Author: Owen

It’s approaching 2am on a relatively mild and cloudless September night. I’m halfway down the side of Pirin Peak, the 2554 meter (8400 ft) summit that forms one of the countless climbs on the Pirin Ultra Marathon.   

I am almost alone. I can see just one solitary headlamp ahead of me through the dark, perhaps a mile away down the mountain. And I know there is a runner behind me, as I passed him some 15 minutes ago and he’s been bravely trying to keep up.  These are the only two other spots of artificial light beneath a star filled sky and an almost full moon. 

Descending from a summit is normally something of a rest period in an ultramarathon. Going down is easier than going up.  But this is not a regular ultra. 

The path, such as it is, offers not groomed trails but a giant bolder field.  Huge chunks of granite, often as big as a small car, spread out as far as my headlamp will illuminate.

There are two ways of covering this rocky ground. You could laboriously slide down from one boulder to the next, as if mountain climbing, searching for hand and foot placing. Or you can put your trust in the advanced rubber compound of your trail shoes and the strength in your quads, and leap from one boulder to the next – chancing that grip overcomes gravity. 

I am intensively focused in my own world of foot placement and grip, so much so that my mind is empty of extraneous thoughts. It’s like a sort of meditation. 

And then the quiet night air is suddenly cleaved by a thud and the most almighty scream from about 100 metres behind me.  I turn around and without thinking, start hauling myself back up the rocks which I’d hoped to have put behind me for life – back towards the source of the sound. 

I can see a runner slumped over back up the mountain.  As I climb, as fast as I can, my heart rate rises, thinking through the possibilities.  I start to consider that an extraction of an injured runner from this boulder field is more than a one person job. More than I can manage.

I reach the runner whose headlamp is illuminating his right ankle and the blood oozing from his lower shin. My headlamp quickly darts around, searching for the source of his pain. Two headlamps on a lonely mountain.

His exhales are slow and parsed through what sounds like a Bulgarian expletive, over and over. My breathing is fast and shallow as I try to overcome my sudden exertion.  It’s not Sleepless in Seattle but Breathless in Bulgaria.

I feel around his ankle searching for any protruding bones.  I assume he’s broken his ankle.  He speaks no English. I speak no Bulgarian.  But the power of his scream says “broken bone” in any language. 

The front of his shin looks as if it has had an encounter with a cheese grater, but his ankle looks mercifully intact. Or at least still joined to his leg. 

As I check him over for any other broken bones or gashes, his breathing slows and the yelled expletives give way to a quiet, delicate and pitiful sob. It’s a sound you don’t expect from a big Bulgarian man that looks like this. 

My sleep-deprived brain is discombobulated and unable to make the code-switch from looking to provide physical assistance to emotional help. 

In the normal world, such a broken, sorrowful sob would demand putting your arms around someone and giving them a big comforting hug.  But giving a big Bulgarian man I don’t know a hug on the side of a mountain seems just a bit too weird.

I tried to offer some soothing words. 

“I think the path smooths out just down there”. But of course this was not true.

Perhaps he senses my awkwardness through his crying and he brushes away my enquiries with a wave of his hand.  He just wants to be left alone, left in his own world of sorrow. 

His bones may not have been broken but is soul was well and truly crushed. He didn’t need airlifting out. But he might have needed a psychotherapist flying in.  

There wasn’t really anything more I could do. So I turned and continued my route down.  I didn’t catch his race number or his name, so I’ve no idea if he made a magical recovery and finished the race, or if he’s still wailing uncontrollably on a psychiatrists couch somewhere.  

This is the Pirin Ultra.  And it’s not for cry babies

Path to Pirin 

Bulgaria hadn’t been much on my radar. And certainly not for mountain running.  But it turns out that Bulgaria has some wonderfully rugged high mountains – the Pirin Mountains – which become a mecca for winter sports in the season. Or perhaps that should be ‘became’ a mecca for winter sports. For here too, climate change is starting to wipe out the snow and hence the winter tourism season.  Last year’s winter was even too warm for the artificial snow machines around the main town of Bansko to do their energy intensive business. 

Ironically enough, the reason I was in Bulgaria for a race was because I had failed to finish another race a couple of months earlier.   For me, my path to the Pirin Mountains began on the side of a mountain in Colorado on the Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run, where I too had started to lose my mind. 

I was about 90 miles and 44 hours into Hardrock, when the sleep demons finally caught up to me.  

Through the early part of the race I’d been slower than planned and had so little buffer against the cutoff times that I’d had not a minute to sleep. I was running without a pacer, who might have been able to slap me around the face and tell me to get myself together. 

I was painfully desperate for just a few minutes of a restorative nap, but simply didn’t have the time.

Obnoxious Knees

Hallucinations are common in ultra marathons, particularly those that keep runners awake for multiple nights. And they were something I’d experienced before.

On one of my first big ultramarathons,  I’d developed a stress fracture in my right shin and torn a knee meniscus in my left knee. Rather than pull out, I’d pushed myself to the limit – or possibly quite beyond it, to finish. 

Because of my injuries and slow progress, I had no time to sleep. On the second night of hobbling through that formative race, the sleep deprivation manifested itself in a delusion where my knees, screaming with pain, started to answer back to the insults I was directing their way.  

Presumably growing tired of the insults, my knees eventually started to answer back. And taking things just a bit too far, they then started to consult with each other about my shortcomings as a runner, and general poor character as a human. When your knees start talking about you in the third person, you really are in trouble. Having my own knees talking trash about me to each other clearly did little for my mood.  

By contrast, at Hardrock the hallucinations were more tame, and I had simply lost the ability to follow the course markers. In the middle of the night, and on the final climb of the race, the reflective markers were generally visible for a few hundred feet up the mountain. And if that wasn’t enough I had a simple line displayed on my watch that showed a graphical representation of the course. I was so close to the finish. All I really had to do was keep the dot representing myself on my gps, on the line representing the course, and I wouldn’t get lost.  And yet somehow I did.  

On the final climb, I remember bending down in the darkness to look at the course markers and studying them as if they were some sort of unique flower, and not quite understanding what they were for or even quite what I was for.

On the way up that final climb of the race, the warning signs had started to appear. I’d sat down on a rock, having just emerged from an Estate Agents.  I’d been convinced that there was an elevator in the side of the rock that I needed to find. And perhaps that I was on totally the wrong mountain.   I asked two passing Pandas if they could kindly direct me towards the Hardrock course.  They were two runners who’d I’d spoken to just a couple of hours earlier.

“Just keep going up, Owen” one of them replied.  

“But then how will I get down?” I wondered, possibly to myself, possibly out loud.   

I can’t really remember much of what happened over the next hour.  Nothing much made sense. Those watching my satellite tracker say they could just see me veering wildly across the side of a mountain.  Thinking back now I can remember little more of it than a dream.

All I remember is that as my mental faculties started to come back and I started to push on towards the finish I’d lost too much time with Pandas and Estate Agents.

Despite running as fast as my tired legs could muster, by the time I reached the finished line in Silverton I was nearly an hour over the 48 hour cut off time, so wasn’t an official finisher in the race.  

All About Hardrock 

For a certain kind of ultra runner – me included – running Hardrock is the highlight of a lifetime.  It’s hard to get a place in this epic race in Colorado. Thousands apply for just 150 places. 

Finishing Hardrock gets you a place in the lottery for next year’s race.   And strangely enough I’d still wanted the chance to keep coming back and run the race again. 

There are just a few other races around the world that the organisers think are also sufficiently challenging to demonstrate your preparedness as a would-be runner for Hardrock.  These qualifying races too get you a chance to enter the lottery. 

Immediately after failing at Hardrock, I’d begun to wonder whether this might be a sign that my time suffering through ultramarathons – particularly the more challenging races – might be coming to an end. Maybe Hardrock 2024 might be an appropriate swan-song.  I’d finished the race the race of my dreams once and failed once.  Did I really want to commit to more endless suffering.  Perhaps this was a sign that it was time to move on. 

In any event, I thought I’d have to wait until next year to find and then train for another Hardrock qualifier. I’d miss the lottery this year – something I’d not done for years.  I’d take the rest of the year off, enjoy myself, and then start training again in the new year and put it out of my mind until then.

Go Now

I’m not really sure when the realisation came that training back up to Hardrock fitness becomes increasingly difficult with age. I tend to run one big race in the summer each year, then take the rest of the year off from the rigours of training.

But maybe it would just be easier to get a Hardrock qualifier whilst I was still almost Hardrock-fit.  It would be easier to maintain the fitness than let it go and try and regain it.

As I flew back from Colorado to London, I looked through the list of qualifying races in the autum. It looked like there was a race in Japan, one in Cape Town, another in Switzerland, Australia and Bulgaria.  

But most were either full, just missed the Hardrock lottery deadline, or were a huge logistical challenge to get to.  

Bulgaria seemed my last chance to get back in the Hardrock game. 

Only just over two months after Hardrock, the blisters had barely healed but I was on a late night flight to Sofia. And then on to a rickety old soviet train to Bansko in the heart of the Pirin Mountains. 

Show me the info

There was however a distinct lack of information about the race available online. After Hardrock this low-key race appealed.   Hardrock had been writing to me for months in the lead up to the race.  

Look up any of the big races online and there are an abundance of race reports and YouTube videos available. But there’s relatively little out there about the Pirin Ultra, and even less that’s not in Bulgarian. 

There were about 100 people signed-up for the race when I eventually made the decision to enter.

There were a smattering of other international runners on the start list. Three Brits, a Dutchman, some  Norwegians, a few Poles, an American and a sprinkling of runners from Bulgaria’s direct neighbours – Greece, North Macedonia, Romania. 

I dare say that most of us had looked up the starting list before travelling to see who the international runners were. I’d guessed that most of them were, like me, going largely for the Hardrock qualifier.

Within the small group of ultra marathon runners there is an even smaller group who enjoy travel enough fly to one of the more extreme races with the sole objective of finishing just so they’d be able to enter the lottery for another race. 

Booking

When signing up for the race (just €80), the organisers offer the opportunity, for a small extra cost, to be booked into an (unspecified) race hotel and have a pickup transfer from Sofia airport (at an unspecified time). 

In addition to the 160 km race, there were a number of shorter races organised at the same time, as part of the Sky Running series.  The website said these races would take place between 21st and 23rd September – but gave no information about when each race would start.  There was just a note that the race schedule would be published 10 days before the race.

It later turned out that the airport pickup to Bansko would be exclusively on Friday with a return to Sofia on the Monday.

I’d already booked my flights and I didn’t really fancy turning up in Bansko late on Friday night for a 6am start the next day. Nor finishing the race on Monday morning and having to be bundled into a bus on Monday afternoon back to Sofia. So in the end, despite paying for the transfer, I ended up sorting out my own transport too and from Bansko.

I’d also booked and paid for two nights in the race hotel – assuming one night before the race and one after.  But it turned out that these nights could only be on Friday night – the night before the race. And Saturday night – one of the nights I’d be out on the course. Bonkers!  

In the end despite paying for the race hotel, I just decided to book my own accommodation elsewhere. At a hotel with room service and a sauna.

The contrast with Hardrock could not be starker. At Hardrock I’d been receiving weekly emails in the months coming up to the race.  Other people I spoke to at Pirin had said that they’d emailed the race director with various questions, and not had a reply. 

I was fairly relaxed about the lack of communication.  In the end I thought my flights were cheap and the hotels even cheaper. I’d not had to invest massively in the race. If I needed to book another night or another flight, then so be it.  Embrace the unknown. 

I’d also assumed that the race director was deliberately trying to channel Lazarus Lake, the organiser of the Barkley Marathons by refusing to provide helpful information. In a race like the Pirin Ultra you need to be comfortable with ambiguity.  Comfortable not having a marked course.  Comfortable being self sufficient with food.  Or at least, if not comfortable, then at least happy being uncomfortable.   

There were few rules for the race. But one that stood out – “no whining”.   Don’t expect too much and you won’t be disappointed.  And for €80, what can you expect.

The Unknown. 

What is known about the Pirin Ultra is that it’s supposed to be a 160km long race, with more than 11,000 metres of climbing. And you have 50 hours in which to finish.  About ten days before the race, the timetable was published, showing that the race was to start at 6am on the Saturday morning.  Meaning you need to finish by 8am on Monday morning. 

The course is supposed to be completely unmarked. Although it turns out they’d marked one small section across a boulder field. And another small part of the course that follows the route of the 66km race which starts a day later, but is a fully marked.  

Although not explicitly stated anywhere, the course profile seemed to show a drop bag icon at one aid station that you reach at 26km and again at 86km. 

I checked in for the race on the Friday afternoon along with some racers for the shorter distances.  After a mandatory kit check I was given my race number and told I could collect my tracker on Saturday morning, before the race.  I handed in a big drop bag, which I was unsure if I’d ever see again.  In it were a couple of AirTags, so at least i might have a chance of knowing where it was afterwards.

Later that afternoon there was a streamed ‘e-briefing’ for the race, which provided a little bit more information.

And then in the evening there was a pre-race dinner that had been included for the international runners staying at the hotel.

The race director did a quick tour of the dining room, and I asked him about the course. He seemed like a really nice chilled guy.

Hardrock is known for its numerous river and stream crossing – so much so that your feet are almost constantly wet. I asked the RD if that was the case for Pirin?  He said it had been dry for weeks and there was very little water on the course – so make sure you carry enough to drink.  There are long distances between aid stations.

I also asked about the finisher rate, thinking it was somewhere around 50%.  He said most years about 30% of the 160km race finish.  He seemed to take genuine pride that this was much lower than Hardrock.  It also seemed to add to the narrative that things could be made easier for runners – but wasn’t the point for it to be difficult?

The info about the water and finisher rate were the most useful bits of information I’d received.  Starting a race where 70% of the field might quit does help to set your expectations.

Race Day

We had been told to be at the start line for 5:30am the next morning to receive our race trackers.   It wasn’t like there were many of us to process, so I wasn’t too worried about long queues. 

None of the international runners knew each other before the race but we started emerging from hotels across town in what felt like the middle of the night, and congregated on route to the town square. It’s easy to spot a foreign ultra runner.

On leaving the hotel, I bumped into a couple from Essex,  one of whom was returning to the race after her DNF a few years ago.  

Most were here for the Hardrock qualifier, and many to settle old scores of a DNF at Pirin from years before.  We each shared stories of how little information there was about the race online. Perhaps that was part of the charm for most of us.  

Come race morning there were 111 people on the starting list for the 160km race, but only 87 people had turned up to register. That’s already a high drop out rate.  Is a DNS better than a DNF?

That number makes even the tiny starting line for Hardrock seem positively crowded. My local Parkrun is much bigger than this.   

And at Hardrock you’re allowed a pacer out on the course. No such help at Pirin.  It really would be lonely out there.

First Sunrise 

Sunrise was officially just after 7am in Bansko at this time of year. So twilight would begin around 6:30. But beneath the dense canopy of the trees it would seem darker for much longer. 

The sky was pitch black when the race director started the count down.

The starting arch straddles some steps in the town square, which has the effect of at least slowing down the runners as they head out into the mountains.

The starting gun went off and we set off up the gentle slope of Bansko’s streets, and then off the roads and onto dirt trails through the trees. 

There isn’t much to say about those first few kilometres. We headed up snow-free ski trails and then off through the woods. 

Early on I started chatting to a Dutch guy who was back to settle a DNF from last year. (Sadly he didn’t finish again this year). 

I’d started trying to nibble a pack of crisps to keep my energy levels up. And I’d managed to get through quite a bit of water. 

The first aid station came at the small Bandaritsa mountain hut 11km in.  I was gagging for a coffee but there was no hot water.  I made do with a coke, which was at least flowing freely. I filled up one of my water bottles with Coke for the journey ahead. At least some sugar and caffeine would come with me. 

But as I started to survey the other food offerings I knew I was going to be sick. 

Behind the hut I puked up a pathetic thick beige paste of chewed crisps.  As I wretched from deeper in my abdomen, I remember thinking that at least the water wasn’t coming back up, so I wouldn’t be getting dehydrated.  I covered the embarrassing beige lump with some leaves – embarrassed to be puking quite so early.  But also embarrassed at how pathetic my puke was. 

There was a time when nausea and puking would dominate my races. Now it was little more than a stomach reset. 

I rinsed my mouth with water and downed some the coke.  It stayed down for a bit. I was still feeling good. 

As the sun rose over the peaks it became a perfect day. Not too hot. No wind. But gloriously clear blue skies. You could not ask for better weather. 

Mandrata

I continued trying to eat some chocolate Twix biscuits and sip on the coke. Every now and again my stomach would try and puke up a bit. And I’d teach it a lesson buy forcing down more food.  It felt like trying to get a rebellious child to eat its vegetables.  ‘You’re going to keep eating this until it stays down’

At the Mandrata aid station, at kilometre 26, we first got access to a drop bag, which we’d also have access to again after the first loop when we returned 86kms into the race.  I was a little surprised to see the drop bag had arrived at the aid station.   All the bags looked the same, having been wrapped in bin bags. And they didn’t seem to have been placed in numerical order. Chaos!  My AirTag helped me find my bag pretty quickly.

I’d packed some spare shoes and socks – which I’d keep for my return later. No point changing shoes quite so early on.  The RD was right, the course was bone dry.  I’d also packed a couple of pots of instant mash potato.  But of course there was no hot water to mix it with. Another drought.

Contemplating forcing down a pot of cold stodgy mash potato, the Dutch guy saw my potential plight and offered some hot water from the massive thermos flask he’d packed in his drop bag.  He’d clearly done the race before and knew what was missing. 

I thought I’d be taking a risk eating the whole pot of mash in one go, and assumed I’d be leaving another beige paste just a bit further up the trail. But the hot food instantly settled my stomach and I think the 5 or 6 times I’d been sick up until then were the last. 

Route finding was sometimes easy and sometimes more difficult. Occasionally you’d have to push through a dense clump of pines, or cross, then cross back over a stream. But in the open air the course finding wasn’t too challenging. 

But having the map feature enabled permanently on your watch really does zap its battery.  So it’s important to keep thinking about whether it’s sufficiently charged as much as whether you are. 

The huge design flaw in Garmin watches is that you can’t charge them whilst wearing them, so you have to carry them in your hand with a battery pack whilst you run. And you can’t do that whilst you’re climbing hand-over-hand up a rock face.  I wasn’t ever at an aid station long enough, and in any case they were too far apart, to get enough charge from them alone.  And I’d known from past experience that you didn’t want to get into a situation where your watch needed charging just as a storm or difficult climb was approaching. 

On an unmarked course, keeping watches, phones, satellite trackers and headlamps charged takes some planning.  Much like managing your own energy reserves.  When your battery starts to reach empty, you’ve left it too late. 

After the first entrance into the mountains, the course is essentially made up of two big loops, which connect at the centre – at Mandrata – like a giant lopsided figure of eight. 

The first loop features a section of mountain highlighted in red on the course profile.  In a howling wind or rain storm it wouldn’t be pleasant but I didn’t feel at all exposed on this mild September night. 

