Writers go running on Dartmoor

Last weekend, I co-hosted a Running & Writing retreat with Feet in the Clouds author Richard Askwith. It's the third retreat we've done together, and each time we ask everyone in the group to write something about the same Saturday morning run, with the option to read it out to the group on Sunday evening.

It's always wonderful to get eight or nine different perspectives, different pieces of writing, all in different styes and coming from different angles, all about exactly the same run. I'm always amazed by how good they all are. Is it the conducive retreat atmosphere? Have we only attracted really great writers to the retreat? Or do we all somehow bounce off each other, like we do when we're running, gaining strength and courage from the others, feeding off the energy of the group? Running and writing are both in essence solitary pursuits, but here on the retreat we come together to do them both, and it seems to work.

I always feel some pressure for mine to be slightly better than those of the guests, but it rarely is. In any case, writing isn't a competition, and whether a piece is better or not is unimportant. Each one can be appreciated in its own way, for its own insights and moments of humour and poetry. 

So for your enjoyment, here are some of the pieces from the 2021 retreat about our little jaunt on Dartmoor on Saturday morning ...

HOW TO DO DARTMOOR ON A SATURDAY IN NOVEMBER

by Adharanand Finn

THERE’S ALWAYS that moment when you get out of the car, the shudder of cold bites at your ears, gets down your neck. Everything jars, and your first urge is to get straight back in the car and shut the door. 

People walk by wrapped up in jackets and scarves, calling their dogs back. That’s the normal way to do this. To be on Dartmoor on a Saturday morning in November. We must look a little odd in our shorts and flimsy jackets. Like that time I saw those people in matching T-shirts being beasted by a man in Army uniform as they did press-ups on Goodrington beach. I thought they looked a little odd. Why would they want to do that?

Why would we want to be here, shivering, as Nigel gets us to warm up by wiggling our pelvis, our bare legs bristling in protest? 

Even after we start running, it’s not instantly fun. My legs creak slowly into movement, my feet squelching in the mud. I try to tiptoe around the black puddles as though they may hide deep holes, my joie de vivre still back in the warmth of the car, the sleek holiday house we left behind this morning. I’m still not yet part of this barren, bleak landscape. I’m skating over it, buffeted by it, and gazing nervously at the stretching distance.

A mile in, up the hill to Haytor, my feet begin to feel some connection with the earth for the first time, finding some bounce in the soft grass, small steps in the stones. A faint warming begins to stir inside me.

The granite boulders of Haytor stand still in the choppy greyness of the day. Shall we climb to the top? The urge takes us and we’re scrambling up the well worn footholds in the rock, made over decades by millions of day-trippers taking a moment to scale Dartmoor’s mini, accessible summit.

At the top the wind is wild, flapping our jackets, inviting lift-off. We take selfies. Of course we do. We are on top of the world. All around us lies the browning, wintering moor, the sea cold and moody in the distance.

We’d best get on, down the rocks, out of the frantic wind, running down the soft, grassy Dartmoor hills, into ancient woodlands where clapper bridges lie sturdy and strong across excitable streams. Then back up, steep. But I’m in my flow now, back in the familiar groove of moving through this knotted, hulking landscape, wild, yet tame. Almost gentle today, out of the wind, no driving, squalling rain to blind my eyes. Even the mud seems reticent today.

With one last tor to pass, and the glint of the cars in sight, I let go of the brakes. We start rolling, a few picking up the whiff of a challenge as I rush by. Childish, I shout: “It’s a race.”

Hardly a fair race with my flying start, but I don’t care, I’m just loving the feel of my legs whirring away under me, the old burn on the lungs as I underestimate the size of the final hill. It’s partly nostalgia, from those cross-country days of my youth, when running meant pushing, pushing, always pushing. And partly just the fairground thrill of skipping and leaping over rocks and tuffets, especially on the final downward slope. Almost at the car now, I sense someone suddenly behind me. I speed up. Of course I do. It’s a race. And in a race, you have to race. 

We stand doubled over by the cars as everyone regroups. We’re warm now. No longer shivering. Happy to be standing here. It’s the same old story: after the run, it all makes sense. Yes, this is the way to be on Dartmoor on a Saturday morning in November. At least, for me it is. 

A COLD WIND ON DARTMOOR

by Richard Askwith

THE COLD hillside is familiar. I couldn’t tell you where we are, let alone lead you back to the car. But it’s not the first time I’ve been here. I stumbled up this steep path a couple of years ago, and I remember it from the year before, too.

I remember the long, treacherous funnel of dark mud, peaty and rich with mulched leaves, with slithery boulders packed into it at random, and failed bracken, unaccountably dry, bristling like wood shavings alongside. I remember the relentless way it kept snaking upwards, seemingly endless, with an irregularity that made rhythm impossible and stumbling inevitable.

I think it was raining last time. Maybe the time before, too. It’s hard to be sure. As usual, I’m as soggy as the landscape; it barely seems to matter where the moisture came from.

