Dave and Jake’s George Fisher Tea Round

As do many good stories, this one starts in the pub.

A fair few weeks ago sat having a nice quiet couple of Sunday Guinness’ talking life and running, Jake mentioned ‘The Tea Round’ and how it was next on his list before the end of the year. The Tea Round, or the George Fisher Tea Round, to give its official title, is advertised as a 30 mile route with over 12,000 ft of ascent starting and finishing at the doors of the outdoor shop in Keswick. It’s a looped round visiting the peaks and pikes you can see from the upstairs tea room. Catbells, Robinson, High Stile,Whiteless Pike, Grisdale Pike, Eel Crag, Crag Hill, Causey Pike, Rowling End and Barrow are on the tick list.

My reaction to hearing ‘it’s about 30 mile’ was, ‘nah not for me that… too far for me that good luck with it’… The longest race I’ve done is the 18 mile Saddleworth Round Race. The climbing in that can’t even be compared to anything like the Tea Round and in that race I paced it all wrong, fueled it all wrong, my legs fell off after 14 mile. I had a miserable time out, got cramp and vowed that these long ‘uns aren’t my thing. Jake on the other hand has boxed off some big challenges these last 18-months. Mary Townley Loop – 47 miles. Frog Graham – 40 mile Lakeland swim/run. 100 mile indoor Zwift ride. Ironman – no further explanation required. All absolutely class achievements I can only stand and applaud.

Who knows then why I said yes in reply to a message off Jake on the way back from track on the Tuesday night. Sometimes you’ve just got to say yes. Turn up and have a do. Go further than you have before and see what happens. The next three days at work I clicked through OSMaps, Strava segments, Garmin Maps, gathering as much info as possible to see what we’d be up against and get the key route points in my head, getting my head round the fact we’d be climbing High Stile for what I’d estimate to be an hour and accepting that my legs were going to hurt.

I calculated and compared to what I’d done before and figured it was close to a double Langdale race plus a bit more. A rough and tough 13 mile lakes race in which the majority was spent in thick cloud. A good experience to compare to. Oh, and I was already doing Rossendale Red Rose Cross Country on the Saturday, the muddiest, toughest XC around. Oh well, you’ve made your choice now, get on with it. No point complaining about it.

Jake was on driving logistics and the pick up time was 03:00 am. 08:30pm early night. Bags were packed ready with more food and fuel than I’d surely need but the main advice I was hearing was keep eating. The drive up flew by and we were both well up for it, with a slight undertone of nerves. We roughly planned and hoped for an eight hour round. 05:30 ticked over and we were stood 0utside the shop, head torches ready. A quick selfie to post on the Harriers group chat and we were off.

Catbells was the first target. I’d seen a route option to go further down the valley and head up to the trig more directly but we stuck to the switchbacking tourist path and were up in 30 minutes, bang on what we said. All good. It was still dark but with our headtorches and a full moon which was sporadically appearing visibility wasn’t an issue. We needed to make sure we caught the right turn off to head down to the hamlet of Little Town, again, no dramas.

Dave and Jake 2.5 hrs in at the summit of Robinson

Next up was the first of the Big Three as I was calling them. Robinson. The route involved a steep direct grassy line up to the ridge, but baring some rocky scrambling to the summit the gradient was much kinder than we were expecting. The sun was beginning to rise at this point and the sky illuminated, changing colours as the light caught the wispy clouds that lingered.

A sunrise in the mountains is a beautiful thing, we were both loving life, appreciating conquering a big lump of rock that has stood there for tens of thousands of years. Anyway enough of the soppy stuff, we had a seriously steep descent into Buttermere to crack on with. Something I’d noticed about the round, which I wasn’t sure would be a good thing or not, was that the three big climbs were all in the first half. This would either get the hard work out the way or batter the legs.

Biggun number two was next – High Stile. There’s no getting away from the fact this was a long steep slog. As predicted we were going up for an hour which was a good morale booster. We nailed a belter of a line off here, cutting down a scree shoot and straight lining over grassy moorland. The official path back into Buttermere was less helpful and we lost time having to carefully tip toe down a slippy wet rock path.

Sat on a wall outside The Bridge Hotel we ate more pork pies and had a weigh up where we were at time wise. Jake didn’t want to know how far we’d gone or what we had left. I knew at this point our eight hour target wasn’t going to happen. Legs still felt good though. Last of the three bigguns was next and that is exactly what the climb up to Whitless Pike was. The weather turned against us here and we were quickly battling strong winds and rain on a steep gradient.

I’d set the pace walking but could tell Jake was having his tough moment as he dropped back. I knew he needed his head space and to be left to get on with it so I left him to it, just every now and again chipping in with what I hope were encouraging comments like ‘One step in front of the other, up we go.’ I knew I’d certainly be having my tough moment later. We were up and I felt the mood lifted, even if the weather went the opposite way and we laughed at this daft challenge we were doing in the now driving rain.

Grisedale PIke was next on the list to get done. Unfortunately for us, and something I’d forgotten about from the Grisedale Horseshoe race I’ve done before, there’s a proper false summit before the main pike. The cloud was heavy and the rain was heavier, we didn’t need that body shot on now tiring legs in brutal conditions.

On the round there are a couple of out-and-backs, running to a summit before having to turn round and get back to the point you’ve just been at, another mental test when you’re tired, getting cold and can’t see much in front of you.

Crag Hill was the next target and caught me off guard. A lack of a clear path on a loose scree footing was hard going. We both had the route on our watches to be on the safe side, which we were checking on points where there were multiple options. I’d confidently pointed us up this unexpectedly challenging kick up of a cragg but all of a sudden my watch was saying we were 270m off the line. I lost my confidence with where we were and was definitely feeling it at this stage. This was my moment of ‘What are we doing this for?’.

A double check on the OS Maps app confirmed we were right and we could see what we had left. Strangely after getting up and over Crag, still with the Causey Pike and Barrow climbs and some 12 miles left to go, we felt we were on the way home and getting it done. One last challenge of the round faced us after the Rowling End out-and-back. Again, we were confident we’d caught the right line but suddenly a big slab of a hill stood in front of us and we both said it can’t be up there as well … it was. We were off-line now and unsure. Jake took the lead and marched ahead direct lining over the moor and through a river to get us back right. I was into unknown territory at this stage, further than I’d ever run before with more climbing in my legs than I’d done in one go. At least we were down to single digit miles to go.
A long descent which neither of our quads appreciated landed us into Braithwaite with just a 5km road run back to Keswick to go.

The hardest work had been done now and it was a case of keeping moving forward. We weren’t going fast but the end was getting closer. We ran past the famous Moot Hall, dodging the Christmas Market revellers and back to the doors of George Fisher, stopping the clock after 10 hours and 39 seconds. We were way off our eight hour target and under 10 hours would’ve been nice, but neither of us was bothered. We completed it and had a cracking day out on the fells.

That’s what this running game is all about in my opinion. Setting a goal, going for it, testing and pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and having a right good time with good people along the way.

On to the next one …