There was a fair bit of scrambling, pushing through vegetation which cut up my lower legs, or patches of stinging nettles,  but not much exposure. 

The aid stations are far apart. Particularly when moving quite so slowly over the terrain. Sometimes seven or eight hours between aid stations. So you need to be fairly self-supported with food. It wasn’t amazingly hot, but I had to stop a couple of times to filter water and fill up my water bottles from the few streams. There were a lot of animals on the course, so drinking straight from the stream probably wouldn’t be senseable. 

It was on the descent from Pirin Peak, on the first night, about 55km in that I encountered my crying Bulgarian man. Further down the course we – though perhaps not him – were back into a wooded pine forest.  

Trying to track a faint path through the woods was hard work.  Particularly at night in some of the tighter valleys and with a dense forest canopy above, it was hard to get a reliable gps signal, and to know whether the path was 10 metres to your left or right. Often you’d just end up bush-whacking through the forest, climbing over broken branches and tree stumps – tracking parallel to a path but not knowing quite where it was. 

There is an epic race video online, with an awesome looking ridge. But there’s so little information online about the race, that it wasn’t clear to me that the  ridge-running only forms part of the shorter 38km Sky Running race.  I suppose it wouldn’t be hugely sensible to send fatigued 100 mile runners that way.  But I was a bit disappointed not to get the really technical scramble and Via Ferrata. 

Speaking to other runners who’d done – or part done – the course before, I found reassurance that the first loop was where most of the technical climbing was. 

Second Sunrise

I’d run with a Dutch guy for a bit at the beginning of the race. And with a Bulgarian woman for a while, and then an Israeli guy.  But large parts of the course I was out by myself.  

Whilst running with a course on your watch, it’s hard to have a full overview of where you are on the course. Your scale is zoomed down to the your immediate vicinity.  You have no real idea where you are in the field – how many people are behind you and how many ahead.

Our race numbers had an elevation plot of the course on them, with indications of mileage and elevation gain. But there was no overview of the course outline.

I had diligently printed out and laminated the cut off times. But this was stashed in my backpack.  

It was on the descent back to the aid station at the centre of the two loops, Mandrata at 86km, with our drop bags, that I began to worry, and then be sure that I was going to miss the cut off. 

I had it in my head that the cut off time at the Mandrata aid station was 5:30am on Sunday – some 23hours 30 minutes after starting.  Over the preceding hours I’d grown increasingly concerned, and kept pushing my pace.  I considered stopping to fish out the timing chart to double check, but assumed that would waste more time. And in any event I couldn’t really run much faster, so even if I had it confirmed it wouldn’t make much difference. 

First my watch rolled over to 4am. Then 4:30.  It got closer to 5am and I was still jogging on at what I felt was a fair trot.  5:15am and I clenched – this seemed like I was going to be out of the race.  I was still a fair way off the aid station.  5:27 … 5:28 it wasn’t close.  I was going to miss the cut off. 

My thoughts switched to my hotel room. It was one of the nicer hotels in Bansko. Recently renovated. Expansive, crisp, white Egyptian cotton sheets lay waiting for me. A lovely bath room. And a spa complex. 

I’d been feeling pretty sleepy during the first night section and was starting to relish the opportunity to crawl into bed. 

I knew it would take some time to get back from the aid station, as it was the other side of the mountains from Bansko.  But I figured I’d be able to grab a quick nap in the aid station before being taken back. 

I’d had a blast doing the 86kms. I wasn’t particularly beaten up by the course. Rather than being disappointed, I was actually rather pleased to have another free day in Bansko.

So I was in buoyant mood when I finally arrived at the aid station just before 7am.  It was still pretty dark in the forest.  The aid station had moved inside the hut. It was pretty cramped and dark inside there too. But warm. Gloriously warm. 

There were a spread of perhaps 5 other runners sprawled out inside the hut. All looking pretty dishevelled. A couple with head in hands. A few laid out trying to sleep. 

So when I entered the hut and announced in a chippy, upbeat tone to everyone and no one in particular

“Oh, so have we all missed the cut off?” there was a minor commotion as runners quickly stirred. 

“No – there’s no cut off here”, the sole volunteer announced. 

“What, really?” I said in a slightly less upbeat tone.  Dreams of my bed and steam room rapidly disappearing from my mind as a dream is forgotten on waking up. 

So I have to carry on?

I set about plugging in various devices to charge. Swapping over headlamp batteries. Changing shoes, washing feet, 

I went outside to brush my teeth and tongue.

As I was brushing and trying not to gag, a runner left the hut and said in an american accent 

“I’ve just done the same thing. Feels amazing doesn’t it? If it’s good enough for Courtney…”

Brushing your feel and wiping your race really does transform how you’re feeling.  

As Courtney says “Look good, feel good, safety third”

I tried to get some hot water for my mash potato, but there wasn’t any. Nor any coffee. 

Instead a got a bit of a lecture from the volunteer about how bad my artificial dehydrated food was, and got offered some slightly tepid soup. It didn’t really hit the spot.  I left the mash behind. 

I figured I didn’t really have time to sleep so I left the aid station and immediately struggled to follow the path.  We were deep in a valley and again with heavy tree coverage. 

Was the path to the left or the right of the river. I just couldn’t figure it out.  “Get a grip, Owen”

In the mountains the sunrise is never particularly pronounced if you’re not on a summit. It just starts to lift the gloom. 

I caught up with the american runner and we chatted for a bit, until he said he needed to get 10 minute sleep. 

I think I must have a soporific effect on people.  Maybe that’s why I feel so tired in races – it’s the sound of my own internal monologue sending me to sleep.

I eventually caught up two Polish runners as we nearly summited peak.  The ground was hard with frost and the sky again brilliantly blue.  How lucky we were with the weather. 

We passed a little mountain hut with hikers looking like they were preparing to start the day. 

It was early. We assumed the hut was closed, but I thought we’d just give the door a push to check. 

It was open and somehow pushing through that door was like entering into a magical wonderland. We managed to order coffee – which one of the Polish guys treated me too. (Bring small denomination notes with you – I just had the equivalent of a £20 Bulgarian LEV note and a credit card – neither of which they seemed inclined to take)

It was unbelievably wonderful inside.  It was like an Edward Hopper painting made real. With the added advantage of the smell of coffee. The sunlight streamed in and the mountains looked picture postcard perfect through the windows.  If they’d had the Sunday Newspapers, I’d truly have thought I’d died and gone to heaven. 

I knocked back the espresso and was ready to leave, when I noticed the Polish guys checking out the breakfast menu.  If I sat, I’d never leave.  I left them too it and headed out into the cold but brilliantly clear morning. 

The day passed relatively painlessly.  Large parts of the day were spent on the course of the 66km route, which at least gave other people to chat to,  and the short-lived luxury of a marked course.  The 66km race started early on the Sunday and tracks part of the same course as the 160km race.

I stripped off down to my shorts and washed in one of the faster flowing streams. Cooling off and getting the grime off you comes second only to brushing your teeth in terms of a restorative effect.  

I thought I was getting a few odd looks and double takes.  But it seemed a perfectly sensible thing to do.  

Normally in a long race I’ll put plaster over my nipples to avoid any unpleasant chafing. You only have to see one bloodied shirt in a marathon to remember to never make that mistake. 

Anyway, I’d forgotten to bring any really adhesive plasters with me, so on race morning I got creative and had the clever thought to use some KT tape – the luminous blue stretchy and super adhesive bandage that you sometimes see athletes use on their legs – for the same protective effect.  It was only later that I realised that seeing a man with blue luminous nipples emerging from the river must have looked a bit odd. Or a bit statement making. 

I’m not quite sure when the american guy caught up with me again. But our paces seemed in sync and we buddied up as the sun set for the second night.  We passed a few other runners, and a couple of runners passed us.  

Eventually in the middle of the night the course for the 66km and 160km races parted in the night. Suddenly we runners on the long course cut a much lonelier affair.  I was glad of the company. 

Again there was a fair amount of scaling over boulders.  And long scrambles on all fours as we made for each summit. 

Both of us were clearly trying to work out pacing and times.  I’d figured that we needed to be at the last aid station by midnight – to give us eight hours to cover the last 26km of the course to the finish. 

But for both of us the wheels started to come off.  For him he managed to bash his knee on one of the rocks and was seriously concerned about the sharp pain emanating from deep within his knee.  

For me, I was starting to get a deep sense of deja-vu. And also slightly conscious that I was beginning to get a weird perception that we were going around in circles – despite clearly being on the track on the gps trail on my watch.  This is what started to go wrong in Hardrock.  

With two other runners we struggled we passed a giant lake and then climbed the boulder field over the last really big climb.  But all four of us struggled to find the route over the saddle. All for of us looking in different directions.

“Get a grip, Owen.  This is where you get timed out”

Over the saddle and the path was fairly distinct now – compacted mud in places speckled with white rocks of varying size which reflected off my headlamp. 

But somehow these weren’t rocks but discarded cups and saucers, and plates and the a guitar. 

When I get really tired my powers of logical reasoning start to break down. And Occham’s razor – that the simplest explanation is the most likely goes out of the window. 

Rather than “they’re rocks” my brain started to create an elaborate story around why companies had disposed of bone white china on the path. 

Later the china gave way to guitars and a washing machines.  Oh maybe I could do a spot of washing whilst we’re up here. 

My american friend was slowing a little and worried about taking any more pain killers. He urged me to go on alone.  I was tempted. But also quite enjoying the company and the varied chat.  He’d paced Hardrock a couple of times.  

And also perhaps I was a little conscious that I’d failed at Hardrock because I’d lost the ability to follow a a simple line on my gps.  If I was already starting to walk on crockery, perhaps a second pair of eyes would help.  Maybe he was the pacer I’d never had at Hardrock. 

He was still talking of dropping at the aid station, so I prepared that I’d have to go it alone from there. 

In my head I’d already been timed out once that day, so wasn’t particularly panicking if I got timed out again.  I was almost expecting not to finish. 

Both of our senses must have been going a bit off as we both thought we could see an aid station through the dark – but much higher up than us. Which was odd as we knew the profile of the course meant we needed to descend to the final aid station.

I’d been fighting off a strange sense of deja-vu and somehow was still a bit confused at the prospect of following a simple line on my gps.  

I remember saying – as if it had been drilled into me post Hardrock – that my watch still showed we were on the course so we must continue.  I was talking out loud – but to myself. 

Sensing the aid station or at least my increasing confusion, my american friend led the way for a bit and we eventually found what looked like a large semi-deserted mountain hut. 

I still wasn’t quite convinced it was the aid station – but once inside there were three cheery volunteers who welcomed us.  There was scant little left in terms of food or drink. No coffee. No hot water.  

In my head I’d calculated that we’d need to have arrived at the last aid station by midnight in order to have a decent chance of making it to the finish some 26km further on, in time for the final 50 hour cut off at 8am. 

It was now just about 2am. But the volunteers were bright and optimistic and told us that the course was now fairly groomed flat trail – or heaven forbid – proper roads. So we’d be able to make it if we pushed.  We were ahead of the cut off time at the aid station. And I’ve never voluntarily pulled myself from a race. 

We looked at each other and decided we’d make it.   The volunteers loved our optimism.  Most runners they’d said had been pretty grumpy coming in.  We were buzzing. 

We stuck some KT tape on my friends knee. And some cooling get.  I think he popped another pain killer.

Those final hours of an ultramarathon when you’re up against it with a hard cut off are supposed to be an awful slog. But I can’t pretend they were.  I certainly enjoyed the run wards the finish. 

At one point, I picked up a rock so convinced it was a small espresso cup. It wasn’t.  I clearly needed sleep. 

Once when we were both struggling with tiredness we lay down  on the track for five minutes to try and get some sleep.   

My nausea had stopped long ago, but my running buddied had to stop a few times to fend of nausea.

We ran as much of the flatter and downhill sections as we could. And power hiked the uphills.  All the time paying obsessive attention to our pace.  

Soon the pitch black of night made way to the gloom of an early morning in the mountains. 

As we got closer to town the murky morning mist gave way to a brilliantly clear cloudless sky. 

All the time we were checking our watches. Maybe we’d finish with 40 minutes to spare. Now maybe 30 minutes.  Ok perhaps we’d finish with 20 minutes to spare. 

As we approached the town, the trails gave way to road that we’d previously covered some two days ago. It was all mercifully down hill at a gentle gradient that made running if not easy, then at least productive. 

My American friend then commented that we’d seen the sun rise three times on the same run.  At Hardrock you only see two.  

We’d been running – or at least moving – for nearly 50 hours. It was certainly the longest continuous run I’d ever done.  Three sunrises – that’s something pretty wild.

The streets of Bansko were quiet that Monday morning.

The finish line was quieter still and very low key.  Just a couple of volunteers. 

We had no idea how many people had finished or how many were still behind us.

We eagerly quizzed the volunteers. 

111 were signed up for the race. 

23 runners Did Not Start

87 runners started

36 finished – of which we were the final two. 

That’s a 43% finisher rate – maybe higher than normal due to the exceptional weather.   We were dead last. Just 13 minutes before cut off.

In some ways it felt a comfortable margin.  In other’s unbelievably tight.

 

As me and the American were chatting and laughing and reliving our race – one solitary runner crossed the finish line three minutes after the cut off.  He slumped onto the bench and assumed the 1000 yard stare.

Our bonhomie at odds with his broken look. He’d gone all that way – and not finished.  Just like I had those two months ago.

I’d got my Hardrock qualifier – just.

In that moment I wasn’t quite sure I’d be entering the Hardrock lottery.

All I wanted now was to be back at my hotel. To shower, eat breakfast and sleep.  In an order I wasn’t quite sure about.

***

I showered, ate and slept.

I will, of course, be entering the Hardrock lottery again.

 

Spare a thought, if you will, for the newly born Guillemot. It begins its life high above the sea on a rocky cliff-face.  Just weeks after hatching on the cold, wind-swept ledge, the chicks are ushered to the edge… and pushed off.  

You can almost hear the mother Guillemot squawking “Fly, my pretties. Fly” as she pushes her offspring over precipice.

The narrow ledge, where the chicks have spent their entire lives, offers little space for flight-training. Or even to fully stretch their wings.  

Given that shove, the student bird must unfold their wings and at least make a passing attempt at flight. Or crash onto the rocks below. It’s the ultimate game of “fly or die trying”.

By contrast with the cruelties of Mother Nature, learning to fly a light aircraft should seem much less stressful.  On a blustery November morning, it doesn’t seem like that. 

A Jump

Most of us in comfortable, professional jobs have grown unaccustomed to being crap at anything.  Experience in childhood taught us what we’re bad at, and we find jobs that cater to our strengths. 

Depending on our personality we might choose to put ourselves in more challenging spots at work, knowing that we need the odd challenge or shot of adrenaline to avoid boredom.  But we do this within the confines of carefully calculated bounds. It’s rare that we intentionally put ourselves at risk of doing something where there’s a real chance of failing. 

And yet, I was about to start spending my weekends looking, and feeling quite incompetent.

Getting Schooled

I’d been thinking about taking flying lessons for some time.  I’d bought the text books, even a couple of aeronautical charts.

I think this was a way to kid myself that I had started the process of becoming a pilot. But I kept putting off finding a flight school.  Work got busier. The pandemic struck.  And it seemed more sensible to have a decent amount in a savings account than start spending it with reckless abandon. Or maybe I just thought I wouldn’t be very good at it.

Then summer rolled around. Work must have been a bit quieter. Training for whatever was my latest whim of an ultramarathon had finished and I suddenly had a little time on my hands.  Oh gosh, was I… bored? 

Learning to fly starts with booking a ‘trial lesson’ at a flight school. I imagine that flight schools do a lot of these trial lessons for people who really have little intention of properly starting – or at least completing – flight training. They just want the first experience.

The studious amongst us might book trial lessons at several flight schools.  You’d check out a few different instructors to see who you best got on with.  Maybe you’d try a couple of different aircraft types to see what you wanted to learn in.  You’re about to spend somewhere north of £10k. You’d like to think you’d done your homework first.  

And yet I went with the first flight school and first instructor I tried. But I don’t think this was just laziness or an over-reaction to dithering for so long.  

How many choices of planes are there? Most flight schools either use a Cessna 152 or a Piper PA28. And the Cessna is smaller, cheaper to fly, and probably a little easier to land. 

And really, you’re going to want to have a pretty good reason for choosing an airfield that’s further away. 

So maybe it comes down to the instructor. 

Teaching and Learning. 

Teaching and learning were always a big thing in my family.  I’d been exposed to more discussions about my education than was probably usual.  I never had a chance to be uninterested, or even disinterested, in my education. Not just what I learned but how I learned. 

I’d long known that I learned best not by being taught, but by asking questions.  I’d need an instructor who was sympathetic to my incessant questioning and constant analysis of my mistakes – rather than teaching by rote or just trying to repeat the course material when I failed to understand something. 

I guess I was looking for an instructor who might be up for changing things around when I failed to grasp something.

Trial Lesson 

I booked a trial lesson through Stapleford Flight Centre in north east London – just inside the M25. It was about 25 minutes drive from home.  On the phone I tried to make clear that this wasn’t just a whimsy, but I wanted to do my PPL and enquired as to what the availability was like for instructors. 

When I phoned reception at Stapleford I enquired what availability was like for instructors and whether they could pair me with someone who would be free for lessons at weekends. Most of the commercial students would be training during the week.  I like to think I used my office-phone-voice to persuade them to give me someone good.

It sounded like a lot of their teaching was done by younger pilots embarking on the first stage of their career into commercial aviation.

Reception booked me in with an instructor who had a couple of students just about to take their skills test, so might have some availability next week.  And If they did, that would be a good sign.

There’s the thing that people of a certain age are supposed to say about ‘policemen looking younger and younger’.  I remember being conscious of almost a generational difference between me and my instructor.  One not in my favour.  He was younger – perhaps in his early 20s.

Sure, I work with people younger than myself. But maybe sitting behind a desk with poor office lighting ages you.  Or maybe the younger people in my office aren’t paid to teach me.  Or maybe I just wasn’t used to feeling like I had to earn the respect of someone younger. 

I did briefly think, am I going to be ok with this? Hadn’t I been expecting a wisened old guy in a beaten up bomber jacket with decades of experience? 

There’s something almost akin to speed dating in your trial lesson. You’re trying to quickly suss out on a personal level if the instructor is someone you want to share the small confines of the aircraft cabin with for hours on end.  Are they going to patronise you when you get something wrong? Are they going to go easy on you when they should really be tightening the screws and giving you hell?

You’re also trying to make a snap judgement, without really much to go on apart from your gut instinct, whether you’re happy to put your life in their hands. 

An engine-failure-after-take-off – know as an EFATO – is one of the most risky things in light aircraft. In the unlikely event this happens in your first few lessons, you’re not going to be in much of a position to help.  How are they going to cope if the shit hits the fan – or, I suppose, the propeller.

And yet I was wondering – how much was he also assessing me? I vaguely had the notion that after COVID, flight training had suddenly become very busy again. 

