023
Tony has a hard time on the incline immediately. Gravity seems to pull at him harder than it does the rest of us. Matt, however, has gone by the time we finish the climb and none of us see him again for days: a message from him surfaces in the WhatsApp group to let us knows he’s OK. For now though, its just the three of us and Derwent Edge – like many other steep inclines – has a summit that takes you to the top gradually rather than quickly. There’s no immediate switch from uphill to flat and there’s no sense of reaching a plateau for what feels like a long time. On the top of Derwent Edge, its already warm.
We cross dry moorland in the heat, under a rising sun. No-one complains about their injuries, but Tony is still finding it tough. We stay at his pace for his sake, for the sake of our injuries and because its also only mile 3 out of 20. From the East, the sun beams directly onto us and forms a weird pressure that pushes us back the way we came. I get ahead briefly and shield my eyes to squint over the patchwork moorland that gets bluer the further away it gets. Looking back over where we’ve come from the land creases and bunches at a peculiar scale, terminating in distant valleys, ridges and hills. Its comforting to look at and there’s a silent, brightly coloured and winding line of runners twisting away into the soft haze behind us. Only the ones nearest to me seem to be moving and only the runners that come past where I’m stood make any sound.
We turn left over the moors to pick up the beginning of Stanage. Its a long, difficult pull up to the top of the edge and broken, sandy – almost beachy – paths and trails make my feet and heels hurt. I’m nervous about the tendonitis returning so I slow down and look for the other two. I take a look behind me and see runners twisting away over the landscape still, happy and alive and dwindling into nothing in the shimmering distance.
From a runner’s point of view, its not often that the rocks underfoot are born in mind for more than a second or two. Its more likely that they’ll be ignored, leaped over or tripped on. Soil gets more attention because it can be hard, soft or even mud. Stone tends to be painful. Stanage is a long, beautiful Edge that we all run quite often, from various angles and in various weathers; I think its most beautiful in the snow. Under any circumstances, the rocks and small boulders are a constant worry and its hard to look up for any length of time. There are walkers and runners all around us now and mountain bikers come the other way sometimes, their eyes flicking between the loose, stone-covered ground and the terrain directly ahead. Tony falls over at some point and cuts his arms, his hands and his knees. His wounds need cleaning and they look a mess. Everything is caked in dust and dirt.
Time slips by and Stanage bleeds into Burbage and we pass a through a checkpoint with bananas and water. The heat of the day ratchets up again and forward motion becomes more difficult. Tony is moving slowly and as we persevere through the dust on Burbage we’re running directly into the light. There’s talk with other runners and by the time we get to Burbage bridge – level with the Edges and looking down into the valley – everyone except me dips their injuries, feet and faces into the cold orange water flowing over the stones and down into the vale.
There is no fossil record in Dark Peak stone, but in the White Peak, the rock tells us that at one time, this part of Britain was hot, humid and punctured with lagoons and shallow seas full of armoured fish, coral and life.
Where we are was probably a river delta; a pythonic convergence of snaking water courses from the North, comparable in size to the present-day Mississippi. Our gritstone Edges grew in the delta mouths, blooming upward from the silt that gathered in the restless, roving estuaries of countless rivers that ran down from the north.
We’re running below Burbage Edge and it still feels ancient. There are ferns and bracken to the sides, the ground is sandy and rocky and the sun burns from the wide blue sky, seeming to bypass completely the threadbare shreds of cloud that sail gently across the horizon.
We get to the Longshaw Estate as the heat gets hard to tolerate. Tony’s still bleeding slightly and even though I’m wearing factor 50, I feel like I’m burning. Fortunately, there’s some tree cover here and the coolness and shade is one of the most welcome things we’ve encountered so far. My right heel hurts, but the pain doesn’t seem to go any further for now. We take a brief break outside the cafe and Tony treats his injuries again, which have stopped bleeding at least. The sun is baking the suncream, the dirt and the sweat onto our exposed skin.
Millions of years of folding, melting, grinding and reducing on gigantic scales have made this area what it is. Cold lavas, plates and stone beds many kilometres long interlock below the surface, water sometimes flowing between them in underground rivers and streams and occasionally on the surface, surrounded by plants and animals. Beautiful as it all is, its all being worn away by machines, feet and the weather.
We’re quite far into the Estate by now and we take a route that I’ve never used before and running south, we stay on the lanes and make our way toward the next Edge on the list. With no wind to cool us, we’re running over moorland, the track we’re on hard with stones and winding away into a distance that shakes with the heat and the exertion.
We come out on a road that curls to the right and leads us past the entrance to The Grouse pub. There’s a stile immediately past it that leads to the car park above Grindleford and Checkpoint 5. There are bananas and jellybabies and water and we take a brief break. The staff are friendly and they warn us that there won’t be any shade out on the next section.
They are correct. The section from Frogatt to Curbar is open, hot and long. Its slightly uphill and the ground is broken too so its tough going. My heel is beginning to get worse and there are jingling climbers perched on gritsone crags like colourful birds, squinting into the distance and watching us struggle past. There’s a slight breeze on the tops which helps and its suddenly easy to imagine this area as a tropical wetland, alive with prehistoric insects and plants. The moors to the south east look scorched and patches of heather are visible on the hillsides.
We pass above Froggatt Wood, which I would gladly spend the next hour in. The shade and the plantlife and being closer to water and the valley floor all seem appealing right now.
At Curbar Gap, there’s another checkpoint that we stop at. Water and bananas again for me and a rest for Tony and Jawad. By this time I want to get back. We’ve been in the heat for several hours and the sun is getting higher in the sky.
The final edge is Birchen Edge and we run beneath it. There are climbers on there and there is greenery blooming from between the rocks and towering over our heads. It still feels ancient here, despite the best attempts of human beings. Even in the awful heat, the rock and the plants feel like they’re alive and ready to expand as soon as they get the chance.
Its the end now and there’s shade and we’re starting to head downhill. Tony nearly takes a fall again but recovers admirably, narrowly avoiding a tumbling collapse onto sand and stones. As we get toward the bottom, we can hear the road and the finish line and it occurs to me that the Peak District is constantly in flux and changing at various speeds. Some changes take days and some take millennia. All of the interlocking structures are collapsing and growing simultaneously slow and fast.
Do you want to read bout the 2024 race? Read about running the Nine Edges fell race in 2024 here.