By Hannah Rickman

The SILVA Northern Traverse™ is a 300km continuous single-stage foot race. Friends who’d done the race spoke really highly of it, and I was attracted by the point-to-point journey of traversing the whole country and moving through those different landscapes. After a few years of shuttling South to North on the Pennine Way, I was excited to explore some new trails and see what it was like to travel sideways. As a bonus, there were some shorter races taking in sections of the main course, and my buddies Sam and Helen had signed up to tackle the 100km Lakes Traverse from St Bees to Shap.

An April race also sounded nice. I’d been living in Malawi for the last couple of years and moved back to the UK in December 2023, which meant it had been a while since I’d done a UK spring. In my head, there would be Christmas, then the Spine, then February might be a bit bleak, but by March we’d be frolicking through fields of daffodils and gamboling lambs, and by the time the race came round in April we’d be in T-shirts and suncream.

Instead, “spring” washed by in a series of recce weekends defined by meteorological misery. We got drenched to our pants, coated in mud and waded through rivers on a variety of Lakeland adventures.

We were blown off Kidsty Pike by sideways hail, stuck in waist-deep snow on Nine Standards, and navigated a full white-out in Swaledale.

Lots of these experiences were good fun. A couple were a bit borderline, but every time it happened, we said “The weather will definitely be better by April.”

Then race week rolled around and the forecast headlines were 1) rain 2) WIND. The mountain weather forecast brought out their very expressive “foetal position spiky things” strong wind avatar.

“If the storm was that bad, they’d have named it”, I said in an attempt to be reassuring. 30 minutes later – Storm Kathleen.

Well, it comes with the territory. I took comfort in the fact that I’d had ample winter weather experience, and knew my gear worked well – and also that the wind looked to be mostly coming from the south-west. Ourea Events were reassuringly all over the comms, with an update that we would need our cold-weather kit and warning of a possible diversion around Kidsty Pike. Aiden, Helen’s partner, drove us up on Friday to friendly and efficient registration in St Bees, and we faffed around with our kit in the AirBnB while Aiden cooked us a pasta-and-pea-based dinner.

Saturday morning started early and there was some improvisation to overcome the AirBnB’s lack of coffee-making devices, but we eventually got fed, caffeinated and somewhat organised, and piled everything back into the car to the start. The sea was rough and the event flags were waving violently, but nothing was airborne and it wasn’t actually raining. Helen and Sam on the Lakes Traverse started at 7.30am, so there was just time for some hugs and hellos with Allie Bailey, uni friend Elsa Morgan, and some other Lakes Traversers, before they set off up the coast.

That left an hour before my 8.30am start to deposit my dropbag, which was going to meet me at 4 of the checkpoints along the way. I’d found it tight to fit all the food I planned (in my naive optimism) to eat, as well as multiple changes of layers, but it snuck in under the 15kg weight limit. I popped down to the shoreline and dipped my toe in the sea, and Aiden helped me to select a pretty (and crucially diminutive) pebble to carry from Coast to Coast.

Then some mingling around at a sociable startline, where it was nice to catch up with Jen O’Neill, James Elson and Eoin Keith – as well as meeting Eddie Sutton and Gary Thwaites for the first time. I gave a lot of enthusiastic hugs to people wearing hydration vests, several of which accidentally squeezed their water bottles and shot electrolyte mix into their eyes (sorry!).

Start to Patterdale – 71km, 3000m elevation

Finally time to get going. I headed up the first hill chatting with James and settled into a bit of a rhythm over the first clifftops and muddy fields. Pretty early on we came to a kissing gate. My friends have a strict tradition when we’re walking or running, which is that whenever you go through a kissing gate you have to give the person behind you a kiss on the cheek. I looked behind me at James, and momentarily considered explaining this ritual, before deciding to let it slide this time and just hold the gate for him like a normal person.