During COVID it looked like the world of commercial aviation – and therefore aviation training – might be decimated for decades. But now things were starting to look up again. After months of pilots being furloughed, and flight training being paused, it looked like pilots might once again be in demand. 

Maybe the instructors got to pick their students rather than the other way around.

Airborne 

The day came around,  I looked at the weather in the morning. Blue-ish skies. Little did I know how much of the following year would be spent pouring over forecasts and weather reports – and sticking my head out the window with an upwards glance and a deep reflective intake of breath. 

After meeting my instructor we started with the walk-around of the plane.  You’re checking that everything looks right. That the control surfaces work, there are no leaks, dents or bits missing. 

You do this with a check-list in an orderly flow as you walk clockwise around the aircraft.  

Teaching the walk around must be a lesson in itself – not really a focus for the trial lesson.  My trial lesson was only an hour – but I felt like I wanted to couple of days to inspect the plane and understand how each bit worked.  I was already getting bogged down in the detail that should come later. 

One of the risks of light aircraft, or indeed any propeller driven plane, is of someone getting struck by a propeller unexpectedly whirring to life.   You quickly become accustomed to checking the area is clear before shouting ‘clear prop’ before cranking the engine. 

When the engine whirs to life it gets pretty noisy in the cabin until you slip on your headset. It’s perhaps the beginning of sensory overload.  Immediately instruments where whirring to life and I was already mentally questioning what each one did. Again more sensory overload. 

We took off and flew to what would soon become the regular practice area near Southend. 

We did some steep turns and a few dives where the g-force when from zero – where a pencil held in the centre of the cabin would stay there – to a gentle pull-up which felt like my weight had doubled.  

I hadn’t really expected to feel much in the way of g-forces in my training. But as I would later learn, training involves stall practices, spiral descents and steep turns where the force through the seat of your pants rapidly increases. I already weigh too much, so weighing twice-as-much-as-too-much was always going to be a shock.  Again the sensory overload continued.

In bigger commercial airliners you might feel a bit of turbulence, but not much in the way of g-forces. In a light aircraft you also get bumped and buffeted by the air in a way you don’t in a big plane.  It’s all a lot of new sensations. 

My instructor, I assumed, naturally wanted someone who would be good to teach.  Were the steep turns about giving me a bit of fun or about checking whether I was the sort of person who would… puke in a plane.  If you’re going to be teaching someone for a while, you’d better suss that out early.  

I hope I gave the impression that I would be a good student; that I was more likely to turn up when I said I would; wouldn’t piss about; and not turn up hung-over like I would have done when I was last a student. Or fail to turn in my homework on time. It turns out there would be a lot of homework.

When we got to the ground, I’d pretty much decided that 1) we would get on and have fun, 2) there wasn’t much of a difference in price between competing flight schools, and 3) the airfield felt safe, friendly and well run. The instructor guy was good. ”

Perhaps I was also a bit afraid of my instructor not choosing me. No one wants to go through speed-dating and not get chosen. Maybe I worried I’d get dumped by an instructor before we even started, and end up with the instructor no-one wants, whose students always fail.

“Ok, lets do this. When can you start” I said almost before the wheels at hit the ground. He had a couple of students about to do their final skills test the next week, so we could get going in a couple of weeks.

Instructing

What makes pilots interesting is that – like architects – they inhabit differing worlds. At its most basic, flying is physical, requiring quick wits and good instinctive judgement. Just like a racing driver. But it’s also a little academic, requiring knowledge of meteorology, biology, aerodynamics, electronics and mechanics. Isn’t it this intersection of the Venn diagram where things – or people – get interesting?

I’ve often noticed that many people who are seemingly gifted academically can’t drive a car. For whatever reason I come across non-drivers more and more. Many say they’ve just never learned. Maybe they grew up in a city and never needed a car. But even if you didn’t want your own car, it always seemed to me to be hugely limiting in life to not be able to use a car. ”

The ability to rent a car in some far flung place and head-out-on-the-highway-looking-for-adventure always seemed one of life’s great freedoms. Maybe they just knew they wouldn’t be very good at driving and decided – as we all do – not to risk doing something they wouldn’t be good at.

I was charmed by how my instructor took me at face value. He didn’t ask me about why I wanted to learn to fly or what I did for work. Did he think I was an arts graduate or a science graduate? Maybe he didn’t care. I suspect he had better things to think about.

I remember thinking that if I was teaching, I’d want to know about the person I was teaching. Did they have a PhD in Fluid Dynamics – in which case I might consider more deeply how I talked about a stalling aerofoil.

Perhaps this consideration of audience comes from half a career working outside my area of education, mainly with arts and politics graduates, where I’d regularly have to make snap judgements about professional people and adapt my message accordingly.

He didn’t ask, and I remember thinking I wouldn’t say – unless asked – that Bernoulli’s principle and that Newton’s Third weren’t going to be a problem.

“You don’t know this yet but we’re going to get this done in the minimum 45 hours.” I remember thinking to myself. How quickly I would disabuse myself of that view. ”

You don’t actually get a huge amount of time to talk to your instructor about anything other than the matter in hand. Lessons are short and there’s little room for small talk.

It was only during a lesson before my final test, that on a slightly longer return to the airfield, I had anything like the time or mental capacity to engage in just the slightest small talk. I remember being delighted that I could talk and fly at the same time. But we’re jumping way ahead.

Early Lessons

The introduction to flying starts with the basic handling of the aircraft: straight and level flight, climbing, descending and turning. You start – as commercial flights the world-over do – with a briefing.

Your instructor runs through the lesson on a white board whilst you’re safely on the ground. Then after the flight you debrief. Incidentally I found the debrief afterwards hugely helpful as it quickly became evident that during the flight I was often so mentally overloaded that I couldn’t take anything in.

After you’ve done the briefing, and your instructor has done the paper work, and you’ve done the walk-around, they take off.

They do this in a away that gives you the reassuring but entirely false impression that you have taken off. You then fly to the the training area where each concept is introduced slowly over a series of lessons

The aim is to ease you gently from the zone of ‘unconscious incompetence’ to ‘conscious incompetence’ as you’re exposed to more and more of the work that goes in flying.

When I started flying I immediately bypassed this Dunning-Kruger effect. I was immediately conscious of my incompetence.

A misspent – or well-spent depending on your perspective – childhood as an aviation geek meant I knew a fair amount about what was going on. What each of the instruments were and what information they conveyed. Maybe I had read some of those textbooks I’d bought.

This might have been part of the problem, in that I was immediately subject to information overload. I should have been focusing on the tasks in hand – learning how to keep the plane straight and level. But my mind immediately kept trying to jump ahead. To work out where I was over the land, which direction we were heading; what they were saying on the radio, what frequency the radio was on, and everything else. All of this I could have ignored. It wasn’t important at the moment.

I was incensed that my mental map of where we were was totally gone. I’m normally good at spatial orientation. I don’t get lost. And here we were, somewhere over Essex, and I didn’t know which direction the airfield was in. I didn’t need to know. But it was hard to let go. Letting go meant acknowledging I couldn’t do everything just yet.

When there was a lot going on, in an effort to cope, I quickly realised that not only had I mentally tuned out the radio and air traffic control, but that I was also incapable of listening to my instructor.

We soon realised that I had to hand over the controls to the instructor to be able to listen to what he was saying. And even then I found it hard to properly take in what he was saying. The debrief whilst back on the ground made a big difference.

And then I realised I could stick my Go-Pro camera up in the cockpit and record the video as well as the audio from our headsets.

Watching back some of the early lessons was like watching someone else’s flying lesson. My ability to block out auditory distractions when I was concentrating on something difficult was epically good. Or bad.

But all this added to the homework after the lessons.

This basic handling took up the first few lessons.

Stalling and Alarming

Early on in training you’re introduced to the principle of a wing stall. A wing stall, as distinct from an engine stall, is where you disrupt the airflow over the wing so much that it no longer provides lift. It happens because you’re going too slowly or climbing too steeply. When the stall occurs the airflow over the wing catastrophically stops providing lift and the plane suddenly drops.

In normal flight you never want to stall. But you need to know how to get out of a stall if you accidentally enter one.

You start by practicing stalls both with the engine providing power and with the engine idling. In both cases you pull the yoke towards you – fairly hard – until the plane is at an ever steeper angle until the stall happens.

In the old Cessnas there’s a mechanical horn that sounds an audible alarm as the stall is starting to develop. If you keep pulling, you start to feel some buffeting on the plane. Keep going still and then the plane starts to sink, and, as often as not, one or other wing drops unpredictably away.

If left unchecked or unrecovered this can develop into a spin and a rapid reintroduction to the ground. Of course in training we don’t get that far. Hopefully.

It took me a while to be robust enough with the controls to bring on the stall. I kept limping half-heartedly and unassertively into a stall.

The training is designed to train out the natural inclination to either pull up or steer out of the roll with the yoke – both of which make the stall worse rather than better.

Getting out of a stall is supposed to be fairly easy and should become natural. You release the pressure you’ve applied on the yoke. You then apply full power until your speed picks up. Then you gently climb away from the stall. If a wing drops, you use the rudder pedals – not the yoke in your hands – to counteract the roll.

Only at one point in my training did I sense my instructor seem genuinely alarmed and piped up my controls as the ground rapidly filled a windshield that had only moments ago contained nothing but sky.

In trying to overcome my timidity with the controls as we went into a stall, I had overreacted on exiting it. Rather than simply relax the pressure on the yoke, I had thrust the yoke forward. This had the effect of exiting us from the stall, but also starting a rapid dive towards the ground.

Phew, I don’t know my own strength I joked as the instructor recovered to straight and level flight.

As in so much with flight training, you learn more through your mistakes than your successes.

We worked on stalls for a bit. It’s important to get the physical feel of the plane – so that if you accidentally get into a stall in normal flight, you’re quick to get out of it.

Bigger commercial planes even have what’s called a stick-shaker – literally shaking the yoke in your hands to alert you to in impending stall. And if you keep ignoring that, a ‘stick-puller’ so if, despite the warnings, you keep pulling, the plane will push the yoke forward itself.

This is one of the reasons that when you practice stalls, you make sure you’re somewhere safe and high enough to be able to recover.

There’s a formalised way to remember these checks with the mnemonic – HASELL.

Memorising Mnemonics 

The HASELL checks – Height, Airframe, Security, Engine, Location, Lookout – are about checking you’re not in any danger of crashing into another plane or built up area if anything goes wrong in the stall practice. These are supposed to be committed to memory rather than read from a checklist.

And when you’re considering the ‘location’ part of the HASELL checks – there’s also another mnemonic – ABCCD – to remind you that the location should be clear of Airports, Built up areas, Controlled airspace, Clouds, and Danger areas.

I’m pretty good at working out systems, but less so at just remembering things by rote.

As we went through the various stall practices, I found more than anything, I was struggling to remember the order of these memory lists.

Oh god, what does the second ‘c’ stand for? By which time the location in which we about the be practising the stall would now be miles behind us.

Right across your flight training there’s a lot to remember by rote. And trying to remember it all got in the way of actually flying.

Before you enter the runway you have the FATPL checks: Fuel, Altimeter, Transponder, Pitot Heat, Landing Light.

Immediately after takeoff its FELT checks: Flaps, Engine, Landing Light, Trim

As you’re getting ready for landing there’s what looks like someone sat on your keyboard BUMPFFLICHHC – Brakes, Undercarriage, Mixture, Prop, Flaps, Fuel, Landing Light, Instruments, Carb Heat, Hatches, Harnesses, Clearance.

At school I struggled to recite poetry verbatim, and it took me an age to remember lines for plays I was in. That was all without the pressure of trying to navigate a one-tonne piece of metal through the sky whilst also trying to remember your lines. I remember thinking I could learn to fly a plane but at the expense of forgetting my own name.

Circuit Training

Flying just once a week on a Saturday or Sunday, the weeks quickly passed and we started to get into the cooler days of autumn.

Once you’ve started to master the basic principles of flight – climbing, descending, turning – you begin to bring these together in the circuit.

The circuit, or traffic pattern, is the standard rectangular route flown by light aircraft around the airfield. You always take off in the direction of the runway and into the prevailing wind. You climb on the same heading as the runway before turning left, so as to take you at 90 degrees away from the runway – this is known as Crosswind.

You turn left again so you’re now flying in the opposite direction to the runway – parallel to it and in the opposite direction to which you took off – this is called the downwind leg. Then you turn left again to bring you back towards the runway – the base leg. With one final left turn you are again lined up with the runway on final approach.

At airfields without full air traffic control you’ll often reference your position in the circuit over the radio to help other aircraft build up a picture of who’s doing what in the circuit.

Flying this circuit pattern means that all aircraft around the airfield are flying in a predictable way. When you return to or approach another airfield, you’ll slip in to this pattern around other aircraft. You’ll listen to the radio to gain situational awareness of where the other planes are.

Circuit training forms a big part of flight training. By repeatedly flying this circuit you can practice takeoff and landing again and again and again in what’s called a touch-and-go.

In a touch-and-go, you let the aircraft gently touch the ground as in a normal landing, but instead of applying the brakes and bringing the aircraft to a stop, you apply full power and transition from landing into a takeoff again. This is quicker than landing, stopping and taxing back to the start of the runway and taking off again.

Take off and landing are the biggies in flight training.

I once heard another student refer to his ‘slam-and-gos’. He was having the opposite problem to me. He had an overdeveloped urgency to get the plane on the ground. I was suffering a huge reluctance to get it down.

Ground Shy

At some stage in your flight training, you’re bound to hear an instructor offer the advice that take-offs are optional but landings aren’t. In bad weather, it’s one thing to be able to take off but quite another to land. You don’t have to go flying but if you do, then you do have to land.

The runway at Stapleford has two quirks about it. One is that when the winds are coming from the south or west, as they are most of the time, the runway you use slopes upwards at two degrees. This gives a feeling that the runway is coming up to meet you.

As you’re approaching the runway the plane should be in a nice gentle descent. The trick with landings is that you have to transition from descending to ‘not descending’ at just the right time. Do this too late and you’ll hit the ground too hard. Do it too early and you’ll float down the runway and run out of runway on which to land.

At the same time as arresting your descent, you have to flare the aircraft so the nose of the plane is slightly raised, so the main landing gear, at the back of the plane touch the ground before the more delicate single front wheel.

I’m not sure whether this was complicated by the upslope of the runway, but every time we got close to the ground some form of built in protection triggered deep within me.

Oh gosh that ground is coming up rather quickly. Better not slam into it and before we know it my hands, almost without control of my conscious brain, would pull back on the controls and we’ve be climbing again. Meanwhile the runway was rapidly running out below us. So I’d increase the power to full, slowly retract the flaps and we’d go around for another try.

Go-Arounds, as they’re called, are an important thing to practice. If you’re not happy with the landing, perhaps you’re coming in too fast, or too high, or the wind changes, or there’s something on the runway – then it’s best to go around. But eventually you do have to land. And I was developing something of a tendency to be ground-shy and wondering whether I would have to be airborne forevermore. I was becoming the ‘go-around king’

Immediately before the big focus on landings, we had numerous lessons on stalls. You are immediately aware that if you try to fly too slowly your plane will literally fall out of the sky. This caused something of a tendency in me to want to fly too fast on final approach.

Stalling just above the ground would not be good.

It took me a while to figure out that the second quirk of the Stapleford runway might also be contributing to my difficulty in getting the plane down.

The first half of the main runway is tarmac, the second half is grass. A decent pilot could easily land and stop on just the tarmac. Indeed, soon even I would be able to do so.

But you could perfectly well land on the first half and continue slowing down on the grass at the end. At a push you could even manage to land on just the grass, on the second half of the runway, and still have time to stop.

But as you’re approaching the runway from above, it’s hard to shake the feeling that it’s just the little bit of tarmac that forms the runway.

So rather than let the plane gradually transition from descent to level flight, settle, and then an easy flare, I was panicking on two counts.

Sensibly, the self-preservation part of my brain was seeing the end of a tarmac runway and deciding to go around. But of course it wasn’t the end of the runway. I had plenty of time.

It was almost like my hands had a mind of their own as we got closer to the ground I had to fight the urge for my hands to want to pull the yoke back towards me – sending the plane back up into the air.

“Don’t pull back. Don’t pull back. Don’t pull back” I’d mutter to myself as we got closer to the ground.

As we got closer still – fighting the urge to send us around for another go – I’d have to fight the urge to look away, as you might close your eyes before crashing.

I talked to my instructor after one lesson. I just couldn’t shake the fear of smashing the plane into the ground. “Something just isn’t working”.

He came up with the suggestion that instead of trying to land we’d break things down further. As we approach the runway, we’d arrest our descent and fly just above the runway. Then apply power and, towards the end of the runway, we’d go around. “

Somehow this convinced the vestigial part of my brain that as we weren’t actually going to intentionally smash into the ground – or even land – I could focus on the individual parts that make up the fine controls needed the landing.

Getting Crossed

I’d started my training in the summer when the weather was fine. Training just once a week, at the weekend, means that it can take a while to make progress.

It was late autumn or early winter before we got into proper circuit training. By this time the weather was frequently causing us problems. Some weekends we’d have to cancel the lesson as strong winds or a low cloud base would make flying impossible.

Just as I got over the ground-shy tendency, I was getting knocked sideways, often quite literally, by a cross wind.

What worked on a still summer day didn’t work when the winds picked up. With the wind roaring directly down the runway, you took off almost unnaturally slowly. But as soon as you’d turned left and left again for the downwind leg of the circuit, you’d find yourself getting blown quickly back towards the airfield.

All the things you normally had time to do were now suddenly rushed as your speed over the ground was now much quicker with a tailwind.

And then we had some lessons where the wind wasn’t straight down the runway – but seemingly diagonally across it. As soon as you took off you were been blown with alarming speed in the direction of France. And would soon be there if you didn’t take corrective action.

Until this point you are used to the plane travelling forward in the direction the plane is facing. But now the plane is facing one way and you’re moving forwards in another.

Taking off in a crosswind is one thing, and fairly easy to deal with. Landing, not so much.

You don’t want to land the plane sideways, so at some stage just before landing you have to make sure that the nose of the plane is facing directly down the runway with the plane staying just above it. ”

There are a couple of ways of dealing with crosswind landings. Whichever method you use, you have to get used to controlling the direction of the nose of the plane with your feet, using the rudder pedals. And control your movement parallel with the runway with the yoke. At the same time you’re controlling your descent with one hand on the throttle.”

It’s like a version of the coordination exercise where you have to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time. Only its like doing this whilst tap dancing.

In fairness I was probably learning in about the most challenging weather. ”

“Nice and relaxed” my instructor would say as we were on final approach – seeing me hunch up as if I was preparing for a fight. Or impact.

“Nice and gentle on the yoke” he’d say.

But what he meant, seeing my white knuckles, was “for god’s sake Owen, you’re gripping the yoke like the plane is trying to rip the yoke out of your hands”

He suggested I try just using thumb and forefinger of my left hand on the yoke. Your right hand is resting (or I suppose gripping for dear life) on the throttle.

