Ed had put a post on the WFDBWGUA blog earlier this week saying that he intended to do the 'Baker's Dozen' this weekend which, as some of you will know from my blog post earlier in the year, is the Coope's Dozen plus Darwen Tower, a distance of around 25 miles. I thought that sounded like a great idea and decided I'd have a bash too so I turned up this morning at the top barn ready for the start.
At the start were myself, Ed, Kev, Mary and Jim. We headed along to the Pigeon Tower car park and straight away I was feeling tired. Climbing up the hill to George's Lane I had the realisation that I may not be in for the long haul and might have to cut the run shorter at some point but thought I'd just play it by ear and see how it went.
We ran up to Noon Hill and then cross-country to the Pike. It was really cold this morning and icy but it was still really boggy running across to the Pike and we were all trying not to get our feet wet this early into the run.
From the Pike we ran down onto George's Lane and then along to the dog hotel before climbing up to Two Lads. I was still feeling really tired and practically the whole climb to Two Lads was a walk rather than a run. Kev left us at Two Lads as he was racing later that day so wanted to preserve energy.
From Two Lads the rest of us crossed the mast road and headed out to the farms before coming out onto Coal Pit Road and running along, past the trespass stone and up the path which takes you to the back of the 'secret reservoir'. Ed and I took a bit of a magical mystery tour at this point and ended up wandering through the moorland trying to get back onto a path. We saw Mary and Jim up ahead who guided us to a stile to get back onto the path.
Then came my favourite part of the run, along to Whinberry Hill and Egg Hillock, however the best part is quickly followed by the worst part of climbing up through the bracken to Counting Hill. At least at this time of year the bracken is really low and only at shin height as opposed to head height like it was during the summer.
After the slog up to Counting Hill, we continued along to the trig point on Winter Hill. By this point the weather was getting pretty grim. It was really cold and there was an icy wind with a bit of rain. The fog was really down too and Jim and Mary soon disappeared into the distance and that was the last we saw of them on this run. They had said earlier that they were only going as far as Winter Hill so I assume the headed back home at this point.
Ed and I ran down to Hoorden Stoops and had a bit of grub for a few minutes. My hands got cold so quickly after taking off my gloves to eat and I couldn't get them warm again. I ended up running with my fists balled up inside my gloves with the glove fingers just dangling empty.
We were both pretty cold by now and had very cold wet feet and we made an executive decision not to bother going over to Darwen Tower. We then made the decision to leave out Old Adams too and just head straight for Great Hill, over Spitlers.
Once on Great Hill, the summits got fewer still as we agreed to leave out Round Loaf and go straight down to White Coppice.
You guessed it, by White Coppice we were both very cold and tired and decided to just head back to the barn.
At the point we decided to cut out Darwen Tower and Old Adams and were left with 11 summits, I decided to call the run 'Ed's Eleven'. However, as we had now also eliminated Round Loaf and Healey Nab, I had to come up with another name but couldn't think of anything which would go well with nine. I commented on this to Ed and said that it's a shame he isn't called Ned as we could call it 'Ned's Nine'. Ah well, I'm going to call it that anyway!
Funnily enough when we finished we found that we were only two miles shy of the entire Coope's Dozen route.
Another excellent Saturday morning run with great company. The run might have got shorter and shorter but it didn't get any less enjoyable.
Total distance - 16.47 miles
http://www.strava.com/activities/226761177
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