How many more times can I do this, I wonder? Can I carry on running unremarkably on the same route, one foot in front of the other, neither fast nor slow, and keep finding things to write about the experience? It seems like a sensible question, but the thought barely lingers a minute. Dartmoor always ends up surprising me. I just have to remember to open myself to it, and I’ll discover it afresh.

Meanwhile, I have realised something. Already, this year’s run is different.

The landscape hasn’t changed much. I recognise the stooped, balding trees halfway to the top, and the stringy remains of the heather. Beyond, glimpses of the cropped green turf on the highest ground feel just as alluring as last time.

But something else is new. It’s a sense of struggle – misery, even – as I try to power up towards the green open space above the tree line.

It never used to be such a slog. I’m sure that, last time, I didn’t drift so easily to the back of the group. And I certainly wasn’t so pre-occupied with pain. But this time pain has been barging into my thoughts all morning: the pain of the moment; anticipated pain; remembered pain; pain that might never even happen.

I don’t know why I’m so bothered by it, but I am. Will this jar my knees? Will I slip and sprain an ankle? Will the coming descent torture my blood-blistered toes? Is my dodgy hamstring about to let me down?

I never used to be such a wimp: such a “nesh”, as Nigel puts it. But I seem to have lost my invulnerability. I feel the cold wind slicing through me. The damp of the morning is seeping into my bones.

Thoughts like these flicker on the edge of my consciousness like social media posts. I keep reminding myself to focus outwards instead. Savour the springy, forgiving texture of the ground underfoot; or glance up ahead and marvel at the crazy lurchings of the wind-tossed birds, as cold gusts blast and scatter them above the tor. Think what a privilege it is to be out here, experiencing all this. Think a bit less about the fact I can’t get enough air in my lungs. Think a bit more about what that air tastes like.

So I try to identify flavours in the clean Dartmoor breeze: the elusive notes of moist earth and drying grass, wet moss and warm, woodland undergrowth. It all helps, and the closer we approach the stone tor, the less oppressed my spirit feels.

But there’s no point denying the underlying trend. I’m less of a runner than I used to be.

It’s the most basic fact of life: age. Each day you are older than you were the day before, and after the first thirty years or so of lived days the passage of time rarely brings physical improvement. After fifty or sixty years’ worth of lived days, the implications of the passage of time cast a chilling shadow over your daily thoughts. You’re on the old people’s table now.

For runners, there are specific symptoms: less power, less speed, less elasticity, less balance, less resistance to injury; less, in short, of all the things that make you a good runner. If you’re used to running being a source of joy in your life, so much loss can be hard to come to terms with. And an overcast morning - with younger, better runners striding incautiously ahead of you while you battle to conquer a hill you would once barely have noticed - can make it feel not just hard but bleak.

Some people – runners and non-runners – see this as a reason for the old to give up; to stop embarrassing themselves. Yet there is, I remind myself, another view, and another firm fact of life. Some runners – many runners – don’t give up. They carry on doing what they have always done: striving, as far as practically possible, to be the best runners they can be. Some of them carry on doing so until they are far older than me or the two Nigels: decades older, in some cases. I have met many such runners recently, in the course of my work, and I can say with confidence that they tend to be strikingly happier, healthier and more enthusiastic about life than people of their age who don’t run.

I have also come to understand an important truth. Age doesn’t make our sporting struggles any less real or intense: it just changes their focus. Older runners are slower and weaker for a good reason: we are up against an invisible obstacle - age - in the same way that fell-runners are up against the invisible obstacle of gravity, or ultra-runners are up against the obstacle of the enormous distances they have already run (unnoticed by onlookers who mistake them for unusually slow joggers).

Yet fell-runners and ultra-runners aren’t lesser versions of “proper” runners. They’re just a particular kind of runner, striving for perfection in a slightly different version of the sport.

Arbitrary obstacles are the essence of sport, and sporting achievements are not diminished by their presence. Was Ed Moses a less legendary athlete than Michael Johnson, because his 400m world records involved hurdles and, as a result, were several seconds slower than Johnson’s at the same distance? Of course not. The greatness lies in the degree to which each man approached the absolute limits of physical possibility.

It’s the same with ageing. “Think how much easier it would be if the goal was bigger in football or the net was lower in tennis,” an old Finnish runner once told me. “But the obstacles are the point. Even in the 400m, you start and finish in the same place. You could just sit on the grass…”

Age, in other words, is just one more arbitrary sporting constraint. Why should it be the only one that makes the contest less credible?

Ageing, for the late-life runner who keeps going, is like trying to run up a down escalator, with no hope of reaching the top. One day, we’ll end up at the bottom. But we can, if we choose, sprint upwards with all our strength, refusing to go down without a fight, with no real goal in mind beyond the reward of the struggle itself.

We are doomed to failure and decline. Yet we can still feel exhilarated by the honesty and intensity of our efforts to fight our way back up the slope.