I really felt like I had no idea what my limbs were doing, It was hugely unsatisfying to keep getting it so wrong. It was like someone was pulling the runway out from under me like people do with a tablecloth on fully laid table. Only this time it felt like the planes were just about to crash to the floor.

Again the breakthrough came when we practiced flying directly above the runway at low level, so that I could practice the precise coordination of the rudder and yoke dealing with the gusty winds.

I’d end our circuit training lessons with sweaty palms, and aching forearms, feeling totally drained. Just happy to be back on the ground. But also hugely frustrated at my incompetence.

After coffee and breakfast in the clubhouse, I’d find that I’d struggle to drive home. The switch from controlling an object in three axis to just two was more than I could handle. I was totally mentally shattered. I’d drive home slowly and find that, like a baby, I needed an afternoon nap.

At about this stage I started to be aware of that nagging fleeing that I’d made no progress on studying for the nine written exams you need to pass.

Going Solo

Once you’ve shaken off the total incompetence of the circuit training, you progress to your first solo flight. Your instructor steps out of the plane and you do a circuit by yourself. Your first time flying by yourself. It’s almost a bigger step than passing your final test.

For me the first solo came reluctantly. It came first after a period of bad weather in October and November. At the end of one lesson of circuit training, and a few half decent landings, my instructor asked how I would feel about going up for another lap by myself.

But he didn’t quite ask that. He asked, in an almost hypothetical way. It was a conditional.

If I asked how you would feel about going up for another lap by yourself, how would you feel? He wasn’t asking. But he might have been. If I said no, then it wasn’t a question. He was sussing me out.

I was the Guillemot clinging to the ledge for dear life.

You’re not pushing me over the ledge just yet I thought.

I felt flustered and annoyed at myself for not nailing the cross-wind landings. Something still didn’t feel quite right.

I still didn’t feel totally at one with the plane. I hadn’t fully understood what my feet and arms were doing to counteract the cross wind. They were doing something, but it wasn’t under full control of my brain. I’d felt my few successful landings were still a fluke rather than baked in to my brain.

On this occasion the wind was right down the runway, so my instructor was presumably thinking it might be a few weeks before another weather window opened up. And I’d done a few half-decent landings. But I felt tired and liable to make a mistake.

“Not today” I said. It was an instinctive answer said without consideration. And I’m sure it was the right one. Normally I’m up for giving everything and anything a try. So I was surprised by my automatic answer.

Fortunately the spell of bad weather didn’t last too long. The opportunity came a couple of weeks later at the end of November, just before my birthday. After a couple of circuits with the instructor he asked if I felt ready and I had no hesitation.

“Yeah no problem”.

The solo itself was pretty uneventful.

After signing various bits of paperwork, the instructor jumped out. And with minimal drama I taxied back to the runway to fly the circuit, now prefixing my radio calls with the word “student” as all trainee pilots must do when flying by themselves.

The plane, now lighter than before, climbed quickly. It felt like a rocket. I landed to congratulations over the radio from the radio room and another plane in the circuit.

Talker

During my lessons I’d tended to talk quite a lot – talking through what I was doing – often asking questions out loud. Sometimes answering my own questions but at other times directly asking him questions.

As we progressed through the training, I’d often ask a question of the instructor, and my instructor would just keep quiet – letting me answer or problem solve the answer myself. He was clearly trying to get me ready for flying by myself without the comfort blanket of an instructor next to me making decision for me.

It made me smile. Years ago when I worked on an IT help desk, I’d get asked how to do something or other. I’d often reply with well how do you think you do it? And the person would work out their problem by themselves and feel satisfied they could do more than they thought.

Long Way Down

It was perhaps my second or third set of solo circuits, some time in late December, when I had my first surprise. The plane hit a few bumps of air. Presumably the airframe flexed a little, and the door next to me popped open as I was turning onto the downwind leg. It felt like there was suddenly a tornado sweeping through the cabin,

The air-flow around the plane means that the door doesn’t fully open but it does open a few inches. Suddenly there was quite a lot of cold air rushing about. I alost had the realisation that without your seatbelt there’s really not a lot to stop you falling out. These types of planes are used for parachute jumpers.

Aviate, Navigate, Communicate is the mantra that’s drilled into you early on. The most important thing is to fly the plane and not get distracted by other stuff – even navigating or communicating. Plenty a pilot has come to harm by getting bogged down in the task of navigating whilst they’ve forgotten to keep the plane aloft.

I heard myself recounting this mantra to myself, after the first instinctive expletive. Methodically, if not quite calmly, I levelled out and got stable on the downwind leg, flying the plane in the right direction. I made the usual radio call on the downwind leg. I was aviating, navigating and communicating. I reached over pushed the door out and then pulled and gave it a big slam. Aviate. Navigate. Communicate. Don’t fall out.

I hadn’t got in a flap, or been mentally overloaded by an unexpected problem. Perhaps it was the adrenaline, but when I landed I felt more proud than I did after my first solo.

Emergency!

All being well, most pilots go through their entire flying career without ever suffering any kind of emergency. It’s hard though to make it through any lesson without considering an emergency.

The inescapable thing about a small, single engine plane is that it has just a small single engine. If that engine quits, you’re got to be able to land the plane safely. The old Lycoming or Continental piston engines are hugely reliable. If they fail it’s almost always down to pilot error: carburettor icing or fuel starvation.

Even over the most populated areas of south-east England, once you get airborne you’ll see there are literally hundreds of fields where you could put the plane down in an emergency.

And that’s what you begin to spend a lot of time practicing – what are called PFLs practice forced landing.

It becomes a studied exercise in getting everything done quickly but not panicking.

Your instructor pulls the throttle back to idle – so you essentially have no power. Then its over to you.

You pitch the plane so it’s has the best speed for gliding as long as possible. Pick a nearby field that’s

big and flat enough, ideally facing into the wind, try to restart the engine, put out a mayday call, brief your passengers and prepare the plane for a gentle off airport landing.

Often, as we began our navigation flights I’d be ready and waiting for the instructor to pull the engine back to idle and say ok, so your engine has failed, what you gonna do?

And you’d have to run through the whole exercise, again and again until it became indelibly fixed in your mind.

Initially I wasn’t very good at a picking field. Then as we looped around I’d loose my orientation and lose the field I said we’d be landing in.

At other times I’d struggle to describe the filed I’d chosen. That big green field with the grass didn’t really narrow things down much. Okay, no, maybe not that one with sheep in it

I often found myself coming up short – finding the plane didn’t glide as far as I thought. My instructor would wait until I got close enough to the group to be sure I’d be able to make a safe landing, before instructing me to ‘go-around’. Added:

Later on, back at the airfield, we’d practice PFFs (Practice Forced Landings) in the circuit, where I’d be given control of the throttle and told to idle the engine when I thought I could make the runway. Again and again you’d have to actually put the plane on the runway without power.

At altitude you’ve at least got the benefit of a bit of time if your engine fails. What’s more challenging is an engine failure just after take off.

During take off the plane is setup for a climb with the nose raised. If the power suddenly goes, you lose speed very quickly and would rapidly stall. So you have to get the nose of the plane down fast, by pushing hard forward on the yoke.

The temptation might be to try to return to the airfield. It’s a temptation you have to avoid – it’s called the impossible turn. At low altitude and airspeed you almost certainly won’t have the momentum to avoid stalling in the turn. Aircraft stall at higher speeds in a turn. So you must push forward on the yoke and pick a field ahead.

As we got further into the lessons my instructor would introduce other ‘problems’

Traffic 9 o’clock he would say, which would immediately get me looking out of the left window, scolding myself for not having spotted the other aircraft.

When I readjusted my view forwards again, having been unable to see the traffic, there would be a warning light on the dash. Or the plane was suddenly out of trim. Would I notice and what would I do to correct the issue.

He was brilliant at creating fake distractions to get me looking elsewhere. Or perhaps I was just easily distracted.

Get Lost

After you’ve gained something of the basic principles of flight in the circuit, its time to start navigation and learning to fly away from – and back to – your home airfield.

Most older aircraft don’t have the fancy computers built into the dash. You have to rely on the traditional ‘steam gages’. Once they’ve passed, most pilots chose to fly with a GPS-enabled iPad, which, much like a car satnav, helps your navigation and flight planning.

But during training and the exam you have to be able to use old-school paper charts, protractors, slide-rule calculators with your flight meticulously prepared flight plan that lists each leg of your journey. You also have to learn to navigate using old-school radio navigation beacons.

After all the challenges of crosswind landings, I found the navigation remarkably easy.

Weekend Warrior

The absolute minimum number of training hours you need to have recorded in your log book is 45 hours before you can qualify as a pilot. It doesn’t take a maths genius to work out that if you’re restricted to one one-hour lesson a week you’re talking about the best part of a year to get your training done. Over the winter, some weekends – indeed some whole months are written off with bad weather.

When you’ve had a busy weekend at work, on a Friday evening you have to start thinking again about planning for the next day’s lesson.

Sensing my awareness at my slow progress, my instructor suggested I have two lessons a weekend – Saturday and Sundays. My excuse, that I was running on Sunday, must have initially sounded like a bit of a cop out.

But throughout the late summer and autumn, my training runs had escalated to the five or six hour-long variety. Add in driving to and from the hills, and virtually the whole day was written off. And I was as physically exhausted at the end of the day as I was mentally exhausted after flying.

But eventually, after the solo, I started to feel that I might have the mental capacity to be able to manage a double lesson on a Saturday, and when the weather allowed, we started making a bit more progress.

Some weeks I’d do a bit of solo circuit training, then we’d fly off on a navigation exercise.

More Time Please

When I first started training I was almost competitive in wanting to pass in as close to the minimum hours as possible. How childish that now seems.

When the autumn came and the weather got a bit worse, and I started struggling with cross-wind landings and getting over my ground-shyness, at least for a while, the idea of flying without an instructor sitting next to me didn’t seem like such a good idea.

For a few months we got into a routine that my flights would be from 8am to 10am on a Saturday morning.

We’d normally WhatsApp just before 7am to confer on the weather. Often the weather was outright too bad for flying and we’d cancel the lesson and I’d go back to bed.

Other times the weather might be marginal and we’d agree to come up to the airfield and take a proper look. Pilots and students spend a lot of time over winter standing around looking up at the sky in a pensive manner.

Perhaps it was because the rest of my life was so scheduled, that I came to quite enjoy these weather related delays and just hanging around the airfield waiting for the weather to clear.

As I got further into my training, I needed to start building up solo time – time in the plane without the instructor. You need at least 10 hours solo time before you can qualify.

When the weather was marginal I might have been able to fly with an instructor (who had instrument rating, so if necessary we could fly in cloud). But the weather was often too bad for my instructor to send me up by myself And solo time was what I needed.

Instructors don’t get paid if they don’t fly (or if their student doesn’t fly). You know you’ve got a good honest instructor when they suggest cancelling your lesson because they can’t send you up solo, and there’s not much point in you just doing more circuit training with them in the other seat. I think you’d just be wasting your money my instructor would say.

I could sense my instructor had a personal pride in getting his students through their training as close the to the minimum hours as possible. Good instructors are efficient instructors.

But I’d often push to fly anyway, thinking I’d welcome more opportunities to fly in marginal weather for the experience.

Suddenly 45 hours of lessons didn’t seem like much. In theory you could qualify having done all your training in the clear blue skies of summer.

We did a lot of bad-weather circuits, at a lower altitude and closer to the runway. We even practiced radar approaches on instruments – where he’d be looking out and I’d be following the circuit on instruments. We practiced circuits with one or other of the instruments covered up with a post-it. He found ways to keep things interesting. And I was happy to take the extra experience.

Written Exams

There are nine ‘written’ exams that you have to pass for your Private Pilots Licence – though really these are multiple choice tests of between 12 and 16 questions. You do these on a computer at your flight school.

The exams range in subjects from ‘human performance’ (like functioning of the heart, optical illusions in the eye and gas transfer across a membrane in the lungs) to meteorology, the functioning of a reciprocating ‘Otto cycle’ engine, to radio spectrum.

These exams can be staggered over your training. Only the first exam – Air Law – has to be taken before you’re allowed to do your first solo flight.

For me, Sir Law proved to be one of the most difficult. Maybe it was because I wasn’t really sure what to expect. The other exams were broadly drawn on physics or biology or mathematics.

I found with a bit of concentration and time I could normally work most things out from first principles. But ‘Air Law’ – has to be memorised. The 1944 Chicago Convention, the rules, aerodrome signs and symbols that you’re still fairly unfamiliar with just had to be stuffed into a brain that was already pre-occupied with work.

After passing Air Law, I let the other exams go for a while as I was too busy with work.

It was only in January 2023 that I started to think I should properly crack on with them. The last thing I wanted, if the weather cleared, was for ‘passing my exams’ to be the thing holding me back.

So for what seemed like most of the beginning of the year, I took Friday afternoons off work and drove up to the airfield for an exam. As the test was online, the results came back straight away. Once I had my results, I’d book the next exam for the following Friday. This focused the mind on studying. Work expands to fill the time available, I told myself. And truth be told, I didn’t really have any more time available to study if I wanted to get them done.

It meant that I broadly had a week for each exam – so the better part of two months of weekly exams.

I’d study a large part of the syllabus at the weekend, then during the week I’d come into the office for 7:00am each morning and squeeze in an hours’ study before work. And then try again after work if there was any brain capacity left.

I built up tons of revision cards which seemed to accompany me everywhere.

Lunch time? The cards would come out for a bit of study. Sat on the Tube on the way to work? Out came the cards. Unbelievable, I know – who manages to get a seat on the Tube?

Fortunately the six big text books I was studying from were PDF copies on my iPad, so at least I didn’t have to lug those around too. But it meant that almost every waking moment seemed to be staring at a screen.

Each Friday, I’d struggle to get work finished by lunch time, then drive up to the airfield. As I’d drive there I’d try and switch my brain from finance spreadsheets and tiresome emails, and back to the business of aviation.

I did pretty well on most of my exams – getting 100% on many of them, I’d probably spent too much time revising. But who wants to go flying with a pilot who just scrapes through their exams?

For a couple of exams, particularly the meteorology, I basically ran out of time to properly study and feel totally in command of the subject. So I went into the exam not quite sure I’d covered everything. I passed. This was about the only time in my flight training I thought I’d be winging it.

Hours in the Day. 

Work was particularly busy at the time. It was one of the reasons I’d delayed my exams for so long. I just couldn’t delay them any longer without putting qualifying off.

On top of all that I was starting to crave a weekend off. Perhaps a weekend in Chamonix with nothing but running in the hills and lounging by a swimming pool. But I couldn’t do that either without delaying things further.

Over these weekends in January and February I was still trying to fit in training for both the Thames Path 100 and the Western States Endurance Run – two big 100-mile ultra marathons. And I was still trying to fit in a flying lesson each week, which further exhausted by brain. Oh, and work.

After a five or six hour run on Sunday I found that my brain wasn’t particularly receptive to mental reasoning or revision, so I had to time anything that remotely taxed my brain to be done before the physical stuff. I could run after studying but not study after running. Even the running suffered though because when you’re mentally tired, it’s hard to force yourself to work hard physically or endure physical discomfort.

I was still finding I needed a restorative nap after my flying lessons. And I was now increasingly conscious of the need to make sure I got enough sleep in the week. Not only as recovery from physical training, but as a way to rest my brain. I often found that something I was failing to understand one evening, would suddenly be quite clear the next morning after a restorative sleep

For short periods of course, you can just burn the midnight oil. And I can scrape through on little sleep better than most. But I knew this wasn’t a long term solution. So even my sleep started to feel like it was scheduled.

I don’t want to over dramatise the amount I had going on, but it often felt like I was pushing at the boundaries of my intelligence. For a long time with ultramarathons I was used to pushing at the boundaries of what I was physically capable of. Not since my physics degree had I felt the same about the use of my brain.

Taking a month or two off work and studying would have been easier. But I didn’t really feel I should have to.

I’ve never really been one to skimp on my job. October, November and December had been particularly full-on at work – so much so that my training had suffered and I’d had to put virtually all study on hold. So I didn’t really feel too bad about giving ‘just’ 100% at work for a months or two.

By early March I’d noticed I my brain was struggling a bit. I think other people might have noticed. The first thing that happened was I’d get peoples names wrong at work,

In hindsight, I should probably have just slowed the pace of things.

Instead I found tricks to hide my overloaded brain. On video calls I’d often glance into the bottom left hand corner of the screen to see someone’s name before I used it in conversation.

I worried that these were the little tricks people used to cover dementia from their loved ones.

By March I couldn’t really face another exam. And the advantage of the weather delaying my training in the plane meant that completing all the exams didn’t quite have the same urgency. So I took the luxury of spreading out my last couple of exams over two weeks. Having two weeks to revise for an exam seemed delightful. I even took a weekend away to a spa hotel to study with a change of scene.

I woke up the next morning in the hotel and it took quite some time – whole minutes – to work out where I was.

Radio Check

After all your written exams, there’s a final practical exam for your radio licence – which allows you to legally broadcast on the aircraft radio.

I always found listening to air traffic control strangely poetic. The language is a strange mix of speed, functionality, the lyrical, exotic and very precise.

The CAA produce what’s effectively become the bible of aviation radio communication in the UK. It defines the prescribed and precise language you should use. It even advises the pilot to “avoid excessive use of courtesies”

There’s no room for ambiguity in air traffic control communication. And air traffic controllers won’t look kindly on pilots who dither and fluff their lines when they’ve got a queue of other planes to talk to.

Often, on a busy day, it can be hard to find a break in the radio traffic. You’ve got to be quick, precise and confident in getting your transmission in.

By all accounts its something people struggle with. Instructors are quick to get their students to use the radio in their first few lessons – perhaps trying to break their shyness. Perhaps its the same shyness that students, on entering the world of work, first find when using the phone in an open plan office.

By contrast I’d already made my peace with looking and feeling stupid in flying the plane. Feeling a bit self conscious in broadcasting over the radio wasn’t really a problem.

But remembering the order of transmissions was just another one of those things you had to remember. To force into your brain. Again there was a mnemonic for that. ADDPAA.

Aircraft, Departure, Destination, Position, Altitude, Additional info.

You have to know how to talk to different types of air traffic control, how to declare emergencies, relay radio messages, ask for clearance to cross controlled airspace, and much more.

The practical radio exam comes toward the end of your training, so you’ll have heard a lot of other people talking on the radio during your flight training. You’ll have heard lots of people using language that differs, often quite markedly, from the precise script the CAA prescribe. And there seems to be just the right amount of efficient courtesies in real life.

Again one Friday afternoon I drove up to the airfield for the exam. You’re given a route to plan on your chart. You have to work out which air traffic controllers you would need to speak to, just like on a regular flight.

Then for the exam, the examiner sits in another room and you’re given a device to mimic a radio. You press the ‘push-to-talk’ button and conduct your simulated flight.

To spice things up a bit, you have to make the radio calls that you’re lost and need a position fix, as well as a simulated emergency.

In hindsight I probably got a bit het up on the precise wording – as if I was learning another language.