This first chunk was a mix of mud, road, track and more mud, and seemed to pass pretty efficiently. I spent some time with Darren and then with Benji. Good company and we ticked the miles off – maybe a bit too fast, but nothing silly. I had a full-body mud wipe-out in one of the fields – the first of many – and underfoot conditions were clearly going to be sloppy. This became even more evident as we hit the technical stuff along Ennerdale Water and discovered that quite a lot of the low-lying paths were now streams. 

Lakeside paths are like coast-path – on the map you think they look flat, and then they end up being rocky rollercoasters of filthy mini-climbs. But it felt cool to have started at the sea, moved through the flatlands, and now be slipping through the door of the Lake District.

We’d started passing Lakes Traverse runners, who were all very friendly. The path leaves the lake and climbs up on forestry tracks where I let the effort drift up a bit too high. I passed Allie looking strong, and then the picturesque Black Sail Hut, where the proper climb begins and the wind started to mount. A bit of a slog, improved by chats with a nice guy called Daniel, and then up onto the pass for my first experience of being blown over. The path contours and then descends, and by this point the wind had spun into a glorious tailwind, powering a super fun bumpy descent over the rough ground before joining the track down to the Honister Pass.

“You’re moving fast – don’t forget we’re only halfway!” a Lakes Traverse guy helpfully advised me.

“I wish!” I replied, and ran off down the hill.

There was a bit of drizzle as I came down through the woodlands, and as I got into the first checkpoint in Borrowdale it was raining properly. I refilled my bottles but didn’t have any reason to go inside, so left quickly and headed over the river. Again the “path” was a briskly flowing stream, but it was a nice boost to meet Aiden there, who told me that Helen was not far ahead. I also passed a hiker with his speaker which was blaring out – in an odd choice for an antisocial noise complaint – Billy Joel’s Piano Man. I’m sorry, but if you’re going to play your music on speaker in a National Park, you’re not allowed to give me a dirty look if I start singing along.

The rain started to really come down on the climb up to Greenup Edge. I was in a merino T-shirt and leggings, and everyone around me was stopping to put on waterproof tops and bottoms, but I honestly couldn’t see the point – I knew I’d just overheat and get sweaty anyway. I was easily warm enough, so decided to stick to my guns and just get wet. My resolve wavered slightly when I passed Helen, herself stopping to layer up, and the rain became torrential – but about ten minutes later the shower passed as quickly as it had arrived. (DISCLAIMER! – I know that this layering works for me in this kind of weather and that I tend to get too hot rather than too cold. I’m DEFINITELY not advocating a minimalist approach to mountain clothing, and lots of people came a cropper in this event from getting cold and wet. I had full proper waterproofs with me, as well as multiple dry layers packed away in drybags which I was ready to put on if the weather got worse – or if I sprained an ankle and couldn’t run.) Looking back down the valley I was greeted by one of the best (only!) views of the weekend.

I’d passed quite a few Lakes Traversers on the climb and felt like I was moving well, so was a bit put out when a guy with a Northern Traverse number absolutely flew past me just before the top, and then threw himself off the other side. This turned out to be Jeremy, who had set out with the front pack of guys but taken a bit of a pause in Borrowdale. I watched him fly over the technical downhill and jealously thought “I bet he lives in the Lakes.” (I was right.)

Again it was windy on top, but it was mostly behind us, and the people laying flagstones had made some sterling progress since I was last up there (thank you, flagstone heroes) which was a great improvement. Then it’s a nice path down towards Grasmere, where Sam’s husband (David), kids (Jacob, Hannah and Reuben) and dog (Frodo) were waiting to cheer.

“How’s your mum doing?” I asked.

“She’s doing AMAZINGLY – she looked so strong!” (You can tell the Lissauer kids have their priorities right because they didn’t say “she’s winning”, which she was.) “She was moving so fast she didn’t even stop to give us a hug,” said Little Hannah, hopefully.

Given that I was doing a 50+ hour race I’m not sure the following is really a defensible thing to say to your 11-year-old bestie, but I replied “Sorry, I’m not going to stop either, but I love you lots!” and legged it.

