The Great Outdoors – July 2019

campaign to stop the Ministry of Defence
buying Knoydart for use as a military
training area. Later, the Trust donated a
considerable sum to the community buyout.
Brasher was fondly remembered by both
staff and members during my time with the
Trust, where by all accounts he performed a
very similar role of provocateur.
And then there was Keri Wallace, who
rang the office one day and said she was
raising money for the Trust, by doing the
Big Three Rounds back-to-back as a
multi-day challenge. As daft as it might
sound now, for me at the time all roads

seemed to lead to the Big Rounds. I felt I

couldn’t escape them.

In May 2014, the day before I walked

the Bob Graham Round for the first time

in one go, I met with Jonathan Williams

at publishers Cicerone Press – to discuss

the potential for my trips around the three

classic Big Rounds to become a book. Later

that evening I met a few folk from the Bob

Graham Club, in a mock Tudor room

above the Eagle and Child pub in Staveley.

My wide-eyed enthusiasm was met with

seasoned experience in both cases. I was on

my way. Or was I?

I limped around the Bob Graham full of a

head cold. It took me six days, even though

I knew most of the tops already. I run in my

local hills now, but then I was a backpacker

only – surely I was in over my head? And

there were concerns about the increased

popularity of hill running, and what a guide

of the kind I was planning to write might

mean for erosion and local infrastructure.

Richard Askwith’s rather brilliant book had

served to inspire a new generation of fell

runners, and now in the Lake District it

wasn’t so much Feet in the Clouds as boots

on the ground. I wanted to do the right

Eventually, the inevitable happened. The author attempting to find his feet in the Glyderau.

50 The Great Outdoors July 2019