If trying to speak french, I would have seen it as the utmost failure if I had to resort to plain English to make myself understood.

At least a couple of times in my training my instructor reminded me that if I couldn’t get the precise wording, I could… well, just speak English on the radio.

(Landing) light at the end of the tunnel

Come April it was the weather that was starting to become the thing holding me back. Where as previously the odd cancelled lesson provided a bit of rest and a welcome bit of spare time at a weekend, I was now starting to get itchy feet and ready to get passed. Every cloudy, windy or rainy weekend was just another delay to passing.

Another weekend was written off running the Thames Path 100 miler.

Memorably, it pissed down with rain that weekend too – so as I squelched through mud some 80 miles in, I remember thinking that at least I wasn’t missing a weekend of flying,

There were now just two hurdles to pass before becoming a a qualified pilot.

My ‘qualifying cross country flight’ (QXC) and my skills test. I’d been waiting a couple of weeks for the weather to be good enough to do by cross-country, but finally on 20th May 2023 the weather was looking ok.

Before you’re ready to do your qualifying cross country flight, you’ll have flown a fair bit by yourself. With my instructor we’d flown to Earls Colne, Lydd and Southend, getting experience with different types of air traffic control and different types of controlled air space.

I’d also flown to Earls Colne and back by myself.

The ‘qualifying’ bit just means that one of the cross country flights that you have to plan and execute must be a flight to two other airports, with a cross-country distance of at least 270km.

It seems like most training schools have their own recommended routes. I flew from Stapleford down to Hastings, on the south coast, before routing East along the coast to Lydd Airport in Kent.

Lydd has full air traffic control and a rather convoluted circuit that involves shaving a corner off the usual rectangular circuit to avoid flying too close to a – thankfully decommissioned – nuclear power station. Gulp. What could possibly go wrong.

Everyone at Lydd was friendly and welcoming – particularly as I told them it was my QXC. Sadly the cafe there was closed, and I was dying for a coffee.

After a quick stop to get my paperwork signed and pay my landing fees, I took off again, this time north for Ashford. I asked for clearance to cross Southend’s controlled airspace – flying over the mouth of the Thames then directly over Southend airport.

I landed at Earls Colne – a little air field with a really narrow tarmac runway and a wider grass runway. Given the wind was directly down the runway, I tried landing on the tarmac. With a hefty crosswind the student pilot might elect to land on the wider grass runway to avoid embarrassment,

The nice elderly couple running the burger shack outside the airfield chatted to me whilst they were cooking my fresh bacon sandwich and making my coffee. They must have been able to see my excitement as I was now almost ready for the home-stretch. As I was leaving they offered me a can of soda from the fridge as a little present for celebrating my cross-country. I took a chilled can of sprite, which I open on landing at Stapleford. It felt like a celebratory glass of fizz.

At Earls Colne I again checked my fuel and oil levels and decided it would be prudent to take on a bit more fuel. It’s a short flight back to Stapleford and I’d easily arrive with a legal minimum of 30 minutes of fuel in reserve. But the club requires a minimum of 1 hour reserve and I’d be a little bit close to that if I ended up with a few go-arounds. As I’m accustomed to doing.

In the end I make a nice comfortable landing at Stapleford. I was physically tired after my jaunt-across the country in a small cabin. And truth be told, whilst the Cessna is perfectly comfortable for a short one our lesson, after a whole afternoon it starts to become a bit like an easyJet seat. But without the distraction of a Gin and Tonic to ease the discomfort.

I was relieved though that whilst I was physically tied, I no longer felt mentally shattered as I once did after even just an hour’s lesson,

The next weekend I had another big weekend of flying with a mock test and a another cross-country solo flight to bump my solo hours up to the minimum of 10 hours solo time required before my exam,

My mock exam wasn’t a huge success, it must be said. But it gave me the basic structure on which the exam would take. That gave me something on which I could revise against.

If my mock exam had been a real exam I would have failed. I can’t remember all the things I got wrong – but it was a fairly long feedback session.

After the long list of of things which were sloppy or poorly executed, my instructor asked if I felt ready for the exam.

Um… did you just hear the feedback you just gave? I thought.

But yeah, sure, no problem is what I actually said.

My instructor found the local examiner and booked me in for the following Sunday – 4th June.

The examiner said he would phone me the following Friday to talk me through the exam structure – then he’d text me a route for me to plan just before the exam.

One of the bits of feedback my instructor gave was to just sound more confident. It was a valid and useful bit of feedback – not just for the examiner but for flying in general.

Over the course of my training, I’d developed a habit of verbalising my though processes – essentially thinking out loud. I suppose early on in my training I thought this ‘showing-what-was-going-on-in-my-brain’ would be helpful to the instructor. But by the end of training it must have just projected a lack of confidence.

Fake it till you make it

It’s hard to understand how you can revise for what is essentially a practical skills test. But actually there’s a lot you can do.

On Monday and Tuesday that week I studied before work and after work – going through my notes, trying to make mnemonics roll of the tongue and ensure the emergency drills could be performed with the grace of swan lake.

By Wednesday I was getting a bit concerned that, again, I didn’t have enough time to get through everything, so I reluctantly booked a precious day off work for Friday to give myself more time. I’d already used up a lot of holiday time for study.

I briefly considered postponing the test, but was reminded of the pep-talk a race director had once given before an ultramarathon.

You never feel you’ve done all the training you need. This is as good as you’re ever going to be. This is it.

 

And also a note of advice from one of Tony Blair’s special advisors that sometimes in order to perform at your best, you need to ramp up the pressure, not ramp it down.

To add to the pressure, I was due to fly to California in a couple of weeks to run a race that I’d been trying to get into for the best part of a decade. Epic amounts of snow had covered the Sierra Nevada mountains in California and I’d been reading various stories about mountain lions and bears being particularly hungry this year. My skills test might not even be the hardest thing I had to do in June.

Sure I could delay until after I’d come back from running the Western States Endurance Run. But in a month I’d have forgotten more than I’d learned.

I hadn’t really told anyone I had my test, so there was no external pressure. It was all coming from me and I was unusually and uncharacteristically nervous. Really, really nervous. For the whole week.

It was a feeling I’d probably not had for the best part of a decade, since I first toed the line for Ironman. I had to keep reminding myself to smile and enjoy the pressure. Pressure leads to performance.

The worst that would happen is I’d fail and have to resit. This wasn’t a ‘worse that can happen is you drown’ situation as the Ironman might have been. And yet the nerves were still there.

GO PAM

There was a bit of uncertainty as to whether the plane I was booked to take my test in, registration Golf Oscar Papa Alpha Mike – G-OPAM (GO PAM to its friends) had a working and reliable VOR receiver. I’d need to use this during the test to track my position to various radio navigation beacons.

I’d flown a lot of the flight school’s Cessna 152s during my training. Each were a little different and had their quirks. Some of the instruments in some planes worked better than others. Given the uncertainty on the VOR and the slight difference between equipment, I thought it would be prudent to go check for myself ”

On Thursday afternoon, after work, I drove up to the airfield and, when the plane was on the ground between other students, I took 15 minutes to sit in the plane. The VOR was fitted and looked like it worked. I ran through all the emergency drills with the engine off.

Back in the clubhouse I went through with plane’s tech-log and minimum equipment list so I could talk the examiner confidently through it. The plane was getting close to its 100 hour check – I made a mental note to point that out to the instructor.

On Friday I spent some time on the flight simulator on my computer, practising with the VOR – reminding myself how to track to it, from it, and take a position fix from two separate stations.

On Saturday morning I took a break from study to do Park Run. Still partly aware that my training for Western States had dropped off for the last couple of weeks and I’d hardly been running. I thought a good hard run on the Saturday would help me keep still in the plane during the exam on Sunday.

Structure of the Exam

Late on Saturday my instructor texted me a proposed routing he would want me to fly from Stapleford. The route would take us to the little town of Heathfield in East Sussex, and then on, in theory to the disused airfield at Manston in Kent. But you’ll never actually reach the second point because they will give you a diversion during this second leg.

In your skills test, the first leg of the route is intended to test your planning, navigation and direction holding skills.

You need to be able to plot and measure the route on your paper chart. Then calculate the bearing. With that, you calculate how the forecasted wind will affect you. Then calculate the angle you need to fly to take account of the wind – essentially how much you need to steer into the wind so the path you trace over the ground is the one you want to follow.

You then calculate your ground speed from your known airspeed. Finally, with that you know the time each leg will take. Once you’re airborne you can calculate your ETA.

So the test not only tests your ability to plan the route, but how accurately you can actually fly it.

When you start out on your first leg, you tell your examiner the compass bearing you’re going to hold and the time you expect to arrive at your turning point. They expect you to arrive there within 3 minutes of your calculated ETA.

If the forecast for winds aloft is accurate, it’s almost like magic that you set out in the plane in a certain direction and speed and – if you can hold a direction accurately – you end up where you planned.

As you’re flying you need to cross reference your predicted position with the chart and the view out the windows ensure to check you’re not drifting more than expected.

At the half way point, you’re expected to revise your ETA and if necessary correct your heading – and let the examiner know.

After receiving the text message I pulled out my chart and pen.

I was conscious that the examiner would want to give me a fairly long leg so as to be able to test my direction holding skills.

But the direct route he’d given me would take me pretty close to London City Airport’s airspace – less than the recommended 2 mile buffer.

But I certainly wouldn’t fly that close the controlled air space on my own.

I read and re-read the examiner’s text. Then I texted the examiner back:

A direct route from J28 [Junction 28, near stapleford] to Heathfield would take me a little closer than I’d normally be comfortable with to City’s airspace (1nm). I trust you’d be happy for me to route via grays or the tilbury docks then direct Heathfield? That would still leave a 30nm leg for the nav.

Clearly this was the response the examiner was hoping for.

He told me it was my choice. The examiner wants to check you’re being vocal and proactive.

Exam Day.

On Sunday I started revision again in the morning. I’d slept well. I downloaded a copy of the wind forecast chart from the Met Office, but knew I’d have to wait till later in the morning to get the most up-to-date forecast as close to my test as possible.

I copied out my weight and balance calculations in neat handwriting for the examiner. Then wrote out my fuel plan.

I went through my calculations a second and third time.

I drove up to the airfield, a little later than ideal.

Demonstrate confidence and professionalism I reminded myself.

When I arrived at the airfield, I reminded myself to smile and enjoy myself.

I met the examiner and I said confidently ‘let me take you through my calculations for today’s flight’. I walked him through the tech-log and pointed out that the aircraft was due it’s annual check in a few days and was fairly close to its 100 hour check

The examiner let me go and do my pre-flight checks of the aircraft get fuel.

For the test we could be airborne for up to three hours – particularly if I needed to repeat any sections of the test. And we needed a hours reserve.

When I calculated my weight and the examiner’s, and our bags, we could be easily over maximum take off weight for the little plane. I couldn’t quite fully fill the plane’s fuel tanks or we would be over max weight.

I gave the windscreen and windows a wash – not particularly so the examiner would see me paying care and attention, but because I hate dirty windows.

We were a little late getting airborne but we took off on runway 03, in a northeasterly direction with a right hand turnout towards Junction 28 of the M25.

Everything went as planned as we continued our climb. I weaved the plane to look for other traffic and changed frequency to Southend Radar.

At Junction 28, our starting point, I again took note of the time as we set a course south-ish for the docks at Tillbury and then on towards Heathfield.

I told him the heading I was holding and the time we would arrive at Heathfield.

Once the busy period after take off is over, there’s a tendency to relax and start chatting, but instead I went through my FREDA checks, and started cross referencing points on my chart with our current position.

We reached Heathfield exactly 18 minutes after crossing Tillbury, And much to my surprise exactly on ETA.

I noted this on my flight log, and turned the aircraft towards Manson.

After a few minutes the instructor told me there was bad weather ahead and he wanted me to divert to Rochester airport.

I looked at my chart then out the window. There was a huge lake to my left, Bewl Water. So I flew the plane there and proceeded to fly a rectangular shape around it as I started to plot out my next course to Rochester. Flying around a fixed position means you don’t inadvertently stray into controlled airspace or get lost whilst you’re doing your calculations and measurements on your chart.

As it took a few minutes to get to the lake. I did another FREDA check, checking the fuel, radio, engine and carb icing, direction indicator and altimeter.

I pulled out my paper chart and drew a line on it with a magic marker, read the distance with a ruler and measuring the angle of the line with a protractor. With that I calculated the wind effect on that track, all the while keeping a good look out of the window, turning the plane 90 degrees every so often, to keep us flying around the lake.

Just a few months ago the idea I would be able to do all this whilst making a stab at flying the plane, would have seemed crazy.

It’s a small cockpit and trying to juggle a map, note pad, protractor, ruler and pens around takes some organisation. I managed to make a big blue mark on my trousers with my indelible pen and I tried to fold the chart. Bugger

“Aviate, Navigate, Communicate” I reminded myself. Deal with stain removals later.

Later on, in the car after the exam, I realised I’d also managed to put a big blue pen mark on my left cheek.

Once I had an idea of direction, I set the plane on the right heading and said right, let’s go to Rochester. I calculated our ETA and told him what time we’d arrive.

I tuned the plane’s standby radio frequency to Rochester and asked Southend for a frequency change.

We arrived overhead Rochester. Success. I was starting to relax and feel comfortable.

Now the instructor said he would be responsible for navigation and tuning the radios – so I could demonstrate the rest of my flight handling skills.

Ok, if you’re sure I said somewhat cockily. But in truth it made things a lot easier.

Next I had to demonstrate steep turns – flying the plane first right and then left in a steep level turn at 45 degrees bank angle, keeping a good lookout and maintaining altitude.

He made notes on his pad as we did the turns. After the steep turns he said ok, fine. I felt like saying, no, it’s not ‘ok’ I can do better than that. But fortunately I didn’t.

Next up came the hood, which blocked my external vision. I managed to stop myself making a wholly inappropriate joke about it not ending well for the last people to be hooded in a plane, and them being headed for Guantanamo. Keep your mouth shut Owen.

In hindsight it was probably a good sign that I was feeling confident enough to at least think about making comments.

With the hood on I had to demonstrate what I would do if I inadvertently entered cloud – essentially turn the aircraft 180 degrees on instruments. The hood means you can’t see outside and can only fly on instruments.

By this time we were almost back to my usual practice area north of Southend.

Emergency drills were next. The examiner pulled the throttle back to idle and told me I’d had an engine failure.

I went through the drills I’d practiced – pitching the plane for a glide, picking a field in which to land into the wind, demonstrating the engine restart checks, simulating a mayday call, warming the engine, and positioning the plane to land in my nominated field.

As we got lower, I was closer than ideal to my field and higher than I would have liked, so it was a bit of a struggle to get the plane down. But this was a better position to be in than a field too far away.

There were some pylons in the next field so I didn’t really have too many options. I applied full flaps to increase the drag and entered the aircraft into a fairly aggressive slip. In a slip you angle the plane slightly sideways to increase your drag.

Clearly my examiner wasn’t quite convinced we were going to make it into the field and let me get lower and lower. I thought he might actually make us land. I felt I’d been assertive with the plane rather than it being assertive with me. I was handling it well.

It was then that the examiner was convinced we’d make a decent landing, and said I could go around. I applied full power and slowly retracted the flaps and started climbing as we would after a take off.

Then he pulled the engine to idle again to test my reactions for an engine-failure-after-take-off.

After that I had to demonstrate three stall recoveries, with and without power; straight a a stall with turns.

Finally he put the plane into a spiral dive and asked me to recover.

Eventually it was time to head back to Stapleford. I was asked to track a VOR radio beacon back to Stapleford – which was useful because after all the practice landings and stalls I’d totally lost my sense of direction. The Lambourne VOR is right next to Stapleford airport.

I set the plane on a track towards Lambourne and took another bearing off the Detling VOR to give the examiner a triangulation of our exact position on the chart. Fortunately I managed to avoid covering myself or him and any more indelible pen marks,

Now that I knew where we were, he asked me to rejoin the circuit at Stapleford. He said he had tuned the radio back to Stapleford for me – but as I made my radio call there was no answer from the radio room.

We were getting closer to Stapleford’s zone and I still hadn’t had an answer. I could see the examiner sit up in his seat which made me think this wasn’t him testing me.

Interesting, what you gonna do now? he said.

My first thought was that he’d mis-tuned the radio rather than the radio operator at Stapleford was busy. Legally, I wasn’t sure about entering the zone without contact from the radio operator, and given he hadn’t confirmed the runway in use, I thought this unwise.

I was barrelling towards the airport at speed, so had to make a snap decision.

I was just starting to turn away from the airfield with the intention to enter a hold a little distance away whilst I sorted myself out. It was then that the radio operator came on and gave me the airfield details. He’d been on the phone.

My first landing towards runway 03 was to be flapless. In hindsight I was coming in a bit fast and fluffed my first landing so went for a go-around. This was probably a good way to demonstrate I’d happily go around if things weren’t quite right,

After a flap-less touch-and-go – well-executed second time around, he asked me to do a practice-forced landing touch-and-go. With a PFL the student gets to decide when to idle the engine and land on the runway.

And then finally I made a final regular landing.

As we slowed and vacated the runway, he said that unless I crashed the plane into something he was pleased to tell me I’d passed.

But I was focusing on after-landing checks, so didn’t really take it in.

In truth, I think you know if you’ve passed. And I felt I’d given a good account of myself. But you don’t really want to celebrate until it’s all official.

I parked the plane – in a tiny gap between two other aircraft. The examiner when back into the offices whilst I tied the plane down and put it to bed.

I know you said, but, just checking, you did say I’d passed? I wasn’t imagining things.

I had passed.

Then we went through out debrief. Broadly I’d done well.

My instructor had been away on a flight somewhere else, so I texted him with the good news when I got home. The next week I left a bottle of champagne and a thank you card for him at reception. This was his pass as much as it was mine.

By the time I got home it was early Sunday evening. I was shattered and had a ton of work in the morning. I hadn’t really considered celebrating.

Oh gosh, I could have an early night. What hedonism.

The next week I caught up on work, and then almost immediately I started packing for California and the Western States Endurance Run.

I managed to complete all the paperwork and pay the £250 application fee for sending off my licence application to the CAA. Exercising the privileges of my licence would have to wait until I was back from California, when hopefully I’d have received my physical licence.

A few days later I was back at Heathrow, sitting in the lounge waiting for my flight. I think I might have instinctively reached for my revision cards, only to realise they could be consigned to the bin.

Where better to celebrate my pass, I thought, than a nice airport lounge. I ordered a first glass of Champagne. I didn’t have to fly this plane.

A lifetime of flying lay head. Endless and as yet unknown adventures in a plane, that I could captain myself were ahead.

But for now, until my licence arrived, I was more than happy to let the Captain of our Virgin Atlantic Airbus A350 pilot us across the ocean to Los Angeles.

As our Airbus climbed out West over the cold North Atlantic below, I thought how far I’d come in one short year, and thought of that cold wind-swept cliff edge below.

I pictured the Guillemot ushering its chicks to the edge and squawking “fly my pretties, fly”

I no longer felt I needed to hold on for dear life.