Another boost at the road crossing, where a small gaggle including Aiden, Kim and Eeke were cheering, and I got a nice fist-bump from someone’s kid. I managed to not get run over and crossed the road with a spring in my step. I joined Jeremy for a chatty climb up Tongue Gill, and we also had the excellent company of Gary Thwaites with his bobble hat and GoPro, who warned us that he’d just come from Grisedale and that the weather there was, quote, “insane”. (This was accurate.) Jeremy pulled away a bit on the climb and we passed the dramatic waterfall and popped over the top between Seat Sandal and Fairfield.

The wind whipped along the pass and Grisedale Tarn had proper cresting white waves, which broke on me as the path came nearer to the shore. The crossing at the bottom was hairy and then the wind on the descent was some of the strongest I’ve ever encountered. That descent is fiddly, steep and slippery, and what you don’t need is a 70mph gust trying to push you off it. A couple of stumbles and near misses before getting out of the insanity – then it became a nice rolling tailwind to carry us over the runnable downhill miles over the bridge and into the Patterdale checkpoint just after 5.30pm.

Patterdale to Kirkby Stephen – 60km, 1700m elevation

Patterdale is the first place we had access to our drop bag, so I went inside, joining Jeremy, and tried to do the needful. I wasn’t eating very well and had only really been managing gels, so I tried to replenish food supplies with things that looked appetising (hmm, nothing.) There was an amazing vegetarian checkpoint food selection but my stomach wasn’t convinced – I ate half a risky onion bhaji and had something to drink. Patterdale is also where we were informed that the course diversion had just been enacted, as conditions on top of Kidsty Pike were worsening and the event team wanted everyone off there before nightfall. The first 6 or so people in the Northern Traverse field, plus the Lakes Traverse frontrunners, had already gone over on the high route; Jeremy and I would be the first Northern Traverse runners redirected onto the low route. A shame to skip out a scenic section, and the highest point on the course – also the bit I’d recce’d twice! – but on one of those recces there had been a severe wind warning and Kidsty Pike had been pretty frisky. Storm Kathleen was worse – so definitely a good call by the Ourea team.

The diversion wasn’t a walk in the park either – a bit of added distance, with a sharp up-and-over on some very minimalist (invisible) paths, and then a jog on roads and tracks above Ullswater. Jeremy and I stuck together for some sociable miles before he pulled ahead again, during which he cheerfully told me how happy he was to have ditched his heavy-duty waterproof in favour of something lighter (I think he later regretted this). A nice sunset broke through the clouds, and we had the sense of leaving the Lake District behind us.

Nightfall brought the weather with it, with the ferocious wind sweeping a curtain of rain over Askham Fell. I was still too warm for waterproof trousers, so was instantly drenched to my pants. Headtorch out and head down for a dark slog on path and then road into a ferocious headwind. I had the diversion GPX on my watch but I couldn’t quite work out how far it was to Shap, so this stretch seemed to go on FOREVER. We came to a road junction, with Shap signposted right and somewhere else signposted left – I double checked my watch and had a small sense of humour failure when I realised it was taking us LEFT.

The muddy fields coming into Shap are the stuff of Northern Traverse legend. The diversion might have robbed us of our Kidsty Pike thrills, but fear not, we still rejoined the Coast to Coast in time for this authentic slurry-wading experience. Everything in England is as waterlogged as I’ve ever experienced it, and the Shap farmland of despair was no exception. The only bonus was joining up with a few of the Lakes Traverse runners who’d gone over Kidsty Pike, and to share a couple of fields with the lovely Phil Harris (helpfully he’s a vicar, which forced me to keep my raving profanity in check.)

I was cheered into Shap by Aiden and some extremely soggy Lissauers (“Is Sam in?!” I asked – yes! “Is she OK?!” – yes! “Did she win?!” – Oh yes she did). The 100k Lakes Traverse finishes in Shap so there’s a particularly sadistic moment when you run UNDER THEIR FINISH LINE BANNER into the haven of the hall, really bringing you face-to-face with your poor life choices. I scanned around for Sam and ran over to give her a congratulatory hug (a slightly restrained one, because she was looking very cosy and civilised in some dry clean clothes and I was looking like the Loch Ness Monster).

