Taking a chance on a good weather window between atrocious storms, Rowen Ratcliffe and Chris Worth became the latest completers of our 23 Before Tea challenge.
Rowen and Chris, members of Saddleworth Runners, tackled the route on Jan 2, finishing in 8 hours 22 minutes. That puts them in 12th place on the leaderboard, and first mixed pair.
Rowen said: “We both live in Saddleworth on the edge of the Peak District. We actually planned the date for a ‘big run’ about six weeks before and when we saw how amazing the forecast was we decided the Lake District was the only option!
“23 Before Tea appealed because you hit so many summits in a relatively small area in such a beautiful part of the Lakes. There are also a couple of fairly straightforward bail-out options, Grasmere being the obvious one. We did toy with the idea of a completely new route but ultimately followed the ‘fast’ route, maybe one to return to another time?
“It was both of our biggest ever runs so we set off at sunrise very steadily with the aim of the day being to have fun! I don’t think we could have asked for better winter weather conditions. How often do you get a full day of blue sky in January in the Lakes? There was still some very cold, very wet ground but higher up everything had frozen.
“We’d agreed that if we’d had enough we’d stop at Grasmere but it was around 1pm and a wedge of Christmas cake gave us a second wind. The lovely descent off Fairfield as the sun went down has to be a highlight and although Loughrigg perhaps felt harder than it usually would, the sunset was pretty incredible. We made it back without having to use head torches in 8hrs 22mins – faster than we were expecting.”
Many congratulations to them. And also to one of our early completers, the remarkable Carol Morgan who has set a new winter record for running all 214 Wainwrights. We are in awe of you all…well done!