I was ready to spread my wings and fly. After another glass of Champagne.

 

“

When I first applied for the Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run, the entry process was still somewhat convoluted. Not quite as preposterously convoluted as the still ‘secret’ entry process for the now famous Berkley Marathons but it was still somewhat of a faff.

In October each year you had to download and printout a paper form. This needed to be completed in black biro and returned by post to an address somewhere in New Mexico, along with, if memory serves, a cheque to enter the lottery.

For potential entrants outside the US, this meant a trip to the bank to get a US Dollar Cheque issued. Then a trip to the Post Office to get a stamp for the US. You’d probably have to pinch an envelope from work. Who writes letters these days.  Then you’d never be quite sure if the letter got through.

Clearly it wasn’t the most difficult thing I’d ever done, but it was enough of a faff in busy working week to put off the casual or speculative application.

On top of all of that, you had to have run one of a limited number of qualifying bad-ass hundred-mile mountain races in the two years before, just to be eligible to apply.

This wasn’t the process to get a place in the run, you understand, but just to get a place in a lottery for a place in the run.

My memory is now a little hazy, but I think I must have applied via the paper-and-post system for a couple of years. Then the application process moved slowly into the digital age and online applications were allowed – and payment for the lottery accepted by credit card.

I remember thinking at the time that the move to the convenience of digital would mean that anyone could apply – and it would make it harder to get a place.

I didn’t get through the lottery those first couple of years. Nor the subsequent two or three when I and thousands of others could apply online.

The Hardrock Hundred is not a big run with space for under than 150 people, its reputation far outstrips its capacity.

The lottery for those 148 places is split roughly in thirds – one third for people who’ve run the race more than ten times before – the veterans. About one third is for people who have never run the race before (that’s me). And a final third for everyone else. So in reality as someone who’d never run the race before, I was competing for one of just 45 places for the ‘never run’ lottery.

In recent years they’d started tweeting the lottery live as it was drawn – going full digital native after their very analogue start with paper forms.  Over the years I’d grown accustomed to either sitting down and obsessively refreshing the twitter app on my phone – or mindfully doing something else altogether then coming back for the reckoning once it was all over.

This year was a huddle over the phone year.

First they drew the lottery for the veterans, then the virgins.

Wainhouse is not too-common a surname. And after a bit of googling I’m fairly certain that nowhere else is it tied to the Welsh first name, Owen. By my reckoning I’m the world’s only Owen Wainhouse.

So when ‘Owen Wainhouse’ was the first name pulled from the proverbial hat, at least I was sure that it wasn’t my namesake that had been picked out.  Imagine the confusion of being James Smith – or indeed Owen Jones.

But there I was. First on the list. I was going to Hardrock.

The first thing they tell you about Hardrock is that this is a ‘graduate run’.  The sport of ultrarunning has grown massively since I did my first 100 miler.

According to Ultrarunning Magazine, between 2007 and 2016, the number of ultra-races in the US more than tripled. Many races have been established as entry level hundreds – where you might suffer (how can you not on a hundred) but there’s no real danger.

For most of the route on the Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc for example, you’re within cellular phone coverage.  It’s tough and rugged but not quite remote and wild.

Hardrock is different.  It’s strap line is ‘Wild and Tough’.

“This is a dangerous course!” say the course notes.

“.. you will do some mild rock climbing, wade ice cold streams, struggle through snow…. cross cliffs where a fall could send you 300 feet straight down… use fixed ropes and handrails…”

“… feel free to include any specialised equipment such as ice axes, crampons, snowshoes… that you are willing to carry”

***

I arrived a couple of weeks before Hardrock after a flight to Chicago, a long Amtrak train ride to Grand Junction, then a rental car to Ouray.

Whether it was the gradual ascent of the train, or the time I’d spend in the attitude simulator at my gym, I can’t say, but I didn’t get the headaches I’d previously had when I’d flown straight into altitude.

Did I mention Hardrock was high? The race starts in Silverton at over 9,000ft. Over those 100 miles you go over 13,000ft eight times and summit 14,000ft once.

Given how popular Hardrock has now become, I’d figured that in all likelihood this was going to be my one chance to complete the race.  Who knows whether it will take another five or ten years to get in again. Throughout a decade of ultrarunning I’ve been – save one stress fracture – miraculously injury free. Who knows how long that will last. Even if you get in again, who knows if you’ll be healthy enough to start – let alone finish.

Even this year I feel lucky to be starting.  For several weeks leading up to my departure, it looked like the race might be cancelled due to a raging wild fire near Durango, just south of Silverton, named the 416 fire.  By all accounts it had been a dry year.

But then the week before I was due to leave for Chicago the seasonal monsoon rains arrived, helping – along with the work of over a thousand firefighters – to quench the fire.

The torrential rains though have caused their own problems, with a mud slide blocking the main, indeed only, route between Silverton and Ouray, two of the principal towns on the route.  Even now the road is only partially open, with one of the two lanes still closed whilst repairs continue.

Later torrential rainstorms and flash flooding also partially destroyed the Bear Creek Trail, which the course usually follows out of Ouray, about half way around the course. The Bear Creek Trail is significant as it’s a tiny path cut into the rock with a 400 ft drop directly below. It’s not a place where you want to be unsure of your footing.

Rumours had been spreading that that route might be altered to avoid this section of course. But for the work of dozens of volunteers who moved heaven and earth – literally tons of earth – to put the trail back together again, it would have been a different route.  The National Park however gave the race special dispensation to use the Bear Creek Trail, which was still closed to the public.

So I felt really particularly privileged to be running. What’s that they say about with privilege come responsibility? I knew I had to finish.  This partially explained arriving in Colorado so early. I wanted to make sure I was properly acclimatised, or acclimated as the American say.

I also wanted to see as much of the course as possible to avoid any unfortunate incidents of getting lost on the course during the run.  There’s a hugely comprehensive document of course notes, but nothing beats seeing the route.

My plan was to split my time walking parts of the course without overtiring myself, and spend the rest of the time lying on a sun lounger by a pool.

Most of the towns in Colorado owe their existence to the mines that provided the bulk of employment in the area – until the mines closed in the closed in the 1970 and 80s.

Some towns, particularly Aspen, Vail and Telluride have been successful at transforming themselves from prosperous mining towns into prosperous ski resorts. In winter ski-season these town have some of the most outrageously expensive hotel accommodation in the US.

Silverton and to a lesser extent Ouray have somewhat missed out on the ski resort boom. But that’s part of the charm of these little towns, precisely because they’ve not become winter playgrounds of the rich.

Telluride though has some nice hotels – which in summer at least aren’t outrageously expensive.

The larger ski resort hotels however have been built in Mountain Village, just a short distance outside Telluride – and connected by a free cable car.

I spent a few days in the area. One day I hiked up to Krogers Canteen and then had a rather filling early dinner in Telluride before taking the cable car back to my hotel. It was from the gondola that I saw my first bear. Two of them.  Just outside town, they seemed to be rummaging for food. Even from the height of the cable car they looked big.  And hungry.

Most people I’d heard from in Colorado said that that you hardly ever see bears whilst out on the trail.  They didn’t seem to take my point that possibly you never heard from the people who had seen bears.

Indeed, whilst I was in Telluride the local paper was full of a story about a hiker who’d gone missing in the woods.

The Hardrock course notes make many references to bear-named landmarks – Grizzly Gulch, Ouray Bear Creek, Grizzly Bear Mine – which one assumes must be for a reason. Whilst bears can apparently run fast, it’s of some small comfort that one doesn’t haven’t to outrun a bear – just outrun the nearest other runner.

So what do you do if you see a bear, I wondered?

Don’t run, was the general advice. Make yourself big. Wave your arms around and shout. And throw stones.  The same goes for seeing Mountain Lions apparently.

I lead a fairly metropolitan life. There’s rarely much need for me to throw things. The last thing I threw was  probably a scrunched-up sheet of paper into the recycling bin in the office. And I missed.

Lobbing a rock towards an angry bear as a sedate underarm bowl might cause a bear to die of laughter, but certainly wouldn’t cause it to run off crying.

So during my next day’s hike I vowed to practice my rock throwing.  You may laugh, but I took this seriously. There’s many a dent on tree-stumps around Telluride to prove it. Though perhaps somewhat more dents in the ground nearby to tree stumps.

Animals aside, being struck by lightning was perhaps my next fear.

Perhaps my biggest fear.

Though if you give it some thought – which I clearly have – being struck by lightning would be a fairly quick and presumably painless way to go. I think it’s actually the thought of cowering in the foetal position (or quite possibly the faecal or, indeed, fatal) and cowering whilst lightning strikes all around me that I was perhaps most not looking forward to.  The Hardrock course notes are particularly unhelpful in this regard: “It is our general opinion that the first fatality we may have will be from lightning! Several runners in past years have had direct contact with lightning and there have been several more near misses

So I made a mental note: try to run with someone taller than me.

I’m fairly comfortable on tricky terrain but next on the list of notes-to-self was to not to slip/fall/slide over a cliff. I paid particular attention to the sections of course notes which said ‘exposure’ ‘acrophobia’ or ‘could be fatal’

With all these worries, I felt it important though to remember the most important thing about Hardrock – to have fun.

I’m convinced that this last point is important because it’s so easy to forget.  At various points through the pre-race briefing past runners reminded us of that saying “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”.  To a huge degree your success, or otherwise, during an ultramarathon is down to your mental approach.

We were also reminded that we chose to do this. It’s entirely optional for us, whilst for millions – those undergoing Chemo tend to be front of my mind – this sort of prolonged pain and soul-crushing nausea are distinctly non-optional.

But I also try to think back to one of my first ultras when I remember sitting in an aid-station in a well of my own despair. I looked up from the wooden trestle table where I’d been resting my weeping eyes. As surveyed the other runners, it was a scene of carnage – almost everyone else looked as bad as I felt. I wouldn’t exactly describe this as schadenfreude – I wasn’t getting pleasure from the discomfort of others, but merely reassurance.

This is nothing personal. Yes, you can feel absolutely awful but so does everyone else. You can’t take anything personally if everyone is in the same position.

Somehow this mental leap has made every run much more enjoyable. And perhaps coincidently meant that I’ve not yet dropped out of a 100 miler. Hardrock wasn’t going to be my first DNF.

***

I was staying at the newly opened Avon Hotel the night before the race. My room strangely reminiscent of an Edward Hopper painting.

I’d set my alarm for 4:30am – and had tried to get an early night, turning in around 9pm.  If there’s anyone cool enough to get themselves to sleep that early the night before a big race without a little help they’re a cooler cookie than me.

So I went the whole hog – glass of red, hot bath, eye mask, two Nightol tablets, ear plugs… the full works.

I slept well, in part due to the supremely comfortable bed, but also, probably helped by the two Nightol tablets.

The early start at Hardrock is actually something of a blessing.  In most other races I’ve done, but particularly the UTMB, you don’t start till later in the evening.  There, if you can’t manage to get a nap during the day (and trust me, you can’t) then you’ll have been awake for pushing 60 hours by the time you finally get back to your hotel room after the race.  That sleep deprivation can be brutal.

***

In the morning I went to the Bent Elbow restaurant over the road on Blair Street for a coffee – two coffees – and a breakfast burrito.

Runners have to present themselves at the Silverton Highschool Gym for check-in before 5:45am on race morning or their place is given to someone on the waiting list. Whether someone bottled it, or simply had an unplanned lie-in, I don’t know, but apparently this has happened before – though everyone turned up this year.  I supposed it was cutting it a bit fine turning up at 5:30 but I’d needed to make sure I was fully caffeined up.

I would be lying if I said I was supremely confident as I waited at the start line, but as I tried to get myself in the zone, it didn’t really occur to me that my race would end in anything other than me trotting back into Silverton 46-odd hours later and kissing that rock.

It was only some 38 hours later – cowering behind a rock – that the realisation that I might not finish slowly dawned on me. But we’ll get to that.

I’ve known from previous races that I tend to forget things in a run, so I carried a little GoPro Session camera with me for the duration of the run. Partly as an aide memoire and partly because it was waterproof. When you get tiered you really can’t be bothered to take out your camera and remove it from a waterproof case just to take a photo. So you end up without any photos. I thought a waterproof and ultimately disposable GoPro might encourage me to take more photos.

The video I took during my race is here.

***

There was a brief countdown from Dale, then we were off at 6am sharp. It struck me how small the field of runners was.

A couple of miles out of Silverton you cross your first stream. It would be churlish at this point not to say that for the most part we were extremely lucky with the weather.  There was virtually no snow on the course and it had been particularly dry over the last few weeks – which meant the river levels were low throughout the course. Your feet still got repeatedly wet, but you weren’t having to wade torrential waist-deep, ice-cold water in the middle of the night. For which I was extremely grateful.

I made it through the first aid station at KT at 11.5 miles fairly comfortably ahead of cut-off.  I was sick for the first time on the run down to Chapman Gulch aid station at mile 18. Chapman Gulch aid station had the most amazing fried bacon which hit the spot perfectly. I followed this with some Ginger Ale with ice.  A friendly crew of another runner helped mend one of my running poles with some gaffer tape.

The descent from Grant Swamp Pass is the first somewhat technical descent. I can imagine in snow it would be pretty treacherous but this year the course was dry and the route was just a scree field. There’s no big drop at the bottom, so normally on my own I’d have been in favour of hammering down as quickly as possible. But the big risk is dislodging rocks which tumble onto those below you.  So you take things somewhat cautiously. It’s a funny thing about Hardrock that you’re often more worried about other people’s safety than you are of your own.

I fell once on the run down into Telluride. I managed instinctively to drop my running poles and grab onto a nearby bush, which had the effect of swinging me around, where I swung face-first towards a rock.  The brim of my cap hit the rock first and crumpled down in-front of my eyes and nose, whereby I came to a stop in almost total darkness, my black cap obscuring my eyes.

I got up, remarkably uninjured, apologised to the rock for our impromptu introduction, dusted myself off and headed on downhill to Telluride – paying slightly more attention to the trail.

Telluride, at mile 27 is one of the larger aid stations as it’s a decent size town and easily accessible by road for the crew.  The reception I received was amazing. You felt like a Formula One car coming into a pit stop. I had no crew of my own but suddenly I was surrounded by three or four people.

“Did I have a drop bag”,

”What can I fill your water bottles with?”

”Did I need someone to deal with any blisters”

“Can I help you change your shoes?”

I’d become a bit worried that my fingertips had gone a bit bluish and cool, indicating I might be somewhat dehydrated. So I had several glasses of iced Ginger Ale which went down a treat. I couldn’t manage to eat much more but took some supplies from my drop bag – including some orange juice and headed out through town to begin the climb up to Kroger’s Canteen. I figured the OJ and Ginger Ale had a fair few calories to power me forward.

Not far out of the aid station my stomach rebelled and I left a couple of pints of Ginger Ale beside a tree. I noted with alarm that what came up was still ice cold.  Oh, well, as least it’s helped to cool me down, I thought.

I knew the section out of Telluride well and enjoyed the climb without having to think about keeping on the course.  And fortunately I didn’t meet the bears I’d seen a few days earlier.

***

Kroger’s Canteen, at 13,100ft and 33 miles into the course, was everything it’s promised to be.

‘A tiny notch into the hidden world’ is what Roc Horton, the Aid Station Caption calls it in this beautiful video.  I arrived in the late afternoon which rendered everything with a warm glow that photographers call the Golden Hour.

It was indescribably beautiful.  As I scrambled up the last couple of hundred feet, I was amazed to see ultra-running legend Joe Grant cheering me on. Our supposed roles seemed to have been reversed. This really is a unique race.

I sat for a couple of minute savouring the atmosphere, but conscious that there wasn’t a lot of space up there, so it was really a case of when one runner arrives another has to leave. I drank a little bit of Ginger Ale but was rather conscious that everything I drank had had to be hauled up here in someone’s back pack.

As I got up to leave, Roc offered (perhaps rather insisted!) that I have a shot of Tequila, that’s become the tradition at Kroger’s.

‘In for a penny, in for a pound’, I thought.  But my stomach churned slightly at the thought – so much so that I momentarily had to find a tiny corner of the small rock pass where I could leave some Ginger Ale. A bit of a burp sorted things out – I managed to avoid being sick.

I knocked back the Tequila shot from a metal camping cup. And almost immediately felt hugely better.

From Kroger’s there a fixed rope to help you down the steep descent. I got stuck behind a guy who was particularly slow and a bit nervous going down. I didn’t mind the breaks – the view was fantastic and I kept hearing the sounds of joy from people arriving at Kroger’s wafting past on the warm breeze. Happy times.

It was fairly easy going downhill to Governor Aid Station, at mile 38, where I again drank too much and was promptly sick.

It was another easy downhill jog along Camp Bird Road to Ouray, along a route I’d previously recce’d. I pulled out my headlamp a few miles out of Ouray.

I arrived at Ouray sometime after dark. Ouray is another buzzing aid station just on the outskirts of town.  Again I was seized upon by a crew waiting for their runner.

Did I want hot drinks? Cold Drinks? Soup?

I drank a bit. Was promptly sick again. Then managed to hold down some soup.

In writing this, and in hindsight, I’m somewhat aware of how often I’d been sick. It was however never particularly remarkable or traumatic.

I’ve spent the better part of races before feeling nauseous – which is utterly soul destroying.  And I’ve been sick before in races with suck stomach-cramping violence that I’ve been worried about dying of a ruptured intestinal tract.

But this seemed oddly no more problematic than blowing my nose.

And my anecdotal view was that whilst it seems like I’m often in the minority in throwing up at races, at Hardrock it seems like most people puked at some stage – which I guess is due to the altitude.

“Puke and rally” someone said to me.

Apparently, this was a thing at Hardrock. After being sick you get a little jot of adrenalin which makes you feel temporarily better. It also means you can cram almost anything back down into your stomach without a problem.

So you drink a bit in an aid station. Puke. Then return to eating as if nothing had happened.

Not for the first time, it occurred to me how far we stretch from the bounds of normal life on the trails.  Though Ouray as it happens was the last time I puked in this run.

***

After Ouray there’s a brief stretch through town then a long climb up the Bear Creek Trail after which it was all fairly unremarkable, or at least unmemorable overnight.

I didn’t stop long at Engineer Aid station at mile 52. I ran with some people on the decent from Engineer Pass Road. I chatted with one guy for a while until I pointed out that I thought he’d dropped his pacer some way back. He looked around and realised he’d have to wait for them. Sorry!

Dawn broke as I arrived at Grouse Gulch Aid Station.

I slumped in a chair next to a runner who was talking to their pacer in grave tones about dropping out. They knew that the next climb out of the aid station was up and over Handies Peak, the high point on the course.

By now I was starting to feel a bit bullish.  I might have just taken a caffeine pill along with my coffee, for I fear I might have been a bit overly talkative, and might have intruded unbidden into their conversation. It’s all a bit of a blur.

“Look” I might have said, “you’ve got two hours before the cut off here.”

