Moire O'Sullivan's book "Mud Sweat and Tears" was lent to me by a fell running friend about ten years ago. It's an excellent read, and it put the Mourne 2 Day on my wish list (along with the Rogaine 24 - maybe next year).
We decided a while ago during the worst of the post Brexit passport mayhem not to bother leaving the British Isles this year. Both of us have been wanting to go back to France or Germany for a while but this year has been a political car crash so we took the easier option and planned our summer (!) holiday to coincide with the Mourne.
We were on the mid afternoon Stena crossing from Holyhead to Dublin, to allow us to spend some time in Eire during the holiday and have a fairly easy journey back. That meant a couple of hours drive from Dublin up to Newcastle on the friday, which should have been easy. Leaving the ferry port there were big signs saying "M50 TOLL", which I hadn't anticipated. With no cash in euros in the van I veered off at the last minute following the signs "non-toll traffic". DO NOT DO THIS! It takes you into Dublin proper, then abandons you. Dublin is one of the worst sign-posted cities I've ever driven in. Add to that the hundreds of people in stetsons wandering around the streets on their way to a Garth Brooks concert, and we found ourselves stuck for about an hour.
Once the traffic started to move, we started trying to find our way out of the city. The lack of signage meant we had to work on the basis of heading north west (by the direction of the setting sun since all four of the compasses we were carrying were in the MM kit in the back of the van) until we hit the motorway. As it turns out, you can pay the toll online within 24 hours, which would have saved us about 45 minutes.
Once we got onto the motorway the journey up to Newcastle was a doddle. Irish motorways are quiet and smooth. Arriving at the event centre I popped into the registration building to get some advice on where to park, and we settled down with some dinner and wine.
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| Vital kit prep |
A fairly civilised start in the morning with coffee and breakfast. Mick and Jack Cooper were parked on site as well, and we had a quick chat while we were sorting kit. We got registered, got on the bus and got out to our starting point at the car park near Spelga Dam.
We got going bang on our start time. Later starters weren't so lucky and ended up with a bit of a wait, which must have been cold - there was a chilly breeze up there. We grabbed a list of controls and settled down to mark up our maps. Claire and I marked up independently then compared, which helps us catch any mistakes. We were starting with a cluster of 5 in a rough circle around Pigeon Rock Mountain and Slievemoughanmore, and after deciding whether to go clockwise or anti, we set off up the slope to our first control. It was a nice simple one on a wall bend and we dibbed and took a bearing off towards our next in a stream junction about a km away between Cock Mountain and Wee Slievemoughan. That too was an easy find, and we took a line around the contour before dropping to the valley bottom and climbing up to the south summit of Tornamrock for our next control. Excellent visibility made things fairly simple, and we were moving at a reasonable pace. The terrain in the Mourne is tussocky and hard going though, so we weren't really able to run at any speed.
That control was marshalled. Only one team member has an SI card on the Mourne, but random controls are marshalled to ensure both team members are together and carrying their packs.
On up a stream to Windy Gap, where walkers and other competitors were criss crossing the hill. From here we pretty much followed a direct bearing across the valley and up to a crag, then down the other side onto the next control under a boulder at the bottom of Pigeon Rock Crags. It wasn't as easy to find as the previous ones, but a large reentrant confirmed we were on the right bearing and as we dropped down we could see other competitors dibbing and moving on. Another runner made a comment at this point about needing an altimeter, which reminded me to set mine up on my watch at mid camp that evening.
The next control was further along Pigeon Rock Crag towards the start point, drawing us back to a control at the car park before the start of the linear section at a pond on the plateau south of the summit of Slieve Muck. We climbed rather higher than we needed, with hindsight it would have been better to contour round once we reached 600m, but I didn't make as much use of my altimeter as I should have throughout the weekend.
Back north from Slieve Muck, our next control was a long long leg at the south corner of Ben Crom res. First job was to get through the Mourne Wall which stood between us and progress. We dropped sharply alongside the wall until we found a stile, then took a combination of bearing and contour round to the top of Silent Valley res. Had we known about the good path from Ben Crom river to the south west corner of the res that would have changed our route, but it's not marked on the current Harvey.
The nose at the north end of Silent Valley res is awful. Deep heather, enormous tussocks and hidden rocks. At one point I stepped in a hole and dropped up to my groin in gorse, which elicited a lot of swearing. Claire was faring even worse - at 12" shorter than me, she was having to climb up and over tussocks that I could just straddle. Finally we made it to the road and ran fairly briskly up the hill to the control.
A marshal was arriving at the control as we dibbed. He offered us the option of the gully direct to the top of Slieve Binnian north tor but we opted for the clear path to the col below Buzzards Roost. From there we followed a trod towards Binnian Loch, then on towards the Mourne Wall. We hit the wall rather lower than we intended and, after a few minutes of puzzling over the map and the configuration of walls, we climbed up to the stile just under the summit tor. The next control was visible almost from the top - the ruins of a quarry hut some way below, although we didn't identify it for sure until we were about 200m away. Once we'd dibbed that we planned our leg to the next control. This was to be the worst mistake of the weekend.