This was lovely but caused some consternation, because I had violated the Shap Segregation System. To the left-hand side of the hall – Lakes Traverse finishers. Jubilation. Finish-line drop bags. Dry clothes, relief, medals, jolly regaling of tribulations overcome, cups of tea. As a Northern Traverse idiot, my place was to the right: home of regret, mild hypothermia, and strong coffee with two sugars. When the (wonderful) volunteers spotted me contaminating the left-hand side with my bad juju they gently ushered me over to reunite with my people. We were a soggy, dejected band. The diversion was longer than the original route but evidently a bit quicker, because Jeremy and I had caught up with all of the leading guys except for Mark Darbyshire. They were looking pretty battered by their journey over Kidsty Pike and most were sitting in their own individual puddles, poking at chilli and changing layers with a thousand-mile stare.

I tried to eat something (I chose a depressing dry pitta bread) and considered my options. We didn’t have drop bags in Shap, but I’d been warm while moving, and didn’t think I needed to get out spare layers. I didn’t really want to go back out, but I couldn’t think of anything that was going to get better if I stayed, and I could think of some things that were going to get worse (my core temperature, my muscle stiffness, my motivation to leave). And when splitting the route into sections I’d mentally labelled Kirkby Stephen, 30km on, as the end of the first bit, not Shap. So I chucked down a coffee and seized a moment of resolve to scarper. (In doing this quickly before I could change my mind, I completely forgot to say goodbye to Sam. I realised 20 metres down the street, turned around, went back in, said bye, and left again, unbelievably proud of both her and Helen for smashing it out the park.)

There’s not much to say about this next bit, except that when we recce’d it in daylight it was quite nice. The rain was driving constantly, the paths were either lakes when flat or rivers when hills, and the world had shrunk to the soggy circle of torchlight. I spent a bit of time with the two Daves and a couple of guys called Lee (the fact that everyone had the same name was not helping my cognitive state), but my main company was a podcast interview with Jasmin Paris, which made me feel like I should probably just get a grip.

Somehow I managed to wash up like a shipwrecked sailor on the shores of Kirkby Stephen, where to my happy surprise the checkpoint volunteer meeting me was the lovely Matt Neale. I wasn’t feeling very chipper but everyone there was amazing. I stripped off in the toilets (leaving a small molehill of mud in the cubicle – sorry sorry sorry) and dressed in some heavenly dry layers. I looked at my feet for long enough to decide that I didn’t want to look at them again, and put on some futile waterproof socks. I ate amazing chips (thank you!) and scanned the faces of the other runners in the room, none of whom seemed particularly enthusiastic about leaving. I wasn’t enthusiastic either, but it was cold in the hall, I was shivering, and I’d again run out of reasons to stay.

“This next bit is going to be HORRIBLE,” I said to Matt, who knows a thing or two about the Dales, hoping he might tell me otherwise. He didn’t. He just gave me a hug and walked me out.

Kirkby Stephen to Richmond – 54km, 2000m elevation

From Kirkby Stephen you basically climb straight away up towards Nine Standards Rigg, the 2nd highest point on the Coast to Coast. Sam and I had recce’d it in March on a wild day, where we’d been up to our waists in snow. But all that snow had melted, and a lot more rain had fallen since, leaving a swamp where the path used to be.

I was wading for the whole climb. There were a couple of bridges over the deepest bog-holes – but everything was so flooded that the entrances and exits to the pointless bridges were themselves covered in knee-deep water. Planks of wood, helpfully laid down to ease the passage, floated redundantly in murky ponds. At one point, I realised that some gelatinous substance was stuck to my waterproof trousers, and that substance was frogspawn. ON THE PATH. It was cold, it was windy, it was intermittently rainy, and it was shaping up to be the worst conditions I’ve ever spent a night outside in. Somehow I made it up to Nine Standards, an atmospheric historical spot which I did not appreciate to its fullest. I knew that the bog after the summit was worse. HOW CAN IT BE WORSE?

