It was a mixed day on the walk up to Ingleborough. The actual walking was absolutely fine. It wasn’t particularly taxing, it wasn’t too hard and, most importantly, my legs behaved themselves.
The main problems came from the technology.
In fact, the walk highlighted quite a few things that I need to sort out for future runs and events, and definitely before I find myself on the start line at World’s Toughest Mudder.
Before getting into the technology lessons, though, it is probably worth explaining why I was there in the first place, what I wanted to get out of the walk and what all of this is ultimately laying the foundations for.
I recorded a vlog from the day as well, which is now on YouTube. Click the thumbnail below if you want to come along for the walk.
Learning the Three Peaks Before Running Them
Following the launch of my new challenge, Running the Yorkshire Three Peaks, I decided there was one fairly obvious thing I should probably do first.
Walk them.
Probably more than once, too.
If I am eventually going to try to run the Yorkshire Three Peaks, I want to know the footpaths, understand the terrain and become familiar with the geography of the area. I don’t particularly want to be running while continuously stopping to check a map and work out where on earth I am supposed to be going.
As part of the planning, I had the fairly obvious thought that there must surely be an app for the Yorkshire Three Peaks.
Lo and behold, there is.
It is a paid app, but for the sake of a couple of quid I thought it had to be worth trying. Even if it turned out not to be particularly useful, the money contributes towards the upkeep and preservation of the Yorkshire Dales, so it still seemed like money well spent.
As it happens, it turned out to be considerably more useful than that. As well as the full Three Peaks route, the app contains a number of other walks around the area.
I wasn’t quite in the headspace to tackle the full Yorkshire Three Peaks yet. That isn’t because I don’t think I could complete it today. I probably could. But that isn’t really the point.
I want to build up to it, enjoy the walks, learn the landscape and become familiar with each part of the route rather than immediately turning everything into a test of endurance.
Looking through the routes in the app, the Ingleborough circular from Clapham stood out. At around 10 miles, it was the longest of the individual walks listed and felt like the perfect place to start.
A Night in The Smudgery
Clapham is about 60 miles from home and, rather than making an early Saturday morning even earlier, I decided to make use of The Smudgery and travel over the night before.
The more I use the van, the more it is becoming a little home from home. When I converted it, I designed it entirely around being a single-person camper. Nothing extravagant, nothing unnecessarily complicated, just a cosy little space for me to sleep, make some food and disappear off somewhere for an adventure.
And that is pretty much exactly what I have ended up with.
After finishing my evening Peloton workout, I headed across to Clapham and parked up shortly after nine o’clock. I climbed into the back of The Smudgery, watched a bit of YouTube nonsense and then tucked myself up for the night.
The alarm went at five on Saturday morning. Bathroom break, porridge, coffee from the stovetop espresso maker because there are some standards that must be maintained, a quick flannel wash, and I was ready to go.
I moved The Smudgery to the official car park, where overnight camping isn’t permitted, packed up and set off.
I won’t give a blow-by-blow account of the route here because most of that is covered in the vlog, but the short version is that the walk itself went really well.
When the Technology Becomes the Obstacle
The Yorkshire Dales app was excellent. It wasn’t particularly heavy on the phone battery and the route guidance worked really well. The biggest drain on the phone was actually me, thanks to filming the vlog and taking photographs throughout the day.
Unfortunately, the same praise cannot be given to the rest of my technology.
When I set off, I started activity tracking on my watch so that I would have a complete GPS record of the walk, together with the usual health and activity data.
At some point along the route, that tracking stopped.
I don’t think I realised anything was wrong until I stopped shortly before heading up into the mist with Geoff and Simon, two walkers I had met shortly after Ingleborough Cave when I had paused to watch a woodpecker.
Somewhere along the way, it appears that the Peloton app had automatically decided I was doing an activity and started recording what it thought was a run instead.
On the descent I knew something was tracking me, but I couldn’t immediately work out which app was doing it. Eventually I realised it was Peloton rather than the activity tracking I had started at the beginning of the walk.
The result is that I don’t have the complete GPS and health record from the walk that I wanted, which is frustrating. More importantly, though, it exposed a weakness in the setup that I would much rather discover on a 10-mile walk around Ingleborough than several hours into an endurance event.
Tough Smudge Kit, Not Accountant Kit
That has led to the first fairly significant conclusion from the day: I think it is time to invest in a better sports watch.
The OnePlus Watch has been perfectly capable as an everyday smartwatch, but Tough Smudge is gradually asking more of my kit. What works perfectly well for Andrew the Accountant isn’t necessarily the right tool for Andrew attempting Tough Mudders, trail runs, long-distance challenges and eventually World’s Toughest Mudder.
I need something where reliable activity tracking, GPS, battery life and endurance sport functionality are the starting point rather than an added extra.