Contouring round the south slope of Binnian, then through the quarry remnants at the base we reached the stile at the base of Wee Binnian. Both of us had made the same mistake - marking the grid ref given instead of the feature we were looking for. The datum point of the grid ref was on the east side of the wall. The control list quite clearly stated that the control was on the west side of the wall. Nevertheless, we didn't look at the control list, contoured round the east side of Wee Binnian and ended up on the wrong side of the Mourne Wall after a much longer than needed diversion. Finding a good solid spot we hopped over the wall and climbed back up to dib the control, then ran down into mid camp.
Mid camp was at the base of Silent Valley reservoir dam. Facilities were more generous than we expected, Jack disappeared soon after we arrived and returned with a scone from a vending van. Apparently there were also showers somewhere around. We didn't bother and just pitched camp, then sat around chatting.
A substantial meal of Tentmeals Italian couscous, along with cheese, chocolate and a bottle of cab sav decanted into a titanium flask, and we slept pretty well (well, I did at least). The start in the morning was 'first come, first served', and we picked up our control list at about 8.30, when most competitors were already well away.
We had a difficult time marking up the maps. A couple of nearby teams were marking up theirs by one member reading out the gridrefs in a loud voice, while the other plotted them. This is extremely distracting and resulted in a couple of screwed up plottings on our maps. In future for linears we'll do something different, or at least get well out of the camp before plotting.
The first control was flagged from the camp, then the next was a simple on at a stile in the Mourne Wall. The next two were 'any order' - two ponds lost in reeds on the river bed. We found them both fairly easily, then set off up the side of Slieve Muck for the next, tucked up under the base of the crag. Below us we could see another team struggling to find the pond controls, and seeming to give up and walk off.
From the crag under the plateau we once again needed to cross the wall, this time slipping through a gap left by a crag near the summit of Muck. The next control was a boulder under a gulley, straightforward to access. The next, at the base of the summit of Doan, was a straightforward traverse to the path up Carn Mountain, then round the north of Loch Shannagh and up Doan. The (marshalled) control was straightforward, and we worked out our next leg.
If we'd thought carefully, we might have realised from seeing runners coming down to Ben Crom dam from the west the previous day, that we could access the path east of the res that way. We didn't make that connection though, and took a rough ground traverse to the west of Ben Crom. We made pretty good time nonetheless, maybe 5 minutes more than another team who took the smoother route. A steep climb to the col south of Slieve Beg, and we were nearing the end of the control list.
The next control was where the Brandy Pad crosses the wall at Bog of Donard. The route was obvious - up over Slieve Beg, under the Castles on the Brandy Pad and up to the stile. We passed others coming back towards us, and at the stile we realised (courtesy of Claire having done a few fell races here) that the ground through Bog of Donard to the forest was going to be much harder and slower than passing over the col between Donard and Commadargh. So back along the Brandy Pad we went.
Over the stile at the col, down the rocky tourist path to Newcastle forest, then some undulating paths through the forest to get the last 3 controls and back into the college grounds for the finish.
The Mourne 2 Day is a fantastic event, probably the toughest mountain marathon I've done just because of the difficult terrain. Really well organised though, very friendly and some beautiful scenery. We ended up returning to the Mourne for another couple of days later in our holiday.
Lessons learned
- If there is a fragmented path shown on the Harvey, it probably pretty much goes where it looks like. If not, at least a section of path speeds things up a bit compared with tussock
- That said, we can do 25km on tussock in a day quite comfortably, if slowly.
- My UD Fastpack 20 is not really big enough for a 2 day MM
- We should come back and do the Seven Sevens race
- Always look for faster terrain as well as direct routes and contour routes
- READ THE CONTROL DESCRIPTIONS!
Kit
On
- OMM Flash tights 1.0 (too warm, should have taken shorts or 3/4)
- Montane wind proof
- Awdis long sleeved base layer
- Drymax thin socks
- Freet Felden shoes
- Montane Coda cap
Carried (incl some shared/carried by Claire)
- UD Fastpack 20
- Terra Nova Laser Competition 2
- Alpkit ti stove
- 200gm gas cylinder
- 750ml ti pan
- 330ml ti mug
- Alpkit Numo mat
- Rab Neutrino down sleeping bag
- OMM Flash tights 1.0
- Isobaa merino long sleeved top
- Montane Primaloft Alpha top
- Primaloft buff
- Montane Prism hat
- Buffalo mittens
- Ron Hill gloves
- Drymax thin socks
- 500ml soft bottle
- 500ml soft bottle with Salomon filter
- 2l platypus (rolled) with short tube and tap (for mid camp)
- Mourne map
- compass
- 2 * retractible chinagraph pencils
- Coros Apex Pro watch
- spare contact lenses
- phone
- OMM waterproof
- Evadict waterproof trousers
Food
- 4 pitta pizzas
- Tentmeals
- malt loaf
- 100g cheese
- chocolate
- wine
- nuts
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