“At the very least wait an hour before deciding to drop out”

“But, quite frankly, I can’t see that any of your bones are broken, so I think dropping out is really quite unacceptable. Don’t you?”

Her pacer looked on in stunned silence.

“A little tear formed by her eye and she admitted that dropping out clearly wasn’t an option”

“Promise?” I asked. “Promise”, she said.

Now, in hindsight, I can’t guarantee that I was actually sat next to anyone in that aid station. But these words, or something like them, certainly left my mouth.

Whether they were directed at another runner, at the world in general, or indeed at myself, I’m still not entirely sure.

So I left Grouse Gulch in the freezing-cold early morning and began the slow climb up to American Grouse Pass and on up to Handies Peak at 14,048ft, the high point of the course.

My memory of climbing Handies was one not really of struggle but of being utterly bemused at the concept of putting such a high mountain in the middle of a hundred-mile run.

I arrived at Burrows Park Aid Station at mile 68 in the blazing heat of a summer afternoon.  From there it’s a fairly flat Jeep road to Sherman Aid Staiton at mile 72 where I had another change of shoes.

I was feeling pretty good at Sherman. I knew I had some time in hand over the cut-off.

So I spent a bit of time washing my face, changing my shoes and trying to get some liquid onboard.

By Pole Creek Aid station, at mile 81, I was starting to feel a little sleepy. It was late afternoon on Saturday by now and I’d been fantasising about having a short nap once I got there.

I hadn’t realised that this is another of the stations where supplies have to be backpacked in. The was only a sparse tent so I lay on the grass outside asked if they would wake me in 15 minutes. I  pulled my cap down over my eyes and willed my tired body to sleep.

Almost as soon as I lay still a swarm of insects somehow emerged from the ground and starting biting at my legs.

Within a few minutes it became quite clear that sleep wasn’t going to come naturally.  And Nightol wasn’t an option in a race.

The skies started to cloud over as I left Poke Creek on route to Maggie Gulch. Fairly quickly it started to rain, then there was the tell-tale rumble of thunder.

You cross a large meadow on the way to Maggie Pole Pass. It was still light and fairly humid in the mid-afternoon. I could see the lightening occasionally hitting the neighbouring peaks and ridges, but I wasn’t overly concerned: there were a few trees in the distance and the ground was fairly undulating. I certainly wasn’t the highest thing around.

But the weather was certainly blowing. I eventually came to a little depression by a stream where a couple of runners had decided to wait before pushing up and over Maggie Pole Pass. The depression meant you felt perfectly comfortable standing up and still being low enough.

Lightning, they said, had just hit the pass so they thought it best to wait a few minutes.  As we waited another couple of runners caught us up. We probably waited for about 10 minutes, watching and noting the direction of the strikes and their distance before deciding the focus had passed.

Someone suggested we keep 20ft apart as we pushed on?

Why? I wondered, to myself

So if one person is struck, we don’t all get struck, came my own answer.

Some people had done this before I realised. Best not to ask too many quesitons I thought.

One guy asked if everyone was comfortable pushing on.

You’re taller than me, I replied. I’m perfectly happy.

The pass was uneventful, though I made sure to be up-and-over as quickly as possible. I soon arrived at Maggie Creek Aid Station at 85 miles. This was the penultimate aid station, which gave me a real boost.  Just two big climbs. Just 15 miles left. Nothing!

I started the climb up Buffalo Boy Ridge (13060ft). It was starting to get cooler now as we eased into the early evening.

As I started to summit – what turned out to be a false summit – I could see a fairly ugly looking cloud over the ridge; dark and heavy.

There must have been some deeper grumbling of thunder going on as once over the first small ridge I remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable. I’d worked out the lightning was about a mile away which felt comfortable enough. But somehow I was being to feel rather uncomfortable.  Maybe a mile isn’t that far?

At the ridge I couldn’t quite make the course notes fit.  I thought I should be going down, but it appeared there was another little section along an exposed ridge before the peak.

I was conscious that I was faffing about on the top of a ridge, which was a particularly bad place with lightening around.

I lay down in a small dip about 20ft off the ridge whilst I tried to get myself together and work out where I was supposed to be going.  I hadn’t recced any of the second half of the course.

I worked out that there was another peak a couple of hundred feet above (13,214ft) that I needed to summit before dropping, I thought, into a valley below for Cunningham Aid Station.

I dithered again, trying to work out which way the storm was blowing. From watching the clouds I thought that the storm was coming toward me, so I thought I was best to try and get up and over this little peak quickly otherwise I’d have to head back down the way I’d come if the lightning got too close.

So I ran in an odd crouching position, with every crash of thunder causing me to quickening my pace.  Up and over the little peak, I felt much better going downhill.  I caught up with another runner and we ran down together.

But by now the lightning was closing in and it was raining heavily.  The path contoured along the side the hill for a while rather than going straight down to a Jeep road that we could see below. We discussed breaking off the path and head straight down the hill to the road. But I was convinced it was too rocky and the path went down a little way ahead.

***

Before the race I’d diligently narrated and recorded every word of the ten pages of course notes onto 14 playlists on my ipod – each playlist corresponding to a section of the course between two aid stations.

Each playlist contained a number of tracks each corresponding to a paragraph or section of the course notes. The old iPod shuffle I’d used has no screen but allows you to navigate playlists and track names with an electronic voiceover. This way I could navigate the whole course notes without having to take my eyes of the trail. It was all beautifully recorded on my finest microphones and recording equipment that I used for my podcast.  It was, I thought, a work of art.

I’d even packed a spare ipod shuffle and spare headphones in case the first broke – both weighed almost nothing, This was a fool proof plan, which I’d tested in other races. Or so I thought

When you’re on the side of a mountain in an electrical storm, you become acutely aware of the two pieces of electrical wire dangling from your ears.

In a panic I shoved the ipod and headphones into my bag.

Whilst this was going on another lightning strike hit nearby. We both almost threw ourselves into another slight dip by the side of the pass.

I was really worried about being trapped here. As we got our breath back, I fiddled with the scale of the map on my watch and thought it could only be a short distance till the path dropped.

I said ‘you’ve got to make your own choice whether to go or stay’, but I think the course makes a sharp right about 200 meters ahead and then drops down to the road. And I’m going to make a run for it.  He followed – us both in a crouching running position.

Oddly I think I might have been more worried about being with someone else who got struck by lightning than being struck myself.

Around the next bend the path did an abrupt 90 degree right turn and took us sharply  down a couple of hundred feet down to the Jeep road.  I had assumed the path continued past the road and down towards the next aid station in the valley at Cunningham at Mile 91.

But as I looked around for the course another runner came running back in the opposite direction. He swore blind that the path went up hill after the road and there was no way he was following anyone up there. The lightning storm had become pretty intense.

He was entirely right – the course continues to climb another few hundred feet up Green Mountain before the drop to Cunningham.  And quite frankly there was no way any of us were going uphill any time soon.

But in my confused state I couldn’t make any of this fit with what I thought the course looked like.

We looked around and there was absolutely nowhere to hide. It was a barren wasteland. Not a tree in sight. (I know, I know – you don’t hide under a lone tree!)

The only thing we could see was a slightly larger rock a little way back from the road. Which we huddled again. Another runner and his pacer soon joined us.

I started to question whether we should be quite so close to a rock. What if lightning struck the rock? Wouldn’t it shatter into a million pieces, impaling us with fragments of granite?

Fairly quickly though another more pressing thought entered my mind: I was uncomfortably cold. The sky had gone from an overcast dull to virtually midnight black. Dusk had come almost at once.

The torrential rain had turned to hail. I pulled off my Goretex Jacket and put on my spare top as well as my woolly hat, which I placed on top of my cap. I then zipped up the Goretex again over everything and curled up into a ball.

I thought I should use the time to check out the route, but my hands had got so cold that I’d lost the manual dexterity control the iPod.

So I pulled out my phone, which was thoughtfully enclosed in a fully waterproof cover. Before the run I had downloaded high resolution maps of the area as well as the GPS track (using the ViewRanger App).

Such was the intensity of the hail though that I couldn’t operate the screen through the waterproof cladding. Each smash of hail would register as another set of fingers on the screen.  My now club like hands weren’t much use either.  Another runner’s watch battery had died. I’d been keeping my Garmin topped up during the run with s spare USB battery. This was about the only bit of technology still working.

In these situations, basic trumps anything complicated.

I soon started shivering. Get some calories in to keep warm, I thought.

What started as a bit of chattering teeth, quickly took over my body, where the big muscles in my thighs started shivering almost uncontrollably.

A couple of the others said how cold they were and perhaps we should get going. Almost as soon as anyone mentioned moving, with almost comic timing another fork of lightning would strike the other side of the road, as if some cosmic force was imprisoning us in our rock hideout.

It was then that I remembered that I had an emergency space blanket in my pack.  I pulled this out of its pack, its shiny metallic coating blindingly reflecting the light of my headlamp.

Hmm.. was this a good idea, I wondered? Shouldn’t you distance yourself from anything metallic in a lightning storm for fear of attracting a strike? It occurred to me that this might be one of life’s decisions that had real consequences: freeze to death or fry to death.

If there was any logic left in my brain at this stage, I decided that freezing was a near certainty whilst being electrocuted at least was only a possibility.

I looked around and the other four were doing the same.  One guy has climbed into a mini bivvi bag – only his face now visible.

Every time the lighting struck we were blinded once by the strike and once by the reflection off a fleet of space blankets.

The rain turned to hail.  The lightning frequency increased and its distance from us decreased.  By now it was almost totally dark. Looking back up the mountain which we’d just come down, I couldn’t see any headlamps from other runners.  If we were pinned down, at least everyone else was too.

***

Sound travels at 330 meters per second in dry air, or so I remembered from my high school physics lessons. Perhaps the only thing I remember from my high school physics lessons.  Light is almost instant. So if the delay between the flash of light and the crash of thunder is 3 seconds, the strike is about a 1000 meters away.  Five seconds is a mile. To pass the time I counted

Zero. One. Two. CRASH.  – 600ish meters away

Zero. One. Tw… CRASH – About 500 meters

Ze… CRASH – Yikes. Hold on tight

The whole sky lit up like it was daylight

So there the five of us were, at mile 87 at Stony Pass, altitude 12580ft; huddled beside a rock waiting for it to all be over – either for the storm to pass or something to hit us and put us out of our misery.

This was then that it occurred to me that there was now a fairly realistic chance of not finishing the race.  I knew I didn’t have much more than an hour in hand at the last aid station.  I’d already lost a fair amount of time faffing around on the decent. And at least another half hour huddling by this rock.

I think then I remembered that line “Try to enjoy yourself”.

This was one hell of an experience, I thought. And if we were unlucky enough to get hit, at least I’d died doing something I loved. It’s hard to describe but it was somehow rather peaceful.

It’s rather strange that I don’t remember being particularly scared despite knowing we were in a fairly precarious situation. Many a time I’ve known the fear that death was rather too close for comfort (sliding various cars down ice-covered mountain roads towards precarious drops, being chased by rabid guard dogs…) but somehow there wasn’t that clarity of fear here as there was there.

Another five minutes passed.

Zero, One, Two… CRASH.

Maybe, just maybe the delay was getting longer. I tentatively peered up to the sky and thought maybe I could see some clearer sky. I thought the eye of the storm had passed.

After about another 5 minutes I pronounced that I was going to make a run for it.

“Thanks guys, that was fun”

Still somewhat cold, I wrapped my space blanket around me like skirt and began to follow the GPS track on my watch up and over Green Mountain.

At Cunningham Aid Station we learned that runners had been held at aid stations whilst the storm blew over.

The final climb out of Cunningham was almost a vertical kilometre into the sky. Even in the valley at Cunningham it had by all accounts been a pretty spectacular light show.

I knew I had to move quickly to make up for lost time.  Somehow my race had a renewed sense of focus. I kept a close eye on the sky for further storms.

It was a fairly steep descent the other side of Green Mountain in the pitch black of the early hours of the morning.

The decent turned into a runnable Jeep road. But this went on for what seemed like ages.  I passed a couple of runners, who both asked if I was sure this was the right route.

My overwhelming memory of this final decent was not so much any pain in my legs or feet, but the discomfort I felt swallowing – I had an extremely sore throat. I tried to take a Panadol to take the edge off, but my throat must have been so swollen I couldn’t even swallow the tablets, so they just disintegrated in my mouth. Yuck.

I knew the route on the final stretch into Silverton. I’d also seen a warning sign here whilst I’d been reccying the course a few days before – warning that a mother moose was active in the area – and that moose can kill. The irony I thought, of surviving a lightning storm but being mauled by a moose just a couple of miles from the finish. I’d die of shame.

It was about 3am when I finally emerged from the woods at the Kendal mountain hut on the far side of town. I upped my pace through town. Aside from a sore throat I felt pretty good.  I upped the pace again, keen to put some time between me and the people I’d passed. I wanted to finish by myself. To have my own time at the rock.

A few people cheered me on as I made the left then right turns through the sleeping town towards the finishers shoot leading up to the rock.

Some people burst into tears on the finish line. I don’t remember feeling particularly emotional as I slowed to a walk final few feet to the rock.

I just remember a feeling of confident satisfaction. I’d taken the decision not to run with a pacer and not to have any crew.  This was my race. I’d finish or I’d fail. But I’d do it by myself. And now it was done.

I’d dreamed of this moment for more than five years. I’d gone into the race with a degree of confidence

Perhaps I’ve not mentioned the rock. There’s a tradition at Hardrock – actually it’s written into the rule book – that you have to kiss the rock when you finish

I handed someone my phone to take a couple of photos. I bent down and kissed the rock – full on the mouth of the bighorn sheep.  I chatted with Dale, the race director, for a few minutes.

Afterwards I hung around by the finish waiting for a few more runners to finish. There was something extremely peaceful about the finishers line with no one there – just the flags flapping in the wind and the warm glow of the flood lights. Peace briefly truncated between bouts of noise as each runner finished their race.

I sat for a while in the highschool gym and made a few phone calls as best I could – my voice had almost entirely given up.

Someone bought me a burger with avocado and cheese. Then another. It was a wonderful if somewhat unorthodox breakfast. I chatted to a few runners as they came in – all looking a little shell shocked.

I wasn’t overly tired but all I really wanted was a shower.

I walked back to the hotel. Had a wonderful shower, brushed my teeth and slept for a couple of hours. I woke to a bright and sunny morning, feeling wonderfully refreshed.

I’d wanted to make it back to the finish line to see the final runners come in before the 48 hour cutoff. It’s called the golden hour – when the tension mounts as to whether the last people out on the course will make it home again before they’re timed out.  Unfortunately I was a few minutes late getting myself organised so only managed to see the last runner miss the cutoff.

Like me, I suspect they will want to be back next year.

 

These are difficult days for the Labour Party. For the wing of the party who aren’t natural Corbynisters, they’re doubly difficult.

Difficult firstly because we’re heading into an election with a leader and set of policies which we think are stuck in the past. We see a floundering government and a Labour leadership failing to provide a credible alternative.

Doubly difficult because this wing of the party had Message Discipline drummed into them from the days of New Labour.

We think our leader is failing and yet we know we must bite our collective tongue in public.

To avoid highlighting policy divisions, the nicest thing we say about Corbyn is that he has a communications problem.

If you’re going to resurrect a range of old labour policies, at least have the decency to do a good spin job on them.   Old policies and old communications make us doubly mad.

***

Take the railways, where Corbyn talks about renationalisation. I’m sure his advisors have told him that this is a clever technique called ‘virtue signalling’.

Corbyn may not be about to immediately renationalise all railway franchises but talking about renationalisation sends a signal.

In much the same way that Trump’s ‘build a wall’ rhetoric or Boris Johnson’s ‘£350 million for the NHS’ – were both about sending a message rather than actual truth or practicability, ‘virtue signalling’ is supposedly a way to tell the public that Corbyn ‘gets’ that trains are too expensive

Unfortunately though Corbyn’s advisors are both right and wrong.

They’re right that they are signalling – signalling that Corbyn is still wedded to the past. It’s a gift to the Tories.

Trains are more expensive than they were. But they’re also immeasurably more reliable, safer and more comfortable. And have you been on commuter or rural trains in state owned France? They’re awful.

***

British railways were originally nationalised in the late 1940s when the railway system was disjointed and dysfunctional – a collection of private fiefdoms that didn’t work together and hobbled the system.

For all its problems now – the system at least broadly works, with the possible exception of at Southern Trains, the vast commuter service into London.

Here, an ongoing dispute between staff and management has hobbled the service for what seams like years. The government has been unwilling or unable to fix the problem. There is at least an argument for the state taking over the franchise. But could Corbyn not think of a better way? A third way.

***

Britain’s creative industries in film, radio and television – and our rampant free press – are vastly better because there is a huge intervention in the market in the form of the BBC.

Private television channels have to work significantly harder to compete with a free-at-the-point-of-use BBC. Our press have to compete with the free-at-the-point-of-use BBC website. And yet we still have a larger and broadly better press than many other countries. Not despite the BBC, but because of it.

This market intervention keeps competition rampant. It drives up quality, helping our creative industries better compete in a global market.

The current model of railway franchises doesn’t favour competition. Each franchise is a virtual monopoly. Competition only comes when franchises are renegotiated.

The system could work better with a small but significant market intervention.

If, as proponents of privatisation argue, the profit motive makes private companies more efficient and competitive than state owned operators, then there should be more competition.

Under the Cameron administration, in 2009 the East Coast Mainline franchise was abandoned by National Express because they couldn’t make enough profit on the line. The franchise was brought back under public control and proved highly profitable and more reliable. But it was then needlessly re-privatised.

Having at least one not-for-profit or employee-owned franchise operating trains in the UK – competing against private operators – would be a market intervention.

At the time of other franchises coming to an end, this new public-interest company would be free to compete with the private ones to take over additional franchises.

This would be a sensible way of Corbyn using modern methods to achieve cheaper and more efficient railways. It would be a New Labour way. Which is why Corbyn would be against it. He’s wedded to principal rather than outcome.

***

This brings us back to the point of nationalisation – fixing a broken system.

And here there is an opportunity to use nationalisation to actually solve a major problem. But also an opportunity for Corbyn to send a signal – that he’s modern and not stuck in the past

Many of our cities are blighted with illegal levels of pollution. Thousands of lives end prematurely because of toxic particulates, mostly emitted from our cars, busses and trucks. The current government has done virtually nothing to discourage the use of dirty diesels and encourage the adoption of cleaner electric cars.

The problem with electric cars is not so much the range anxiety they are said to elicit in their drivers – but charger anxiety.

***

Over the last few months I’ve been using a variety of electric cars through a local car-sharing service – the electric version of Zip Car.

The cars are fun to drive around town and have a decent enough range for moderate trips.

But the problem comes when you try and charge the car. The system is essentially broken.

Firstly there is an absurd situation where there are, by my count, three or four different types of charger plug. You first have to find a charging point that fits your type of electric car.  Can you imagine different and incompatible types of petrol pump nozzles?

Even if you get the right plug, and manage to plug in your car, you find many charger providers are not compatible with each other.