It was worse. There was no path. If there was something that looked like a path it would suddenly veer off in the wrong direction, or mutate into a pond. On one giddy occasion there was a section of flagstones which turned out to be as deceptive as a London bike lane, giving you just enough time to build up speed and a false sense of security before abruptly ending and dumping you into the path of an oncoming bus (or, in this case, off a cliff into thigh-high quagmire.)

“This is fun, this is fun” I repeated to myself. Reader, it was not fun. At some point Jeremy came frolicking past me, moving beautifully over the bog and giving the bewildering appearance of actually having fun. I tried to work out what he was doing that I wasn’t. “I think I just need to commit more,” I decided, and tried to switch my ponderous stumble for a confident fluent jog. This went well for about ten seconds before I confidently and fluently committed my left and then my right foot into a knee-deep bog, hit the heather with my face and spent a minute extricating both my legs, with the shoes thankfully still attached. Back to the ponderous stumble.

There wasn’t much of a sunrise, but at some point the sky lightened a little and the path became a bit of a path. There’s a stretch at the bottom where it crosses the same stream 5 times (WHY), with a bridge generously provided for a total of 1 of those crossings. My feet were so wet that it didn’t make any difference. More tracks, and more mud, as I stumbled past Keld – always a nice landmark as it’s where the C2C crosses the Pennine Way. I was running low on water (and it’s not a great place to refill because of all the – *new hazard category unlocked!* – lead mines) and still hadn’t really eaten anything. At some point overnight I’d also managed to overdose myself on caffeine, adding to my general existential disequilibrium.

The next bit is one of my favourite parts of the route, above beautiful Swaledale, picking through the evocative landscape of lead mining legacy. I reminded myself that I’d chosen (paid!) to be here, and that it would be a lot more unpleasant to have been a Victorian working in the lead mines.

I put some music on, the weather cleared a little, and I managed to run and enjoy it a bit before dropping down into Reeth in a window of almost-sunshine.

I popped into the bike shop for a coffee, cake and water refill, with the help of the lovely safety team stationed there. Stupidly I broke the zip on my vest, which meant that for the rest of the race my bag would be held together by safety pins (luckily they were no longer needed to hold my race number on my leg – that had been ripped off by the wind on the first day.) I faffed around a bit too long before finally ejecting myself for the 16k slog to Richmond.

Sunshine, daffodils and gambolling lambs, as promised, but the lack of sleep was biting and I was shuffling and feeling down in the dumps. Luckily something came along to put a BIG smile on my face, and that something was the wonderful Danielle Butler, who met me with a surprise cheer and hug. She’d also consulted on my favourite ultra snacks and brought me a coffee and mini eggs, which I sadly had to decline as it’s against the rules, but it was SUCH a kind thing to do and left me a bit emotional but in a good way. This put a spring in my step as I slithered across the fields and onto the road into Richmond. The latter was full of Normal People walking their dogs, and as I staggered past, I got a bit of nervous side-eye from the owners and healthy sniffing interest from the dogs.

I got into the Richmond checkpoint in the early afternoon. (Again I had to run through a finish line arch to get there – this time for the Dales Traverse. At the very least they should give us the respective medals?!). I’d been back and forth about whether to sleep there or press on another 50k to Lordstones. It was daylight, and sunny, but the section after Richmond is the pan-flat Vale of York, which I thought would be a horror show while sleep-deprived, and conversely somewhere that I could make good progress if I was feeling good. I was keen to avoid a repeat of my Spine experience, when I’d pushed too long into the 2nd night and ended up a crawling hallucinatey mess. My general grumpiness and incoherence clinched the decision: bed time. I ate some chips and shuffled off to the tent, aiming for an hour.