And that, I think, explains why, for a few wind-whipped moments as Nigel and I unsteadily approach the top of the morning’s final climb, that ugly, urban image of an escalator fills me with hope. All around us, the vast, ancient landscape shrugs off the depredations of time, indifferently. But our struggle as ageing runners has forcibly super-imposed on it a stirringly human meaning. This is a landscape in which, today, we are not giving up.

We each pick what we think will be the most runner-friendly route: not because we want to make things as easy as possible but because we want to run as fast as possible. We are both immersed in the same doomed struggle, fellow sufferers from the universal curses of age and mortality, pushing ourselves to the limits of our remaining power and endurance merely because that is what runners do.

It’s no more pointless than any other struggle in running. And today, as we force our aching joints into a final descent, it feels like a kind of victory.

We float down the gentle slope towards the car, fast and light-footed. The cold wind is gusting in our faces, but it no longer seems to cut through me. Instead, it is bearing me up.

SQUELCH

by Gavin Boyter

I RATHER love mud. Or rather, I adore the sensation of plunging through it, confident and uncaring. There’s a feeling of connection to the childhood pleasure of dancing in puddles in welly boots. And when you get to know mud well, it can become your friend, rather than your adversity. So long as you can read it, and know what to expect, being able to tear through a boggy hollow or grip a slippery slope will offer an advantage in cross country or fell races. But that benefit is only a niche part of what makes mud pleasurable.

For most runners don’t just encounter mud in race situations – more commonly, they stumble into it on a training run, or perhaps negotiate it during an ill-advised shortcut. For the bulk of runners, mud becomes a fun, challenging obstacle, a problem to be solved, a chance to test out one’s proprioception, balance, and agility. It can be worn as a badge of honour too – return from an autumnal cross country run not sprayed from head to foot in the brown stuff and you evidently haven’t tried hard enough. Why else are so many cross-country meets held in the season of rains?

Fortunately, for the mud-lovers in our weird subspecies of running writers (or writing runners) there’s plenty of the divine substance on Dartmoor today. It may not have rained for half a week or more, but the moor holds water expertly, almost jealously, sifting and filtering it through many streamlets and burns towards the River Dart or collecting it in standing ponds, puddles, and the basins of defunct quarries.

Some of this water mingles with thick, peaty loam studded with salty granite particles to form mud of a particularly black and sloppy variety (M3 on the Boyter Mud Scale). This mud cannot be tiptoed over, even at speed. It must be skillfully avoided or splashed through with what used to be termed “gay abandon”. Today, since we are joyfully flinging ourselves into a communal experience of running with very likeminded people, most of us opt for the latter strategy, rejoicing in the squelch of evacuating liquid beneath our shoes. There’s a distinct pleasure to this and it’s an uncomplicated one. We never fully escape childhood, and why should we want to, when there is mud to tear through, rope swings over rivers to dare and steep rocky downhills to invite a crazy plummet? We find all three of these diversions on our run today, as well as spectacular views of a cloud-misted moor from each sculpted tor, often accompanied by a scouring wind.

Adharanand usually leads the way with his deceptively quick, wiry lope. I remind myself that he actually wins races from time to time and famously has run with the Kenyans, and I should perhaps not always attempt to keep up with him. However, there is a competitive undercurrent in our group, with veterans of marathons and ultras, many parkruns, and a multiple Marathon de Sables among us. Although we pause atop each tor, and slow down for particularly steep hills or winding, technical trails, there are still eyeballs-out descents and plenty of mud to enjoy. No-one is holding anything back, at least as far as I can tell.

There’s also much to learn from one another. First Nigel leads us in a wholesale revision of our biometrics, with twisting and bending exercises, culminating in us shuffling our buttocks along the wet, sheep poo dotted grass. It really does seem to loosen me off, as the run begins, predictably, uphill. I note Lydia’s bouncy and economic stride, quite deerlike in its grace. Heath boldly strides up slopes with his state-of-the-art poles, and I suddenly understand why they might prove helpful in wearisome terrain. Richard is dogged on the ascents, shortening his stride, and quickening his cadence. In the last mile, fellow Bongo-owner Jonathan seems to float downhill, chasing down Adharanand in the last few hundred yards around the final tor and down to the car park; I haven’t a hope in hell of keeping up, but I blast downhill, nonetheless.

Just as each of us has a unique approach to our writing, as yesterday’s reading revealed, each runner has a subtly different approach to the terrain we cross together. Such idiosyncrasies of form are noted and filed away for later use. By the end of the run, we’ve all collected our own mud deposits, which we duly transfer from our shoes and shins to the interior of Nigel’s car. But this mud is more than just a nuisance, it’s a souvenir.

Just as a purpling bruise from a fall, or a mild hirple earnt from years of injury, become battle scars of runs past, our mud-besmirched running shoes drying on the flagstones outside the house remind us of our joyfully chaotic run in the honest, dark mud of Dartmoor.

