Apologies but my lakeland running for 2015 still hasn't got off the ground. Harry my border collie running chum injured his stifle joint (knee) in January and we haven't been able to get out to the Lakes for long days in the hills largely because of that. Hopefully things will improve for the summer

Fairfield Horseshoe - 30th December 2014

Okay, okay 30th December 2014 isn't 2015 in the strictest sense... but its after Christmas so it'll do. Just a beautiful, beautiful run with Hester and Harry around the Fairfield Horseshoe, one of our favourite and well thumbed routes in the Lakes. A good starter for the year then.

From Rydal - 10.1 miles and 4,007 ft - route on Strava

The first climb out of Rydal

Rydal Water

Looking towards Bowfell on the horizon

Spectacular running Hester

Fairfield ahoy!

Me with my wooly chullo and Hazzer

Harry hits the snow line

Hester and Haz just in front on a dodgy snow cornice

View from the top of the horseshoe

Running back into the sunset

Introduction

Well, following on from my "hugely successful" (cough) Stolly's Running Blog over the past couple of years I thought it was time to give my hill running blogging a bit of a shake up and, for this year at least, I'm intending to 'run' two hill running blogs - a Lakeland Running Year (this one) and a Yorkshire Dales Running Year (the other one). Given that my running blogs are just one huge excuse to (in the main) include pictures of the Yorkshire Dales and the Lake District taken as I run through them, separating expeditions one National Park from the other somehow seemed like a good idea... although funnily enough, now that I've started, it suddenly seems ever so slightly less of a 'good idea'.

Given that I live in Horton-in-Ribblesdale (with Hester and Harry), the Yorkshire Dales runs will I'm sure outweigh those in the Lake District. Equally the Dales runs will be a bit south western Dales centric but with the occasional excursion north into Wensleydale or Swaledale. The Lake District is only an hour or so down the road though and we get over there relatively often so, after a bit of a slower start, the Lakeland Running Year will start to gather a pace in no time at all.

I tend to run in the hills most days by the way, circa 40 to 50 miles a week, but (thankfully?) the runs posted will usually just represent the more exciting weekend adventures, with the odd mid-week expedition included if something out of the ordinary occurs.

Quite what I'm going to do when I'm running somewhere not in the Yorkshire Dales or the Lake District remains to be seen but I'll cross that bridge when I get there!

All style and sophistication - that's me!