Source London, Charge Your Car, Chargepoint and Ecotricity are just some of the providers operating near me.

But to use most of these you need a specific subscription and a special membership card with the specific provider.

It’s the equivalent of driving a petrol car and only being able to fill up at a petrol station where you have a subscription.

At some electric chargers you pay by the minute, others by the amount of electricity delivered, and others on a monthly flat rate.

Imagine the feeling of delight when you arrive, with a virtually empty battery at a charging point, only to find, as your delight turns to dismay, that the proprietary subscription card in your car won’t operate the charger – almost none except credit cards.

If you own or use an electric car, you can’t go out for a long drive without a bit of technical knowledge, forward planning and a dose of luck. It’s a huge hurdle – but one that’s easy to overcome.

What’s holding back the mass adoption of electric cars is not really the range of the batteries but the complexity and lack of charging infrastructure.

It seems to me to be a system crying out for nationalisation. For only when chargers are ubiquitous and utterly simple can there be mass adoption.

The government should mandate standards and roll out chargers the length and breadth of the country.

This would end the last major hurdle to the adoption of electric vehicles in the UK. Only when you know you can charge anywhere, anytime will electric cars be worry free and truly mainstream.

Tesla have started to realise this an build their own proprietary system – but this further fragments the market.

For the last thirty years Corbyn has been desperate to nationalise something.

When he finally gets the chance, he picks the wrong thing.

And electric cars – more than the railways – would signal he was looking to the future, rather than the past; that he recognised our cities were polluted and that people aspired to their own method of transport.

He doesn’t.

You might say he’s stuck with a signal failure.

Or at least a flat battery.

 

There’s a quote that’s been doing the rounds a lot recently.  It’s generally attributed to George Bernard Shaw. But in this newfound world of fake news, it’s a bad idea to believe anything you hear attributed to anyone.

But fake attribution aside, all that really matters is that it was said by someone.  And I repeat it here:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

We are now some six months on from that ill-conceived referendum on Britain leaving the European Union.  And two-and-a-bit years on from the Scottish Independence Referendum.

Each referendum was championed by an unreasonable man. The then leader of the SNP, Alex Salmond made Scottish independence his life’s work.  Whatever you think of the economic folly of Scotland going it alone, you have to admire his dedication to trying to adapt the world to himself.

The Scottish independence movement lost the referendum by 45% to 55%.  But that hasn’t stopped Salmond and his successor, Nicola Sturgeon, from starting to talk up the prospect of another referendum. One that they hope will give them the result they’ve always wanted.

Unreasonable men – and women – don’t suddenly stop believing what they believe and bow to reason; don’t suddenly let a referendum result get in the way.

Nigel Farage too has form as an unreasonable man.

A different referendum but the same economic folly. The Brexit isolationists won their referendum by a narrower 52% to 48%.

But imagine for a minute that Nigel Farage had lost by a similarly thin margin. Does anyone really think that an unreasonable man – who has spent his life trying to bend the world to his way of thinking – would now bend to reason and accept that Britain’s place was in Europe.

Those are, to quote Kellyanne Conway, ‘alternative facts’.

Farage would have started campaigning for another referendum, just like Nicola Sturgeon and Alex Salmond have done.

People with principle don’t immediately change their minds. And we should admire them for that.

***

Our new Prime Minister was in favour of staying in the EU. Until she wasn’t. Principle isn’t a big thing for her.

Almost immediately after taking control, she launched an audacious attempt to wrestle power away from parliament. She wanted to avoid debate on triggering Article 50, whilst giving herself sole power to decide what the country’s exit from the EU looked like. This wasn’t so much unreasonable as unjust. And illegal.

The Prime Minister was only stopped by a private individual, Gina Miller. Miller took the government to court to insist that the rule of law was followed. That Parliament was sovereign, not an unelected Prime Minister.

Miller provided more opposition than all the benches of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition put together. Miller used her money to sue and force the government to adapt to her way of thinking.

So why is Miller so alone. Why are there so few progressive people willing to step forward and be unreasonable and oppose leaving the EU?

***

There are two obvious possibilities. Labour MPs are afraid of losing their constituencies. And perhaps afraid of losing their lives.

On the second possibility, it bears repeating that a brave young Labour MP was brutally murdered – assassinated – by a far right extremist during the referendum campaign.

Those of us on the remain side were stunned into silence. Those on the leave campaign metaphorically stepped around the corpse and carried on campaigning.

The level of hate in this country has reached unprecedented levels. Many other MPs face vile abuse and death threats on a regular basis. You can forgive their fear.

But on the first point of Labour MPs losing their seats? Don’t they see that they have already lost?

With an unelectable and largely incompetent leader, upcoming boundary changes and problems communicating with what’s patronizingly called the white working class – Labour has never looked further from power.  Unless they do something bold these MPs have already lost their seats, just like they have already done in Scotland.

***

There is a third possibility though: that sensible progressive people; those who like to engage in debate on facts and reason – have an overdeveloped sense of fairness and reason.

They actually think they lost. And that fairness dictates we should agree to leaving – with all the damage that will cause.

I don’t buy it.

A 52-48 referendum is a narrow win. The country is essentially divided.   And the people who stand to be hit worst by Brexit are Labour’s natural constituency.

If, before the referendum, you believed the economic problems of leaving were vast and complex?

If you believed that one country trying to negotiate a divorce from 27 others, would only ever result in a victory for the many?

If you believed that Britain’s safety and economic prosperity were best secured through interdependence and collaboration rather than isolationism and aggression?

Then why cave in now?

Clearly you must believe that this unelected and unprincipled Prime Minister will fail to deliver a successful exit from the European Union.

And what will Labour say then?

When prices start to rise and jobs become scarcer; when human rights legislation starts to be repealed and environmental protections start to be scrapped; when the health service starts to crumble and Britons start to look abroad for jobs – what will we say then? That we went along with it?

We ought to be less reasonable.

We ought be saying that the referendum was a con. Introduced by a weak Prime Minister who cared more about appeasing his backbenchers than settling a point of principle.

We ought to say that ‘Brexit means Brexit’ doesn’t mean anything and that the new Prime Minister is out of her depth.

Most of all we ought to say that we support referenda when the battle is fair.

But – by God – this was a referendum fought on lies and deceit.

Not equal lies and deceit on both sides. But principally lies by Boris Johnson and Nigel Farrage.

It was a referendum skewed massively by an over-powerful and racist Daily Mail and their campaign of alternative facts and hate.

This referendum is as legitimate as Donald Trump’s ‘election win’.

We ought to be saying these things. We support a fair fight. And this was not it.

***

And when this house of cards comes crashing down. When Farage and Boris and May and Trump are gradually exposed, we’ll be there to say we have a better way.

The real worry is that when Theresa May’s Brexit plan starts to spectacularly unravel, Labour will have just been lame accomplices.

And when people then start to look for an alternative, they’ll only be able to find something more menacing and much worse. That’s when fascism really takes hold.

Those who based their political beliefs on evidence and facts and reason have been cowed into silence by an over developed sense of fairness.

It’s time we learned from the unreasonable men and women and started fighting for what we believe in.

It’s time we started to behave unreasonably. Just like Farage and Sturgeon.

Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava might have nearly bankrupted the city of Valencia, but I challenge anyone visiting the City of Arts and Science in Valencia not to say… it was worth every billion.

 

Have you ever woken from a deep sleep on a flight to be momentarily disorientated?  Briefly unsure where you’re going to or where you’re coming from? You try to narrow things down, but your surroundings don’t give away any clue as to which airline on you’re on. Even the crew fail to give the game away.

It can’t just be me that finds airlines have lost so much of their individuality and sense of provenance as to be virtually indistinguishable. Once a symbol of internationalism and national pride, it now seems that great lengths have been taken to strip airlines of their character and identity.

I still remember – as a relatively young child – arriving back at Heathrow aboard a long haul British Airways jet. As the roar of the aircraft’s reverse thrust subsided and the airliner quietly turned 90 degrees and departed the runway, a calm, measured voice came over the intercom. In short, clipped tones and an upper-middle class Home Counties accent, the Chief Purser welcomed us to Heathrow. The announcement seemed almost choreographed and perfectly contrasted against the roar and drama of the engines.

Even then, aged all of nine or ten, I remember thinking this was classy; a lesson in how an intercom announcement should be made. It gave flying a sense of occasion and feeling that British Airways was in a different league. Airline cabins were different then and crew had a sense of identity. It was perhaps the last time I felt genuinely proud to fly on the national airline.

Now most of the intercom announcements are recorded. So routine you can almost quote them verbatim. The Chief Pursers are long gone too. Replaced by younger, cheaper, less experienced crew. Underpaid and undervalued staff are no more interested in looking after customers than the airline is in looking after them.

That sense of occasion is now all but missing when you fly anywhere. It’s probably why I love flying through turbulence, or landing during a storm; anything to lend the flight a bit of drama and a break from tightly prescribed routine. Give me a mid-flight lightening strike or engine failure and I’m all smiles.

Despite my love of flying, as it has become so routine, I’ve found myself increasingly looking for other ways to travel.

So now I started a rule inspired by the Tom Waits song Long Way Home.

Whether travelling for business or pleasure I’ve started taking the boring option and flying direct to where I need to go. But now, I always take the long – and more interesting way home.

***

I’d flown from Mumbai to Goa’s Dabolim airport on a flight so uneventful I can’t even remember the airline. Perhaps it was Beige Airways or Bland Airlines, I honestly couldn’t say.

After an uplifting week in Goa – wine, wedding, beach, sun lounger – I was looking forward to the more interesting long way home.

I took a cab from the hotel to the nearest station at Madgaon junction, just outside the small town of Margo. There, later that evening, I boarded the aged Konkan Kanya Express for the 12 hour ride back to Mumbai.

The train’s crew weren’t some homogenised mix of nationalities, they were Indian, and proudly so. And so was the food.  It wasn’t bland.

As I drifted off to sleep on the top bunk of my sleeping compartment, somewhere deep in the backcountry of Maharashtra, the words of that Tom Waits song came back to me with a smile.

I put food on the table

And roof overhead

But I’d trade it all tomorrow

For the highway instead

Or, the railway in this case.

The video below is my trip on the overnight Konkan Kanya Express from Madgaon Junction in Goa to Mumbai CST station.

The first experience many people have of China’s rapidly expanding railway network is ironically not on the railway itself but hovering some three inches above it.

The Maglev – or magnetic levitation train – whisks you the 30kms from Pudong International airport to a metro station a stones throw from the city in just eight minutes flat. As the train breathlessly accelerates to 430kms per hour you feel like you are being propelled headlong into the future. People stand and take photos of the speedometer.

This short test track – currently the worlds only commercial Maglev – is impressively fast, but after a few return trips you can’t help but think it’s rather bumpy for a train that supposed to float on magnets.

And truth be told, after you’ve ridden it a few times the novelty of its vast speed and rapid acceleration begins to wear off. The cramped interiors and lime green seat covers do nothing for the eye if you’re jetlagged (as you are when you arrive) or hung-over (as you so often are when you leave).

The maglev was launched in time for the 2010 Shanghai World Expo as something of a boost to national pride. For reasons I’m not entirely sure of, the top speed is only reached during the peak morning and evening rush hours.   At other times it reaches a relatively sedate 300kph – a speed often surpassed on the rails rather than hovering above them.

And pulling into Longyang station the slightly squalid housing around the station is surrounded by rubbish. This slightly ruins the impression of the sleek modern city.

As so often is the case, the future often disappoints.

***

Over the last few years I’ve gradually started to explore more of China’s railway network.

Flying up and down China’s Eastern seaboard is a frustratingly slow experience with frequent delays and cancellations. Much of the vast airspace is controlled by the military, leaving precious few airways for commercial aviation – leading to delays.  Smog also frequently slows down airport operations.

As you leave Shanghai behind and venture out across China you realise that whilst China’s sleek new conventional high speed trains might not match the Maglev for outright speed, they’re light years ahead when it comes to comfort. The huge new railways stations in Shanghai and Beijing feel more like airports than railway stations and have an ambitious architecture to match.

But you don’t have to stray far from the new lines and gleaming white trains to find a much slower and more basic form of travel. Which strangely is somewhat more charming.

***

Truth be told, I’ve never really appreciated the joys of train travel in the UK. I think it’s all the stopping and starting, and the inherent fear – probably unfounded – that if I nod off, I’ll wake to find that someone has run off with my luggage. Or that you’ll end up without a seat. Or you’ll find your seat is covered in a mess from the previous passenger. Or your seat mate will end up barking away on a mobile phone. You’l be crammed in uncomfortably. It does’t make for a relaxing journey.

For this reason I started looking at booking internal flights around China. But domestic flying here is not the simple business it is in Europe or the US. For foreigners at least online booking, ticketing, checking in and the like always seems a bit overly complicated.

It’s probably for the same reason that they don’t let foreigners rent a car in China – they don’t want you to have too much freedom to travel your own way.

So over various trips I let the train take the strain.

***

On boarding the high-speed G trains from Beijing to Shanghai all my fears about train travel elsewhere are dispelled. Train number G1 makes the 1,200km trip in a breathless 4 hours 48 minutes. Non stop. No worries about dozing off and missing your station.

When you buy a ticket you’re automatically reserved a seat. There are no tickets sold without seats. What a nice concept.

During the trip, staff come through the train mopping the floors, cleaning the loos and collecting rubbish. And there’s none of that stained carpet that Eurostar are so fond of.

If first class isn’t enough, up front in business class – which, strangely, is more luxurious than first – you can have an airline style flat bed on which to nap.

The only thing I was left wanting was a decent coffee service.

***

On some of the more basic night trains – like the train from Shanghai to Huangshan there are more flat beds than you can shake a stick at. But I’d not recommend the ‘hard sleeper class’ which is pretty much as described. And according to the guidebook, getting your luggage pilfered is one of the inclusive extras.

This soft southerner took the ‘soft sleeper class’ – a bed in a four-birth cabin which I had to myself as we pulled out of Shanghai, initially north, then west.

At Nanjing I was already asleep when someone else took another bunk in the cabin. But I quickly fell back asleep. The white sheets were clean and soft. The bed was comfortable – certainly more comfortable than the Caledonian Sleeper service I took some years earlier to Fort William.

I woke as we trundled through the countryside somewhere west of Hangzhou in the early light of morning. My fellow traveller had left during the night but helpfully my luggage remained chained to the bunk below me. I peered out of the window to discover a new scenery for me in China – greenery.

And so around 7am we pulled into the little town of Tunxi, the end of the line for this service. It felt more than a nights train ride from Shanghai. It felt like a different country. I appeared to be the only white guy getting of the train.

***

Some days later,  I took the bus to Hangzhou (there is no direct train). As we trundled through the driving rain I saw the construction of various concrete viaduct struts and I wondered how long it would be until the high speed trains came tearing across this corner of China and changed its ways forever. I pondered on how the railroad had spread across the wilds of America, taming new frontiers and connecting the country.

***

Back at Hongqiao station in Shanghai – conveniently connected to the airport above – I marvelled at the huge queues for tickets. Whenever possible I’d asked the concierge in the hotels I’d stayed at to book tickets for me. And almost without fail the tickets came back later the same day.

But now I needed a ticket myself. I joined the back of a very long queue. As I waited I prepared to use the wonders of google translate to make myself understood. But once I reached the ticket window it actually turned out to be remarkably simple to get the tickets I needed.

Given how wired the young generation of Chinese are, I was amazed that everyone wasn’t booking online. But it wasn’t just the foreigners and elderly in the queue. There didn’t even seem to be enough – or any – electronic ticket booking machines. It seemed a relatively easy thing to fix and a huge flaw making the system massively less efficient. I had plenty of time to consider this problem as I waited. I guessed most people with money just paid someone else – perhaps an agency – to queue for them.

I again realised how easy the convenience and speed of modern China can belie what lies beneath. The government still want some degree of control of movement of people. And perhaps the ticket system – where you have to show a passport, as you do at every hotel, reflects this keeping tabs on people.

So what the excuse is for the huge queues of people at Victoria station in London all waiting to buy tickets, is beyond me.

***

I had wanted to explore more, taking the train further west to Xian and the impossibly exotic sounding Urumqi.

But these are huge distances. And that’s more of a Great Railway bazaar than a little one.

Save for a few miles on the shores of the Baltic, the Germanophone world is sadly lacking much in the way of coastline.  What they lack in beaches, both Germany and Austria more than make up for with a thriving network of big resort hotels nestled in the mountains.

Hotel culture in France has been largely ruined by the rise of now ubiquitous Accor Hotels. Ibis, Mercure, Novotel and Sofitel have sucked any individuality out of the sector.  Each brand carefully graded so as not to encroach into the next price bracket.  You never experience any unexpected charm. You are guaranteed uniformity – which is generally uniformly bad.  Britain’s hotel sector was similarly saddled by kitsch bed-and-breakfasts and latterly by the rise of Holiday Inn and Premier Inn.

But in the foothills of the Alps, both Germany – in the Berchtesgaden National Park and Austria, in the Tyrol – have a vast array of charming resort hotels tucked away in mountain valleys. Designed for the ski season – but perfect too in the summer.

I flew into Innsbruck in a creaking Bombardier turboprop.  The creaking probably had more to do with the updrafts and assertive weather sweeping through the valleys than it did the ageing aircraft.  The approach to Innsbruck’s delightful airport (recalling the best of Berlin’s now defunct Templehof) requires proper old-school flying by the pilots as you sweep along the valleys, making sharp turns left and right to avoid mountains which obstruct the flightpath.

Moments after stepping onto the tarmac I was at the wheel of my hire car and heading south towards Italy. Fifteen minutes later – and just before the border – I’d turned off the Autobahn and trundled along a valley to find my hotel.

The hotel, despite being similar to the countless other spread along the valley – felt individual and built to its surroundings rather than a template.  It had solid-feeling wooden doors a vast Greco-Romanesque health spa.  Germans and Austrians do good health spas.

At check-in I was instructed that “I will” come for coffee and cake at 3pm – the linguistic false friends of English and German, mistranslating Will and Want.

Of course the hotel staff meant that coffee and cake is served at 3pm and I would be welcome to join.  But I very much liked the ‘will’ instruction. In fact this carried on for much of the stay.

I was tired and in need of rest. I wanted to have my choice limited and my decisions made for me.

Choice once was the luxury above all others. But now choice has become a chore rather than a desire. We are now surrounded by so many inane choices – often of such little consequence – that not having to chose is wonderfully refreshing.

At dinner that evening I was handed a five course menu in such flowery German, that rather than reach for the dictionary, I handed the menu back and told them to chose for me.  The food was wonderful. And each course a surprise.

Tucked away in a mountain valley, the television channels were strictly limited. I left the television switched off. Have you every found anything good to watch on a hotel television anyway? And how much time have you wasted flicking through the plethora of national propaganda channels. Russia Today anyone?  It was one less choice.

So I slept like a log. In the morning I descended to the breakfast room to be faced with a huge buffet breakfast. The choice was overwhelming.

What I would have given for a simple coffee and a croissant in the sun.