A DARTMOOR RUN

by Lydia Thomson

I’M RUNNING in the middle of a group of men across Dartmoor. The route is unknown to all of us except our leader Adharanand, but it seems to me like we just keep running further and further away from the car. In which direction? I don’t know, I’m too busy trying to soak the views into my skin. Besides, these men all seem lovely so far. I’m in no danger. I turn my cap backwards and think, this is just the break I needed.

We pause beside a tor and I climb on top of the rocks. I feel medieval, I feel powerful, I feel like I’m in pursuit of something important and marvellous. I raise my arms above my head. My lungs enjoy the extra space to breathe. My ribcage expands, and I don’t want to make it contract. Never, ever again. I want to stay on top of that tor for longer, but I know the group will want to press on.

At least, I think so.

I go back and chat to Gavin about using the tors to shelter from extreme weather. Then I notice Jonathan disappear behind the rock and I think, it’s not that windy or rainy…and then Adharanand leaves the group to stand behind a different corner of rock, and I think…and then Heath takes Jonathan’s place, and yes I think they’re weeing. Yes. That is what’s happening. They return to the group as if it’s a normal part of a Saturday morning run: climb a hill, wee on a tor.

For women it’s not as casual as this, because it’s not as straightforward. Within my running club, the women often share news of public toilets we’ve found on our routes. One of the women once squatted in a bush, not realising there was a public toilet on the other side of the fence. She got some strange looks from the staff.

I’m sure no one would mind if I found my own corner of tor to squat beside. I feel like we know each other well enough already. Not through any of the small or large conversations we’ve have before now, rather from learning how each other runs.

Down rocky trails and along boggy plains, we’ve all yelped at the unexpected depth of a puddle, or nearly slipped down a bonus stretch of scree. A particularly sociable branch of bracken whacks me in the face after Adharanand has flown through it, and it hits Nigel after me. We call over our shoulders, “Sorry, sorry, don’t worry.” On the steep descents we’ve tried not to fall into each other, and on the steep ascents, we’ve run unnecessarily close to each other. We’re not racing, and it’s not like we’re going to get lost, so I don’t really know why. I think we’re just enjoying running together.

The distant trees and the close camaraderie make my everyday life feel silly and small. My anxiety, its triggers and the giggles of depression seem so far away here. It’s probably just because I’m on holiday, right? I’m sure they would manage to find me if I was here for long enough. I’d be running up a hill towards Haytor and they’d be skipping and dancing right there at the top. There’s still emptiness, there’s still alienation and fear. It just looks a bit prettier on Dartmoor.

I’ll enjoy this escape for what it is for now. But maybe there’s something I can take home with me - some deep and meaningful message about running between the tors - the goal is in sight, the distance is manageable. I hop between rocks and mud flicks up my legs and it’s all magnificent, because I am able to keep moving. I get tired, the clouds change, the wind throws hair into my mouth and threatens to steal my cap, but I stay firm. One tor and one wild pony at a time.

Back at the ranch, I hold my socks beneath the shower to try and rinse out the mud. I squeeze and squeeze them, but the water doesn’t get any clearer. Are they just more mud than sock at this point? As for the mud buried in my toenails, I know that’s going to need some firm scrubbing. I decide not to bother. We’re all friends here, and it's comforting to keep a bit of the moor with me.

DARTMOOR, SENSORY MEMORY AND THE TRAIL RUNNER’S BURDEN

by Jonathan Bean

ARE YOU familiar with the surfer’s burden? The addiction that makes it difficult to do anything other than view the world through a surfing lens. It makes surfers feel they have to surf. If they’re anywhere near a decent beach, and the forecast indicates a favourable swell, they have to go. Not to do so would be to waste the waves, to waste the gift.

Granted, it’s not universal, and a beginner may equate surfing with little more than squeezing into a stale, damp wetsuit to get thumped in the head by wave after cold, grumpy, brown, Cornish holiday wave. Once the beginner has ascended to the level of basic competence and experienced the first glimpses of flow - literal, harmonious physics and hydrodynamics in action, but also the mental flow state - they risk being caught by the surfer’s burden. That brief moment where it all just clicks is enough to capture the new initiate for good.

Doubled over, laughing and heaving in oxygen, in a small Dartmoor car park, after one of the most affirming, vital runs I’ve ever had, I wondered if there was a trail runner’s burden. Once you’ve gone up, down, over and through the natural landscape, can you ever go back to striding on suburban streets?

Lydia said she loved watching me run as I looked to be having so much fun. She was right. I had a great time. But was that because of the novelty? It was a type of run I rarely get to experience, on new terrain, with a group that had come together for just this weekend. If I did this every day, would I have enjoyed it in the same way?

Committed trail runners often say they’d never run on road. It’s too boring, too flat, too monotonous. Personally, I don’t hold that to be true. The fewer external features there are, the sharper the focus on the internal challenge. I enjoy track racing as it strips the race back to the fundamentals of pure head-to-head competition. I’ve finished big city marathons and barely recalled the features of the route afterwards, as I didn’t notice them. They were incidental. A backdrop to the event rather than the definition of the event.

