The Dragon’s Back again
I wanted to run this route again and include High Wheeldon because every time I’ve done it, I’ve been tired and stopped after Parkhouse. Tony had some good advice too, which I wanted to implement, and it involved starting at Hollinsclough, rather than Longnor, which is where I usually run from.
The land between Longnor and Hollinsclough is flat and on the roads its long and boring and in the fields its wet and occasionally illegal. I thought it would be a good thing for my brain and muscles to have this section at the end rather than the start. A nice flat section at the end of a long run is often welcome and a break in routine is also good for reasons that escape me.
People do things automatically and habitually all the time. Autopilot is a useful state to inject into complex activities like driving, running or drawing. If one aspect of what you’re doing can be put into a box and kept quiet, then there’s more attention and care to be pressed into the service of understanding things that matter, like road signs, evening shadows and time.
I can’t find the road that takes me to Hollinsclough and I drive straight through Longnor and out into an early portion of the Morridge. I could see the four hills I wanted to run sailing past me on my right and then, after a minute or so, sinking down into the landscape behind me in my rear-view mirror. So on a warm summer evening in the British countryside, I turned around in the middle of the road and drove back to Longnor, where I parked in the same place that I always park. Exiting the car, I decided to run a repeat of my last visit and describe a loop from Hollinsclough, to Chrome Hill, to Parkhouse and to High Wheeldon: the same loop that I always do.
We think of loops and repetitions as basically interchangeable but they’re not. Loops are not like repetitions. Repetitions (like habits) don’t have a shape – a physical circularity – in the same way that a loop does. A loop will take you back to where you started – admittedly at a later point in time – whereas a repetition of something isn’t necessarily fixed in space and in theory can be endless.
After 2 miles or so, at Hollinsclough, I go a completely differently way. I usually go round the back of the hill, but this time I take the path up the front. Its more technical, covered in sharp plants and slightly harder work than the trail that winds around the back. Its steeper and thinner and there are sheep everywhere. Hitting the top gasping, I expected to come out onto Hollinsclough’s summit, but I found that I was actually quite far away. By the time I got to the top – after running along a narrow trod with a steep drop at the side – I realised I’d already seen the view quite a few times so I tipped straight down the other side. Its steep, hard on the knees and impossible to run.
The cross country section between this hill and Chrome Hill is much tougher than it looks. Every time I do it, I think the same thing and I go the same way and it never gets easier. The sun is out though and because last time I was here we were drowned in fog it feels like I’m here at a special time (back then the coral reefs loomed like icebergs in the murk whereas today they appear to be long-dead up-thrusts in a bright, living landscape).
The heat rises too and by the time I scramble up the sides of Chrome Hill I’m on my hands and knees, climbing up the sides and grabbing handfuls of grass to steady myself and knuckling over the rest like a gorilla. There’s no-one else here and its good to hear the sheep call to what I hope is each other.
I haven’t brought any water, so coming off Chrome Hill and up onto Parkhouse is basically the same exercise, but harder and with the growing urge to drink something. There’s someone else up here and I stop to check my map and to photograph some of the landscape and the rock formations that I can see from up here. After a few miles of running and scrambling – my fingernails black, my feet hurting and my throat dry – the light and the warmth begins to feel oppressive and I’m struck by how a group of elements can feel transcendent in one instance and then, with the addition of another they become troublesome and difficult. Without the constant urge to drink water, the hills, the sun, the landscape itself, could all be an approximation of some sort of Heaven.
From Parkhouse, I need to get over some fields, up the side of a valley and into Earl Sterndale. It is at this point that I usually break to my right and cut back into the valley to return to my usual parking spot in Longnor.
Thirst has made me consider drinking from a small, muddy stream, but for some reason – maybe the mud, maybe something more obscure – I decided to keep running and to get to High Wheeldon. The route to get there through Earl Sterndale is quite straight forward, but the way up to the top of its high-rise bulk is not. I don’t know how high it is, but it looks enormous from the road. From its shadow, I could see the path, but I lost it very quickly and scrambled up the steep grassy side anyway, hoping that I wouldn’t topple backwards and fall. At the summit, I wanted to be pleased and drink in the view, but I was thirsty and tired of the sheep so I went straight back down again to look for the road. I made a slow, winding and awkward descent that made the fell-runner in me cringe and scream for a woodland track. Toward the bottom I got a photograph of a thistle that came out badly.
The paths back to the car were essentially flat, except for the end – the mud-clogged fields and steep concrete road that lead back into Longnor – where I had the urge to drink out of a stream again. When I got back, I decided I probably wouldn’t run up all of the hills in the Dragon’s Back in a single session again and that I should know more about drinking water in the countryside.