Unfortunately, the moment I lay down my entire body went into agonising muscle spasms. I often get these post-ultra and have had them before on the Spine (memorably on the floor of a disabled toilet on Hadrian’s Wall) and they are no fun. I tried lying on my front, my back, my side, but I couldn’t put pressure on any part of my legs without them going full Cruciatus Curse. I spent 20 minutes writhing around, wide awake, while wasted sunlight poured into the tent, thinking “this is a terrible idea”. But eventually, mercifully, they seemed to settle a little, and I was able to drift off.

Richmond to Lordstones – 50km, 900m elevation

I woke to my alarm much too soon and stumbled out into the sunshine. I had some nice messages on my phone, and also peeked at the tracker, to realise that a lot of people in the front of the field had decided to call it a day. Suddenly there were only the two Dave Ps ahead of me, and no one very close behind. I had a healthy lead on the women’s field, and was tracking around Lisa Watson’s course record time (although I knew of course that Lisa’s awesome CR – which I think is also the women’s C2C FKT – was on the full route over Kidsty Pike, so they weren’t really comparable.) But the immediate thing on my mind was getting through the Vale of York, ideally in daylight.

I’d recce’d that section in March and regretted it, as it left me with the firm conviction that it was a route I wanted to run only once in my lifetime, and I’d since whinged about it to anyone who would listen. It’s basically 34 completely flat kilometers, before a final hillier 16km once you hit the moors. That might seem like a good thing, but after 180km you want some variety and some uphills to give you an excuse to walk. To make matters worse, the terrain sucks – 12k muddy fields, 10k on the road, then 12k more muddy fields before the respite of the final climbs. I’d received the following advice from 2023 finisher Dave Hanna: “That part is grim. Run it as fast as you can to get the hell out of there.”

In the end, once I set out, I felt like I’d been a bit of a drama queen. The sun (!!!) was shining, and some of the fields that had been barren muddy wastelands a month ago were grassy or blooming with yellow rapeseed. There was even a rainbow. I had some music on and felt better for the sleep, and in my head I was moving pretty well. (Looking at my pace splits for the section, it turns out that that my imagined fluid, bouncy running form was translating to 8-minute kilometers). When I hit the road, I remembered something that Jasmin Paris had said in the Barkley interview I’d listened to last night: “If you don’t think you can run at that pace – just run faster.” At the time I thought this was next-level insanity but actually it sort of worked. Every time I thought about stopping to walk I’d instead focus on improving my form and speeding up a bit, to get the damn thing done sooner.

I slithered over the muddy fields and comically swampy lanes. I came through Danby Wiske just as the sun was setting, and met a friendly couple going into the pub. “Are you doing the Coast to Coast?” they asked. – Yes. “Awesome, us too! When did you start?” – yesterday. “When are you finishing?” – hopefully tomorrow. With increasing alarm, “Where are you staying tonight?!” – errr… “Are you coming to the pub? Can we buy you a pint?!” – very kind and very tempting but no thank you. Some people in a car beeped their horn and shouted “well done Hannah!”. I ploughed on through the fading light, and even got to meet the (very nice!) residents of the farm with the terrifying signage and fence-posts decorated with skulls and spiders (“I really like your signs” I said, which is probably the most barefaced polite British lie I’ve ever told.)

I successfully negotiated the scary railway crossing, then made it to the scary A19 crossing. Surely where the UK’s most popular long-distance trail meets a major dual carriageway there must be some sort of underpass or bridge? Absolutely not. You take your chances with the 70mph lorries. I took my time, and my life in my hands, and made it over in one piece.