I wondered, are the road-eschewing trail runners drawn to the trails because they didn’t like roads to begin with, or has their benchmark of external interest been raised by the environment in which they run? Does a trail runner who lives at the foot of the mountain feel guilt if they opt to run on the road one morning, rather than the mountain? Would it feel like a waste to turn their back on the glories of nature in favour of man-made terrain? Where does their joy threshold lie? Can you tire of perfection?

Is paradise a burden?

I have lots of questions, but no answers. My mind was racing, bouncing between ideas.

Often, my thoughts wander on a run, especially when on familiar ground. I like that. It’s meditative and I enjoy spending time in my own head. This was a writing retreat, though, and I knew I’d be writing a piece in response to this run. With this in mind, I decided to pay attention and absorb everything. Nonetheless, my mind wandered during the drive up. How did the snails get stuck in the extractor vent in the bathroom? Had they crawled up there when small, then grown to the point where they could no longer descend through the grille, or had they fallen in from the outside? Did a bird drop them there?

Once out of the car and moving, my mind couldn’t wander. On the few instances it threatened to, the terrain interrupted. I have fallen over on flat runs, but the risk was higher here. A few minutes in, we reached Haytor and had the choice of climbing it. The part of the brain that exists to prevent death from misadventure fought with the rational. The granite is round, slippery and tall, but surely Adharanand wouldn’t take us here if it was dangerous. Right? In the event, ego won out. I didn’t want to be the person who stayed down.

Steps had been cut or worn into the rock. The altitude gained was mere metres, yet we ascended into the underside of a cloud and stood in the way of the wind as it harried and tilted trees. Everything that grows here must broker a deal with the wind. You can live here, as long as you remain short and slanted.

Back off the summit and below the weather, we made our own headwinds, racing down, losing height, gaining speed, cadence doubling, field of vision narrowing. Think fast, run faster, hope for the best. The view would have been incredible, looking over hills and out to sea, but at speed it was a blur glimpsed through wind-forced tears.

During slower, calmer moments of rest and regrouping we could raise our gaze and drink in the wide expanse of moorland we were part of. I tried to think how I’d describe the terrain in terms of watercolours, to commit it to memory. Burnt umber and sienna for the bracken. Black mud, not brown. Vermillion. Would the pony be inked in white, or masked to show the base colour of the paper? Stray bramble branches or sharply angled rocks quickly broke such chains of thought.

I didn’t take photos, and that’s OK. There’s no need for me to recall the view in precise, panoramic, technicolour detail as plenty of others have done so on Dartmoor. Besides, sensory memory is stronger than visual and I know how it felt.

I’m confident a sensation this strong will stay with me. The immediate afterglow may fade, and new emotions and memories will be layered over the top, but it will always be there.

It’s true of other experiences. Even if the set-list is forgotten, a gig is remembered as sound, light, heat, colour, strobes, sweat, bass and emotion. The music is absorbed into our cells. Just listening to house music when washing up can transport me to the South of France, dancing to Laurent Garnier on the beach.

In the same way, Dartmoor is part of me now. As much as I’d like to run on Dartmoor every day, I don’t need to. The sensory memory is there, ready to be triggered by a hill, the wind, or a suburban Southampton puddle. To me, this is what magic is.

RUNNING WITH STRANGERS

by Heath Buck

It must be something about middle age that makes you want to go on a running retreat. Perhaps to afford retreats as opposed to running in a park for free you must have the financial comfort that comes with being a bit older, a bit better earned, and not pissing away two hundred quid each Friday night. Or maybe we’ve just lost the shine of youth to whom socialising comes easy.

Whatever the reason I’m stood on Dartmoor with seven strangers and a non-identifiable running coach who is definitely not a Scouse, which would be an offensive term to someone from the Wirral, but none-the-less is shouting instructions at us above the blasting wind.

It is obvious he knows his stuff as we try various postures and lunges to “warm up”. But then he says “you need to do this next exercise with your bum on the ground, it will get wet, but this is trail running it will get wet anyway”…

I have doubts about how this guy runs. Never in my life has my bum got wet trail running or in fact on any other kind of run. Or maybe he knows something I don’t and this run goes to somewhere for which I’m not prepared.

There’s something polite about not challenging a stranger. I want to be friends, I want to be liked, and I’m already aware I might be the least knowledgeable runner in the group, so despite my reservations I dutifully sit down as instructed. I’m soft, I secretly use hand crème and sun protection before each run, but the rule of being soft is you don’t disclose it easily. You want strangers to like you, not pity you, you want respect not sympathy, and now my inability to hold my ground means I’m sat on the grass potentially covered in sheep shit, definitely bum sopping wet, waiting to stand up again. Once we’re shivering and properly warmed up we are allowed to set off on our run.

Our run leader hits quite a pace, bounding up the first hill as if biting wind and steep incline mean nothing.

I thought this would be a gentle warm up run, but this is more like training for retired athletes and I definitely underestimated the run leader. I consider this thought and reach the view that a rule of being liked is not whining, so I say nothing and breathe hard, sucking it up, yet at the same time making a mental note to avoid running with run leaders older than myself to eliminate the response of it being “an age thing”. If you run with a younger leader you always have the excuse.

