OMers Triumph In Bowland Challenge

THE 2nd ANNUAL BOWLAND CHALLENGE - 29th/30th JUNE '07

OMers Triumph in Weather fit for Ducks!

In June '06 OMers Matt C and Peewiglet took part in the first ever Bowland Challenge, achieving a creditable 3rd place. (Read the report here)

This year, for the second running of the event, Matt teamed up with fellow OMers Jonno and Blackadder, and Jonno's mate, Dave, for what turned out to be a very different experience. On a weekend when torrential rain and continued flooding was forecast for much of the country, here's his account of how 'The Lost Boys' got on….

The Event

The Forest of Bowland AONB is a beautiful but often overlooked area, east of the M6 between Preston and Lancaster. The Bowland Challenge is organised by Bowland Pennine MRT as a fundraiser. Their intention is to grow it steadily, and this year, despite the weather, there were 17 teams taking part, up from last year's 12.

The Forest of Bowland as it's supposed to be... ie: not wet and claggy

The format of the event requires each team to plan their own route, as long or short as they wish, to visit designated locations spread across the area. At each location points are gained by answering a question related to some physical feature there.

There is a staggered start and each team has 10 hours to complete their chosen route, with an additional requirement that they visit a lunchtime checkpoint at a nominated time of their choosing. Points are deducted for incorrect answers or for late arrival at the lunch checkpoint or the finish.

Although the format is competitive the atmosphere is very definitely geared to fun. People enter for a variety of reasons but typically to try out an event for the first time, to test out or improve their navigation, or to challenge themselves personally. And of course to support a very worthwhile cause into the bargain.

A Cunning Plan

'The Lost Boys' met up at Waddecar campsite at 5:30 on Friday evening – literally met up, I'd previously met Jonno once in my living room, but Blackadder and Dave were completely new to me!

We spent an hour or so marking 100 grid references on our map and colour coding the points scores for each, then set about deciding our route. We drew 7:36 as our start-time and, despite the prospective bad weather, opted for a 14 mile morning route over the Bowland fells to gather some high-scoring locations.

We set our lunchtime check-in at 1:59 (2:00pm was the limit!), figuring that we didn't want to be late but that if we had time in hand there were other scoring locations near to Chipping that we could sweep up. The afternoon session would be shorter – if we were flagging then 5 miles would see us back to base but hopefully we could circle around under the fells' edge for 8 or 9 miles gathering more points.

And again in happier, drier, clearer times...

Grey Dawn

We submitted our outline route and relaxed. Dinner, a couple of beers, a brew by the tents and off to bed by 11:00. Waking at 5:00 on Saturday it still looked quite bright, but by 6:15 when we got up to prepare for the day, it was looking grey and beginning to drizzle...

At 7:36 sharp we were handed our question sheets and set off. Looking for our first question we immediately realized our glaring error the previous evening – we hadn't marked the question numbers on the map alongside the grid references, doh!!

This left us needing to scan all 100 questions for grid references each time to identify the right one! Fortunately while we walked down the first few lanes, we were able to work on this and identify the questions for our morning route while we moved, so at that stage it didn't cost us any serious delay.

Bog, Glorious Bog!

We picked up a few points on our way to the fells and then climbed out onto the open moor on Oakenclough Fell. It was raining and the clag was down – to the south Beacon Fell at 266m was well covered – and we had to reach the 530m mark!

But this was the post race camp site reality...

We picked up a tricky '20 pointer' using classic navigation - finding an attack point, then aiming off and pacing across dense heather moor on a bearing - the trig point loomed out of the mist perfectly. Later we heard of many teams getting lost at that point or abandoning the search completely!!

The rest of the high traverse went well, despite the bog being decidedly boggy this year – team tactics dictated that Jonno crossed first and if he didn't sink then the rest of us would be ok!

The mist cleared briefly as we approached Bleasdale Head, which confirmed our position, but quickly closed in again. We had a moment of indecision later caused by an extra fence not shown on the map but we trusted the compass and fortunately the required cairn on Fair Snape Fell appeared a few minutes later.

Adapt and Survive

As we reached Parlick at the southern tip of the moor, the cloud suddenly lifted and quite a view spread out below us, past Chipping and over to Longridge - then it was downhill and into the fields and lanes for the rest of the day.

With almost 2 hours until our lunch time we swept out a circle to the north of Chipping and gathered about 6 or 7 'bonus' locations, despite an erroneous question concerning a non-existent cattle grid – supposedly in the middle of a field.

Bedraggled finishers, but happy ones....

By now the heavens had well and truly opened - we were drowned rats, and the question sheets were rapidly disintegrating. We reached lunch at 1:45 and a nice MR man at the checkpoint took our sheets and dried them over his car heater!

We didn't move again until almost 2:30, and here it cost us maybe 10 minutes while we sorted out the afternoon's questions. Then the field navigation to the first point proved troublesome and we lost a bit of time. A short time later we struggled to locate an answer and must have found the wrong wall (it looked like the *only* wall within miles to us!) because we got that question wrong.

A man in need of a new map, preferably a waterproof one...

The fields proved even more boggy than the fells at times, especially where livestock had churned the ground, and at a couple of cattle-trodden stream crossings we were left wondering quite what exactly was flowing into our boots!

Erring on the side of caution late in the day we had to omit a 6-pointer from the route, but that was a good decision - we were flagging a bit, although the team kept going remarkably well, and we got home with 10 minutes to spare. We celebrated with a well-earned beer and hot soup, then went to get dry clothes on before dinner.

Glory for OM!

After dinner the result was announced. Last year's winners, a couple of fell runners, had amassed 216 points. Neil Conway (Bowland Challenge organiser, and a nice chap) announced all the results in reverse order – the team in last place had come home almost 2 hours late! As the placings and points totals steadily increased so did the suspense, until Neil declared 'and that leaves 2 teams who shattered the 200 point barrier....' So 'The Lost Boys' came second with 212 (it would've been 220 but for the incorrect answer) and we were completely made up.

And this, it says here, is the Dolly Dimples team, hmmm....

The winner... an OMer and keen mountain-marathoner called 'Toreador' - last year he was in the team that narrowly pipped us for second... this year he and his mate covered almost all the far-flung reaches of the course, covering a staggering 40 miles to clock up 254 points!! Fair play - none of us minded coming second to that performance!!

I've since mapped our route on the PC and we covered 24.1 miles with 1250m of ascent. Several folk from other teams came up to congratulate us and ask what route we'd taken - most of them assumed we must have been running and were quite surprised when we said we'd walked the whole way!

Thanks Where They're Due...

I really should thank Jonno for getting us together as a team, and him, Dave and Ste for making such a good team and being great company. Spirits remained high despite the weather and despite Dave completing the whole day with a heavily strapped ankle, and Jonno contending with horrendous blisters by the end of the day. It was a thoroughly enjoyable day and one that we're all keen to repeat.

Finally, a big thank you to Neil Conway and his team from Bowland Pennine MRT for another friendly welcome and for all their hard work in running such a good event. Chatting to Neil, he explained the painstaking negotiations required to be allowed to host an organised event like this, even now that Bowland is largely Access Land where an individual can wander at will. It sounds a daunting task and it's to be hoped that the team's efforts will see continued and growing support.

Some inspiration for next year when it will look like this :-)

Planning has started for next year's Challenge, which is to be on 11th/12th July 2008 and held in a different part of Bowland further north to open up new fells for the course.

See www.bowlandchallenge.co.uk or www.bowlandpenninemrt.org.uk. Big thanks to Neil Conway for the post-event pictures. Nice to see some big smiles despite the weather.