And then, hooray! – a hill. I got my poles out and romped up gratefully. Halfway up a wave of sleepiness hit, so I lay myself down (bag and all) for a 5-minute trail nap. Feeling like a new woman, I stormed up the rest of the climb, enjoying the clear night and the views, and then partied along the rolling top and down the descent. Halfway down the steepest slope I was surprised to see a pair of feet, attached to Dave Parrish having his own trail nap. I couldn’t work out if his unusual posture was intentional – he told me that he was deliberately sleeping with his feet facing up the trail so that he would be woken if anyone came past him, but the particular section was probably a 30% descent which meant that he was on an alarming head-down tilt. Maybe helpful for the leg swelling? It was nice to have company for the next bit into Lordstones – I’d never met Dave before but he was great to chat to, and it was cool to hear about his Cape Wrath experience (which seemed like a punchy choice for his first ever ultra but he’d casually gone and won it!). The path follows the Cleveland Way along the edge of the moors – rolling heather to the right, a dramatic drop-off to the left, with amazing views of the stars and the lights of Middlesborough below. It was cold and exposed, but at least a brisk tailwind ushered us over the bumps and down into the Lordstones checkpoint.

Lordstones to Robin Hood’s Bay – 66km, 1600m elevation

I was feeling good and should have blown straight through Lordstones; instead I accidentally got stuck. I knew that I was going to need at least a couple more naps to get me through the night, but the moors are really exposed, so it seemed to make sense to have one nap in the checkpoint, with my sleeping bag and an extra layer. I also wanted to try to eat – I’d been pondering on the climb whether there was any hypothetical food which wouldn’t make me sick, and had settled on lasagne, so it felt like fate to discover lasagne on the menu.

Unfortunately the checkpoint turned out to be a freezing marquee rattling in the wind. I felt sorry for the kind brave volunteers (including the lovely Robyn Cassidy, who I only ever meet when I’m in a state of total dishevelment) who were spending the next few days there – it was Arctic (THANK YOU!). They got me some lasagne and tea, but I got cold, and the shivering kicked off the muscle spasms. I put on a coat and tucked myself into my sleeping bag and lay down on my mat – I couldn’t be bothered to go to the tents, which I’m sure weren’t any warmer – and hoped I might somehow start feeling like I was in a warm bed. I didn’t. My ten-minute alarm went off and I gave myself a good talking to, brushed my teeth in a deckchairs-on-the-Titanic nod to personal hygiene, and sorted out my layers. Robyn helped me to repack my safety-pin-fastened vest (“Hannah, I think maybe you could invest in a new one…”).

Dave had gone for a proper sleep, so I gritted my teeth and ejected myself solo into the night.

I reached the top of the next climb feeling simultaneously gnawingly hungry and wretchedly nauseous, which seemed extremely unreasonable of my body. “WHAT EXACTLY DO YOU WANT ME TO DO ABOUT THIS?” I asked it aloud. The answer, clearly, was “stop running and go to bed, fool”. Instead I decided to force a gel down. It came straight back up, violently, and it brought all that lovely lasagne up with it.

Thence ensued some classic Night 2 flailing. I somehow totally messed up the line around the Wainstones, going round rather than through, and had to haul myself up the side of a grassy slope. On the next climb the path was steep enough that my face was almost touching the rock anyway, so I leaned forward a few extra degrees and slumped against the trail for 5 minutes. I woke with two enormous slugs right next to my nose, wondering vaguely if I might have swallowed any in my sleep, and if I had, whether the passive protein snack might not be such a bad thing. I hadn’t recce’d the next section but it turned out to be deeply awful – the former Rosedale Railway converted to completely flat track which curves monotonously around the moors, elevated up above the landscape to expose it to the full force of the freezing wind. There’s a radio tower with 4 red lights which sneaks around in the periphery but never gets closer or further away. I was vaguely aware of being chased by both Dave Parrish, and by Lisa’s course record, and every time I looked over my shoulder I was convinced I could see two headtorch lights – one for Dave, and one for Lisa. At least one of these was clearly not real.

When trying to describe this section, I played a friend a 7-minute clip of James Acaster’s comedy sketch about his time on the Great British Bake Off (if you haven’t seen it you should watch the whole thing), in order to get to the immortal line “THIS DOESN’T FEEL NICE.” Because that was the line that was stuck in my brain. THIS DOESN’T FEEL NICE.