We take off across the moors exploring the land together. The run is one of beauty: bronzed ferns swaying, green glades and trickling streams. In West Country style: wind gives way to sunshine and slowly we connect as a group. Running is full of polite introverts, no-one wants the lead, no-one wants to offend. It’s unusual that for a sport full of individuals, the spirit is always collective.

We cross moors, traverse valleys and climb hills, then my tendons find me. Tendon pain is not a break or a cause for screaming out, instead more of a slow burn with occasional piercing pains as I tread up hill. Changing gait provides some respite, but it only comes back with vengeance later.

To ask to slow down or not to upset the group? It’s hard to tell if I was trying to fit in with strangers or keep my problems to myself. There’s a decorum, a level of suffering it is okay to do on your own, but when will this run end?

Politeness and eccentricities aside, I neither disclose my discomfort nor ask how much further as we grind up the hill. Cresting the hill we can see in the distance the car park and there’s a final dash to the finish. What I should do is wait, drop to the back, keep the impact off and allow my poor battered tendons to recover. What I actually do is play! Several of us go tearing towards the finish and I’ve never not wanted to be part of an informal race.

Suddenly I quit the race and peel off to take the harder way back, battling up a hill to hit a final ridge, and then it hits me. The blast of wind from the initial starting point is still there. Some weird freaky micro-climate where God has declared the car park to always be windy. The wind hits my eyes so hard tears rush down my face and my cheeks flush.

Some sick sadistic place inside me loves the feeling, the sensation makes me feel alive. I look below and my fellow runners have taken the circular route, and I battle the headwind and descend to re-join them. Not-a-Scouse athletics movement coach with various qualifications but not actually a physio is waiting in the car park with six others and this time he’s not forcing us to get our bums wet.

SECOND COMING

by Nigel Crompton

I NEVER get nervous at races. Never have. I don’t really get it to be honest. I suppose I could understand if there was an Olympic gold medal at stake. But that has never been the case for me. The only races I ever won were almost 40 years ago now and I didn’t expect to win them. Those wins were as much a surprise to me as I’m certain they were to others present. So, why would a mid-pack runner be nervous? I suppose that there is a competitive element in me. Throughout my latter forties I took much interest in who was winning the Vet 50s prize in local fell races. When I attained 50, myself, I only ever won the category once and then injuries and life in general conspired to stop it happening again. And, of course as you advance relentlessly further into the age group it becomes increasingly harder. As soon as I hit 60 the same thought process started, but now I had some super virus throwing the world into a pandemic dystopia to thwart my chances of reborn age-related glory. But even in my attempts to strike it big as the local champion grandad of the fells I never get nervous in the pursuit.

If I don’t get nervous in races, then it would make absolutely no sense whatsoever to get nervous about a mere training run. That would be wasted energy. And yet I find myself standing in a small car park in the middle of the Dartmoor national park about to go on a 7-mile trail run, just for fun, among a small group of authors and aspiring authors who are all here like myself to further our ambition to write about what we love most. To write about running. And I’m nervous.

Two years ago, I had stood in this same position. I was on the same running and writing retreat and our task was to write a short piece about the run we were about to embark upon. But it was okay. We were told by Adharanand Finn, the leader of the retreat, that it was not obligatory. It was okay if we didn’t want to. So, I didn’t.

The next day we were in a cosy room in our accommodation for the weekend, nestling up on sofas and it was time for those who had written a short piece to read them out. Not all of us, of course, because, well, it wasn’t obligatory. We were sat in a semi-circle and the narratives began at the point furthest from where I was sat. They were good. They were entertaining. They were creative, imaginative, and sometimes funny. As each person was invited to present their efforts, I was expecting another, at least one other, to say that they didn’t have a piece. But, one by one they all presented their creative wares. It came to me. “I haven’t done one.” I could sense the disappointment on Adharanand’s face. “It’s fine” he proclaimed, “it wasn’t obligatory.”

I know!

So here I am stood in the bleak expansive landscape of Dartmoor gazing around thinking: “I’m going to write about you, you bugger.”

The night before, Adharanand had asked me to lead a short warm up based on Anatomy in Motion (AiM) principles, a discipline in which I am trained. I had decided to concentrate on hip and pelvis mobility in which I felt I could convey some of the key principles and so I am leading on several AiM inspired movements. At the end of these I wanted to introduce a practice which I call ‘running on stumps’ whereby the participant visualises that they have to move themselves forward using full pelvic rotation and counter shoulder rotation. To get the feeling across I invite them all to sit on the cold wet Dartmoor grass to demonstrate moving forward on their sit bones. I think they are loving this bit. But even if not, at least when I start to receive their criticism for my literary endeavours the following night, I will be able to relish in the fact that ‘I made your bum wet’

Anyway, shortly after we set off with a looming edifice in the distance we soon learn is called Hay Tor. This giant piece of granite rock “Is it granite? I think it’s granite” dominates the skyline and we are soon trotting up towards it’s summit. And I feel okay. Legs are okay, lungs are ok. I’m doing what I love.