The research is already underway. Garmin is currently looking particularly interesting, but I’ll write about that properly once I’ve worked out exactly what I need and, more importantly, what I’m actually going to buy.
And Then There’s the Camera…
The other piece of technology moving steadily up the shopping list is an action camera.
Filming on the phone works reasonably well for walks like this, but it isn’t going to be a practical solution for running events and certainly not for obstacle course racing. I want something small, waterproof and rugged enough to record runs without me having to think too much about it, essentially something along the lines of a GoPro or one of its competitors.
The watch will probably come first, but I would like to have the camera sorted before the half marathons in January so that I can start experimenting with recording those properly.
Ideally I would have one before Tough Mudder Manchester next month, although there is one fairly large problem with that plan.
I am also expecting the 2027 Tough Mudder Season Pass to appear fairly soon.
Apparently Tough Smudge has developed quite an effective way of making money disappear.
The Walk Itself
I had been a little apprehensive about the walk, although not really because of the distance or the climb. My main concern was my leg.
I had thought it was fully healed when I attempted the parkrun the previous weekend, only for that to end rather abruptly when I aggravated the injury again. With the next two weekends potentially containing around 44km of obstacle course racing, the last thing I wanted to do was turn a pleasant walk in the Yorkshire Dales into something that jeopardised Born Survivor or Tough Mudder London South.
Thankfully, I needn’t have worried.
The leg behaved itself and I was able to complete the walk without any difficulty. In fact, one of the things that still surprises me is just how much fitter and more capable I have become. I had expected parts of the walk to feel hard. They simply didn’t.
That doesn’t mean I am suddenly underestimating the Yorkshire Three Peaks. A 10-mile circular walk up one summit is very different from running all three. But it was another little reminder that the work I have been putting in is making a difference.
Shortly after Ingleborough Cave I joined Geoff and Simon, two seasoned walkers who know the area extremely well and have completed the Three Peaks countless times.
The conversation on the climb towards the summit was definitely appreciated. They shared plenty of useful local knowledge, but what particularly caught my attention was hearing about them completing the Three Peaks during January and February.
That planted another seed.
I had originally planned to tackle the individual peaks through the winter and wait until the clocks change before attempting the full route. I still think that is the sensible progression, but the idea of a winter Three Peaks attempt is now firmly sitting somewhere in the back of my mind.
Christmas holidays, perhaps?
We’ll see.
Into the Mist
As we climbed higher, the weather changed and the mist came in. By the time we reached the summit, visibility was severely limited, probably down to around 30 metres in places.
For a first visit to the summit, having Geoff and Simon there was extremely useful. They took me across to the trig point and then made sure I knew the correct direction to leave the summit for the route back towards Clapham.
It was also interesting hearing about the different routes they had used on longer outings around the Three Peaks and comparing those with the paths other walkers were following that morning.
For someone planning eventually to run the Three Peaks, that is exactly the sort of knowledge I need to start building. Knowing the broad route from a map is one thing. Knowing what the ground actually looks like, where paths divide, where the runnable sections are and where a mistake could send me off in completely the wrong direction is something else entirely.
Which, of course, is exactly why I am doing these walks now.
So, What Comes Next?
I won’t rabbit on too much more about the walk itself. The vlog probably does a much better job of showing the scenery, the weather and what the day was actually like.
There are, however, a few useful takeaways.
First, Ingleborough is done. One of the Three Peaks explored, and certainly not for the last time.
I would like to complete the other two summits before the end of October, weather and events permitting. If conditions are kind, the two weekends between Tough Mudder London South and Tough Mudder Manchester could provide the opportunity to do exactly that.
If the weather isn’t suitable, though, they can wait. The whole point of these walks is to learn the area and enjoy the process, not manufacture unnecessary risk simply because I decided something should happen on a particular weekend.
There was also one other little discovery on the way back down.
Part of the route joined the Pennine Bridleway, a long-distance trail through the Pennines, and I met a number of cyclists using it along the way.
Naturally, my brain immediately started turning that into another challenge.
Actually, possibly two challenges.
Walking the Pennine Bridleway from one end to the other.
And then cycling it.
Those are only ideas at the moment, and there are already more than enough things occupying the Tough Smudge calendar, but they have definitely made it onto the ever-growing list of possibilities.
One Down, Two to Explore
So, the first of the Yorkshire Three Peaks has been conquered, or at least properly introduced.
More importantly, I came away with exactly what I wanted from the day: a better understanding of the terrain, a bit more confidence in what my body can currently do, a few lessons about the technology I am relying on and another piece of the puzzle for next year’s Running the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge.
For now, though, attention turns back to obstacle course racing.
Born Survivor first. Then Tough Mudder London South. After that, it will be back to the Dales for the next summit, another bit of reconnaissance and, hopefully, another couple of nights in The Smudgery.
The road to the Yorkshire Three Peaks has started.
Endure. Overcome. Make It Count.