I tried the Jasmin Paris “just run faster” trick with some effect, but about every half an hour I would start drifting off on my feet. When this happened, I had absolutely no reserves to deal with it – instead I would commando roll directly to the ground and curl up for a nap. I’d wake to my alarm, or the cold, or the muscle spasms, and drag myself up to continue, usually feeling a bit livelier, but I must have had 4 or 5 of these so the average pace was slow. One time I awoke by the side of the straight trail on the dark featureless moor and had absolutely no idea which direction I’d come from.

Finally I stumbled onto Blakey Ridge, where the Lion Inn supposedly is – I completely missed it in my stupor, although presumably those big plates of chips were not being served at 5.30am anyway. I looked at the rosy sunrise and slumped by the side of the road for one last sleep (no passing motorists stopped to check if I was alive) before putting away my headtorch and deciding that was enough faffing around. It was an undulating ride on roads, bog and hard-packed tracks through desolate sweeping moorscapes – but it was mostly runnable so I tried to run, and eventually hit the long descent into the very welcome Glaisedale aid station.

Glaisedale was full of lovely volunteers who I’d seen earlier up the course, which made it seem like a reunion episode of your favourite TV show (in which they resembled the perky A-list co-stars who’d aged well and were still looking great, and I was the one who’d developed a serious alcohol problem and had some bad botox.) There was an incredible picnic laid out just for me, and I managed to eat a marmite sandwich and a banana, and took some flapjacks for the road. (Hygiene rules mandated that I wasn’t allowed to touch the food, so the nice volunteer picked up the flapjacks in his rubber-gloved hand before placing them into my grime-encrusted palm in order for me to shove them directly, unwrapped, into my sweaty, filthy waist belt. “What you do with it once I give it to you is up to you”.)

In Glaisedale I learned Dave Phillips had just finished, Dave Parrish was a little over an hour behind me, and I was still pretty much on the course record. I thought that as I’d taken the diversion it probably wouldn’t count if I went under the CR, but I didn’t care. I was ready to be done, and just needed ANY kind of goal to keep me pushing to the end. I did the maths and it felt doable if I got a wiggle on.

Frustratingly, every time I got up some motivation and momentum, I would immediately hit a Bambi-on-ice section of unrunnable mud. A blister burst, and when I stopped to deal with it I sat down in a patch of stinging nettles. But I pushed up the ridiculous road climb out of Grosmont, and then charged happily down the descent into the valley. The next section through the woodland seems to have featured in other runners’ nightmares, but in daylight it was stunning – shining green leaves, celandines and wild garlic, sparkling sunlight, birdsong, the incredible Falling Foss waterfall, Normal Nice People out for Normal Nice Walks with their Normal Nice Dogs, who all responded to my friendly “morning!”s with an expression of mild concern. And then, for old time’s sake, a last hurrah of knee-deep bog. But where I could, I was digging deep and running. When I hit the spectacular rolling clifftops there was a little over 4km to go, and I had 45 minutes to do it in. 10 minutes per km. Should be fine.

I charged through the caravan park and down the grassy slip-n-slide descent that led to the coast path. Unfortunately at that moment my foot got stuck in a particularly deep patch of mud, and the top half of my body executed an almighty belly-flop. I’d been muddy before, but now my face was covered in mud. My top was covered in mud. My arms were covered in mud. My watch screen was covered in mud. My poles were covered in mud. I dug myself out and tried to keep moving. The faces of passers-by changed from mild concern to outright horror. And to my frustration, that slidey muddy kilometer had taken longer than 10 minutes. It felt like a sick joke, the Coast to Coast having the last laugh. I imagined spending the next three hours rolling around in this mud like a greased pig.

But eventually I hit some solid ground, thought What Would Jasmin Do?, and pulled out what felt like a sprint finish. Down the ridiculously steep hill, past a load of quaint cafes and souvenir shops, and suddenly there were Northern Traverse flags and that beautiful bay and I crossed the finish line and I could Stop Running.