There was another reason I felt nervous about today’s run. 18 months ago, I contracted Covid 19. It and of itself it was little to write home about. A dry hacking cough which didn’t last long and maybe a night or two of light fever (or was I using too high a tog on my duvet?). A week later, however, I had pains in my chest, acid reflux and severe, draining exhaustion. It was a struggle for this aspiring grandad of the fells to even climb the stairs in my own house. Weeks later when I resumed running, it was terrible. Any pace at all just wouldn’t manifest. Each run was like trying run in a swimming pool. It felt like the motor just wasn’t there anymore. This carried on for 12 months. 12 months of running like a fly trapped in the treacle jar. They call it Long Covid.

This was lifted when I had my first vaccination. Like turning on a switch I was better. My running was improving again, and I started to train. Only a short few weeks ago I was running in the heat in the Sierra Tejeda mountains of Andalusia in Southern Spain but then, luck would have it, on my return I tested positive again for the blasted virus and was forced into isolation where the symptoms were far worse than before. Not awful. Others have had it worse. But debilitating with constant cough, aching limbs, shortness of breath and chest pain.

So, this running and writing retreat is my first attempt at running again. Will I have long covid? Will I be able to run? Will I be able to enjoy running? I am nervous. I am nervous about running.

But it feels ok. I’m running. We run down from Hay Tor in a sweeping long descent into the sprawling moorland below and then carry on through undulating scenery. From here the going is relatively easy. In the distance protruding from the barren moorland stand disparate lumps of angular rock but our course is relatively welcoming before we plunge down a particularly steep gradient emerging on a roadway below, from which we turn sharply left up hill. But not for long before another descent, gentler this time until one of the massive craggy outbreaks that litter this land emerges ahead of us. Now it is starting to catch up with me. I am labouring up hill. It is hard work. I fall behind.

Eventually, I reach the top where Adharanand is explaining that we are now just going to return the same way. A pointless hill and not even a word of praise from Richard Osman or Xander.

It is downhill again and then gentle ascents and descents, a river crossing or two and we are heading back towards the car. I am struggling now and when another of these craggy granite monoliths plants itself between our gang and the car we have a choice. Up and over the top or round the outside. I choose the latter traipsing through rough tussocky foliage of the type that threatens to snap your ankle, soon realising up and over was possibly the more sensible option.

I finally arrive back at the car. I’ve done it. I’m back. Not just back to the car but back to running. Onwards and upwards from here. I am quite pleased that I have done this, and I know the trajectory to full fitness won’t take that long. I’ll soon be champion fell grandad.

Then a thought dawns upon me. “Damn, I’m supposed to write about all this.”

HAYTOR, DARTMOOR

by Nigel Harding

(Note: Nigel skipped the Saturday run to do a local parkrun, but this is his account of the same route when he joined the retreat three years earlier, in November 2018)

THE PANG of regret is fleeting. Just 5km down the road to our right, the leading runners will be finishing Devon’s toughest parkrun. I focus on the task ahead. Our run today will be twice that distance and even more arduous.

Withdrawal symptoms dissipate during our first climb. I’m thankful we’re not running to the top. Haytor’s twin granite outcrops to our left are much higher than our grassy path. We’re rising gradually. Just down to our right, three isolated larches seem bizarre; especially the one blasted by lightning, bare and folded over on itself like some piece of Modern Art.

Through a gate we turn left on a narrow path. I’m thinking about volcanoes. For a moment I wonder if this is one that has blown its top. We seem to be in a crater. Sheer cliffs surround us on almost all sides. In fact, it’s an abandoned quarry. A novelist might populate this setting with a guerrilla army in hiding. Wavelets move across the black pool where the workings have flooded.

Out on the open moor again, we cross an ancient trackway, two lines of stones snaking across an empty landscape. Evidence for earlier human activity seems incongruous in this modern-day wilderness. Regrouping at a small tor, we angle north-east, climbing onto Black Hill. This gives a view of tors atop several surrounding summits.

In Paul’s picture of me bringing up the rear, you can almost see the wildscape closing in again after our passage. Bracken, a mundane brown today, would have looked golden in yesterday’s light. A single, beige patch on the north-western horizon suggests sunshine has broken through. More than 40 years ago, I spent a freezing July day up there, target shooting on Okehampton Ranges.

We edge cautiously past grazing cattle. Most are black, with a few brown exceptions. All have a distinctive white mid-section. Are they a rare breed? I could imagine they’ve been here since the Middle Ages. In fact they’re Belted Galloways, transplanted from the Southern Uplands of south-west Scotland.

We pause by a cairn. Finn, as guide, warns of the steep descent ahead. My 60-year-old shock absorbers aren’t what they were, so I back off completely. He leads the charge, even falling over, but he’s back on his feet so fast only Dave notices. The lane below seems to mark the edge of the moor. There are fields, then woodland further east; a village and a separate church tower to the north.

