DARK PEAK NEWS - Dark Peak Fell Runners

Dark Peak News October 2007 page 14It all started in 1998 when Geoff Townsend, a local shepherd, found that the Old Nag’sHead had run out of his favourite tipple. Instead of moving onto something from thetop shelf he, no doubt drunkenly, offered to fetch a barrel of beer from the Snake Inn,some four miles away over a big hill. The landlord agreed that if Geoff and his mateslugged a barrel back they could have it for free.And so the race was born. The Great Kinder Beer Barrel Challenge where teams ofeight would carry a barrel, weighing 54kg, from the Snake Inn over the top of Kinderand down to the Old Nag’s Head in Edale and the winners would get a barrel of beer.Team Gladioli, mainly fell runners from Matlock, won the race every year until 2006,setting a course record of 48mins. This year, Dark Peak decided to challenge them.As last year’s winners the Gladioli set off last, with teams starting at three minuteintervals. It obviously helped entering as Dark Peak because the local prowess got ussecond to last start, with Gladioli chasing us up Kinder. Our team of Oli Johnson, JamesHargreaves, Ben Carter, Neil Northrop, Andy Middleditch, Pete Hodges, Rob Baker andRob Little was well prepared for the race. Rob Davison kindly lent us a ladder, which weattached our barrel to with nothing more than a piece of string and some sticky tape. Aswe watched the other teams run off through the woods towards Gate Side Clough, weknew we could run pretty well but still didn’t have a clue if we could actually get overKinder with a barrel and 16 (mostly) scrawny arms.From the off we were moving at a fair lick, so much so that we had to shout warningslike “boulder”/ “hole”/ “tree” to save the guys behind from going arse over tit. We madelight work of the stretch through the woods and across the river and started the climb uptowards Blackden Moor. This was where it got tough and we slowed to a walk. But itwas a clear day, and ahead we could see three teams stretched across the hillside tryingto reach the top.We got to the plateau and headed along the rim path towards the Three MinuteCrossing, but then things got rather heated with Neil ever so politely asking us: “Wouldyou chaps mind awfully staying on the path and not running in the f***ing heather”.At this point the relentless pace we’d set up the hill took its toll on Andy as he droppedoff the back of the ladder. We wouldn’t see him again until the finish. But with onlythe balls-out descent to come we had to have no mercy and carry on. Things soon wereeven worse as Ben, the muscles of the team – in only his second fell race - also droppedoff the back, as he’d hurt his leg. Thankfully, he gallantly caught up, so we were sevenstrong across the Three Minute Crossing, passing another team just before we droppedlike stones towards Grindsbrook.On the downhill we wasted some time faffing, trying to use the ladder as a sled, but itdidn’t work. Instead we let the back end drag and lifted and ran with the front end. Well,James and Rob Little did a lot of the work while the rest of us attempted to stay out ofthe path of the marauding ladder and barrel combo. We finally met both the path at thebottom of Golden Clough and the crowds who had turned out to watch the nutters withthe barrels. All that was left was a fast last kilometre into Edale and under the finishbanner outside the Old Nag’s Head. We then had to wait to see if the undefeated Gladiolifinished within three minutes of us. They didn’t and we had managed to win and in anew course record of 46:49, three minutes and twenty seconds clear of the field.