A couple with a grey, woolly-looking dog walk ahead as we reorganise. When we chase them down I ask about their plans.

‘We’re doing about twelve miles around Hound Tor and Manaton,’ the man tells me. He adds that we’re running part of ‘Haytor Heller’ - a tough six-mile trail race. Down the lane, a farmer has been pruning his trees. Branches of holly and oak lie forlorn on the ground. We branch left off the track and enter a steeply-climbing wooded section, pausing only to close gates as we go.

We emerge onto a boulder field. I slow almost to a crawl, my rhythm broken completely. How would steeplechasers manage this section if Finn had some Kenyan friends to stay? We enter a strip of woodland, carpeted with granite interspersed with fallen, yellowed oak leaves. We cross a clapper bridge over a brook. There’s a central pier mid-stream, connected to each bank by three giant stone slabs like gateposts. It looks as if it’s been here for centuries. There are sycamores on the far bank. Perhaps they only thrive in more sheltered dingles.

Starting the ascent, I’m determined not to look up. The leaves on the ground are brown and angular. It’s a popular species in the parks of my 5km runs, but how did a Turkey oak get here?

My revival after resting by the bridge doesn’t outlast the climb. Half-way up the hill, both fatigue and the Law of Large Numbers kick in. Inge recognises one of three walkers waiting for us to pass. I envy her excuse to pause as I stagger on to reach the tree line.

Emerging, we’re back on the uplands with the summit of Hound Tor ahead of us. Rail fences bar the direct route, which is being restored. We circle left before sheltering in the lee of the left-hand outcrop. Faster runners circle the hill-top.

The next descent is the highlight of my run. Finn rushes off ahead, but I’m a distant second. The grass is springy. I’m suddenly energised. It’s almost like bounding on a synthetic track. I’m reminded of the paradox: when running a set of repetitions, the one that you lead seems easier than all the ones when you’re trying to follow the pace. The two hikers are coming up the path. In this rugged terrain, it’s almost as fast to walk as to run and recover!

I try to lead again on the next section. We’ve diverged right from where we came up onto a narrow sheep track rambling through bracken. I’m glad of long sleeves as I brush past gorse bushes with the last yellow flecks of summer. Briefly it opens out again. A frustrated posse of runners charges past.

The valley seems shallower here. We’ve gradually wandered to the left and down the hill until we’re by the stream once more. There’s a Dartmoor pony on each bank. The single slab bridge looks too good to be true. When I read the plaque on the other side I find it was only placed here in 2014. The stream is Becka Brook. What a great name for a character! Should I make her a pony-mad teenager, or a reclusive shepherdess?

Two alpha males prefer to cross the hard way – via a rope hanging down from a tree. Steve almost succeeds; Nick is bloodied, but unbowed by his defeat. After a group photograph and a brief scramble between rocks to leave the bank, I struggle to get going again. I barely exceed a walk, as our gazelles bound off up Holwell Tor.

Skirting west of the summit, we encounter the trackway again. Roger, who is next in front, just beats me to the realisation that this is a railway with stone rails. We run across a couple of sets of points, where side branches peter out among the bracken.

The path is fairly flat – what the map calls a ‘tramway’ couldn’t run up a steep gradient – yet the gap to the runners ahead increases rapidly. The gap behind is growing, too. Alicia, who has been sharing back marker duties with me, is also flagging. As an American, an ultra-distance road runner, she isn’t used to this terrain.

We rest, then fork right, leaving the tramway. The gaps are back almost immediately. After another regroup, we turn right, climbing towards the twin Haytor outcrops. We’re all tired, so a mix-up is not surprising. Concerned that Alicia hasn’t followed me and may have missed the turn, I retrace my steps. A couple walking haven’t seen her in the quarry. I rush to catch up with the group. Alicia is now ahead! Finn is now searching for me. He loops back when there’s no sign. The group is together again, but I’ve kept the majority hanging around and getting cold. They’re relieved to be on the move again.

Wind is whistling between the rocks. Some hardy characters are climbing on the eastern tor. Though it’s more than four decades, I should remember Professor Waters telling my field trip about volcanic intrusion; how the liquid rock permeated through the older sedimentary layers before cooling; how 280 million years later the more resistant granite stands out. The tors are only recently exposed – most on Dartmoor have been on the surface less than 200,000 years - little more than the blink of an eyelid in geological time. Truth to tell, I reminded myself of all that earlier this week. My clearest memory is of him recalling a much earlier visit. He and his doctoral supervisor were studying the rocks, while his professor’s sons played cricket on the grass between the tors.

Our hares are off again, almost down at the car park before I can absorb the panorama. From Haytor the land drops away to the southern horizon. I can’t quite see the sea, but the Teign Estuary is clear before Devon sweeps round to the right, the South Hams fading into the mist. This is too steep. I’m not going to risk my chances of running tomorrow. I descend to my car at a walk.